Artist Royalties should be higher

[Plutonia]

Hello,

Spotify pays artists every time their songs are played.  But they pay only a fraction of a cent.  In conversations I have had with many artists, I hear that they often have thousands of plays per month, but even at this moderate level of activity they receive less than $1 per month.

To me, this is really the same as not getting paid.  So, in reality, Spotify is simply a legalized form of piracy.

Sure, thay have the proper contracts with the labels.  Everything is completely legal.  But in this case, 'legal' doesn't really mean anything.  The payments that artists receive are virtually nothing.  Spotify makes money from subscribers and advertisers.  The labels make a much higher proportion of all income than the artists.  But it is only the artists who create everything.

Creating music takes a lot of time and a lot of money, most of which is contributed by the artists themselves.  To do this full time, as a professional, you must be able to make a living at it.  If we, as a society, are unwilling to pay for music then music will die.  It won't disappear, but it will die.  We will be left with only those 'artists' who create products that are designed to appeal to as many people as possible, which of course means that the 'artists' must be very attractive people too with a willingness and talent to be a model/dancer.  That is really the only way to make a significant income in the industry anymore.  And this is very different from how it was not that long ago.  I am struck by how many truly gorgeous people there are posing as musicians these days, versus how it once was were few people cared how a musician looked.  After all, music is there to hear, not see.

These trends make it extremely hard for REAL musicians to be heard, or to even survive.  All of the promotion done goes to the gorgeous people who ought to be on the cover of a fashion magazine instead of in a recording studio.  Spotify, in not fairly compensating artists, contributes to the adverse situation that real muscians face today in the business.  I suggest that Spotify look less to their immediate-term bottom line and more to future of music itself.  For without good music to stream, they got nothing.

[Peter__]

Hey! Welcome to the community 🙂

I'm not sure the blame here lies with Spotify. Spotify have deals with the record companies, they are the ones who set the prices and pay the artists. Spotify never actually pay or are in contact with artists directly, they also do not set the prices. Sure there are negociations and the like, but overall the blame here lies with the record companies. 

Your logic is faulty, calling Spotify a legal form of piracy is ludacris. Piracy implies that Spotify are in breach of copyright laws, which is clearly not true, everything on Spotify is above board. 

Also artists are always free to opt-out of Spotify and streaming services, like several big bands have decided to do. At the end of the day, artists might not make a lot of money from allowing Spotify to play their music, however, if I hear an album I like on Spotify, I will still go out and buy that album. In that sense, its an extra sale for the artists as I would not have purchased the music if I didn't hear it on Spotify first.

Just my opinions,

Peter

[user-removed]

Hey there!

I listen all the music from Spotify. I like the idea, best service for mobile and PC, all the music...

However when I heared about Premium, I purchased an smartphone and that was not cheap for my budget, but that worth every cent! Also I use Unlimtied mobile network 0.5M/0.5M, soon speed 2M/2M, at home cable modem broadband 10M/2M.

I think Spotify made my life easy. No need to music transfer, already sold all my mp3 players. 🙂

There is no need to mp3 players, only Spotify 🙂

That's service called Spotify. Easy life, amazing life... Love it!

[Circle]

I Know this isnt the right boardd but no ones answering on the help board. the play button is broken- please reply and help!!!

[user-removed]

Hey to play some song, you need to double click it and then this button should work. If button is not clickable, there is no songs to play. So just search some stuff and doubleclick and play. If this doesn't work, I suggest to do clean re-install.

[elee]

Here's an interesting take on royalties from streaming services:

Making Cents

I don't see Spotify as the bad guy in all this. I think the industry overall should repay artists more. 

[Peter__]

I couldn't agree more!

Peter

[Alinanda]

I agree. In fact that is why I came here, to see if a Spotify staff member had responded. Just saw a local band who is on Spotify and says they have never received a check from Spotify but they get a lot of plays. I think Spotify IS to blame. This particular band produced their own record so there is no label to pay them. I definitely think that'd your music is being played through their app, the talent should be getting fairly compensated. Clearly the more popular talent is already signed to big record labels with a contract that pays them well, but our local starving artists, who just want to share their joy should absolutely be getting at least a couple hundred bucks a month. Just as if it were a gig. Total bull**bleep**nSpotify. Please explain yourself.

[Peter__]

If your friends band has never received any money from Spotify, I would suggest they get in touch with their aggregator for more details. 

They can also get in touch with the artist services team directly from the artist pages. 

Peter

[mutantdog]

I know this is a bit of an old thread but I've had a few thoughts about this subject myself. Certainly, I think that artists should earn more money from the music industry in general. This is nothing new, record labels have been ripping off artists for decades, with the relatively few high profile exceptions most musicians earn a pretty poor wage from their work. Royalties from streaming services are particularly small when compared to per-sale earnings but when you start to add it up it kinda makes sense.

For example:

A UK subscriber pays £10 per month for a premium account. Presumably this includes VAT, so actually this subscriber is paying £8.33 per month. How much music someone listens to obviously varies, some people likely spend much of their waking day with music playing (some even while asleep), others maybe only listen for a couple of hours a day. For the sake of argument lets say the average person listens to 5 hours of music per day with the average song being 5 minutes long. We end up with 60 songs played per day per subscriber, over a month this totals up to 1800 songs.

As far as I'm aware, royalty payments from Spotify are around a third of a penny per song played (remember this is paid to the label/distributer who take their cut before paying the artist). If we add this up we get  1800 x £0.0033 = £5.94. Consider Spotify's own costs (staff payments, investor payments, promotion costs etc) and we are fast approaching, if not overtaking, the £8.33 threshold.

Even then, we are completely ignoring the large number of free subscribers, from whom advertising revenue makes up a much smaller contribution than a premium subscription.

My estimates for average listening habits may be wildly off, but if you look at it like this then its hard to see how Spotify could actually pay more in royalties, unless either the subscription fee is substantially raised or more people pay while using the service less.

Either way, these tiny per-play payouts are more than that earned for an illegal download which of course earns the artist nothing. The argument of whether streaming services damage sales is a valid one but the way people consume music has changed over the last decade, i doubt there are many people who can honestly say they have paid for every single mp3 on their computer/phone. Furthermore, Spotify payments are significantly higher than YouTube partner payments (av. £0.001 per play) or soundcloud payments (nothing). At least this way, the money is fairly distributed across everything that a subscriber listens to and of course gives many artists the chance to have their music heard in exchange for payment without necessarily needing the massive promotion of a major record label.

Increasingly, recorded music is becoming less of an income stream, that is just the way things are now, the damage is done and many people simply will not pay large amounts of money for an album or a song any more. Artists can and do opt out of subscription services, whether it does them any good is whole different story of course.

[lordjameson]

I was just curious as to how much of a song has to play for the artist to receive royalties? Sometimes I don't listen to an entire song and wonder if artists get compensated for that. Thanks!

[smelico]

While I do think the labels should be paying artists more (a topic for another forum imo), I think people are neglecting another source of revenue that happens *because* of Spotify.  I've bought mp3 albums from probably 5 or 6 artists just this month due to first hearing their music on Spoify. Had I not been able to explore pretty much any genre I want, I'd never have heard of the artists whose music I purchased.  I think only one was a mainstream band. The rest were obscure bands most people might never hear about because they don't find the "mold" required by mainstream media companies.

If I discover a new artist and find myself listening to their music over and over,  such as that of Bajofondo or Black Violin or Chic Gamine, I buy their albums (always mp3s) just to show my support.  After all, I want them to continue producing music, and they can't do that if it's not financially feasible.

And I'm not naive enough to think most people buy albums based on artists they hear on any streaming service.  I'd bet that most use streaming services so they don't have to buy music.  But keep in mind some people do support artists by making actual purchases thanks to discovery services such as Spotify.

[Peter__]

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@smelico wrote:

While I do think the labels should be paying artists more (a topic for another forum imo), I think people are neglecting another source of revenue that happens *because* of Spotify.  I've bought mp3 albums from probably 5 or 6 artists just this month due to first hearing their music on Spoify. Had I not been able to explore pretty much any genre I want, I'd never have heard of the artists whose music I purchased.  I think only one was a mainstream band. The rest were obscure bands most people might never hear about because they don't find the "mold" required by mainstream media companies.

If I discover a new artist and find myself listening to their music over and over,  such as that of Bajofondo or Black Violin or Chic Gamine, I buy their albums (always mp3s) just to show my support.  After all, I want them to continue producing music, and they can't do that if it's not financially feasible.

And I'm not naive enough to think most people buy albums based on artists they hear on any streaming service.  I'd bet that most use streaming services so they don't have to buy music.  But keep in mind some people do support artists by making actual purchases thanks to discovery services such as Spotify.

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I totally agree, especially for smaller bands where royalties from streaming sites will be low! In fact it is those bands who generally have reasonably priced albums and content, so its actually a win-win in terms of you buying it since you are helping them out but it is affordable!

Peter

[cmscode]

i just read that an artists only gets paid by % of total streams. this means that if i listen to joe satriani 30 times in a month, and some other yankhole has lady gaga on repeat 9,000 times in a month, i'm actually paying for lady gaga to make music.  this is like me going into a store and trying to buy good music and someone telling me NO - you must buy THIS crap instead. seems like this payment scheme is unfavorably skewed in favor of quanity not quality. 

every artist should be paid by a proportion of how much each individual user listens to them each month. i do NOT want to invest in crappy music, one thing the world needs less of is bad media.  i am seriously considering going back to pandora and downloading from amazon music. at least i know the artists is getting more than .0004 cents when i do that. 

[Joe]

Spotify say on their artist services page "we will pay out approximately 2% of our gross royalties for an artist whose music represents approximately 2% of what our users stream". This sounds pretty reasonable to me as artists are rewarded in proportion to streams of their music. Sure, new bands aren't going to make a living from spotify but need to do what the industry has always done - tours, promotions, CD sales etc. No idea where the cents per stream figure came from - this Guardian article suggests something much higher.

If you haven't seen it, you might also want to read what Pink Floyd had to say about Pandora.

[cmscode]

I agree essentially that the way an artist makes money is not on albums - unless they sell a trillion, etc.   

what i'm hoping for is a more equitable arrangement where my subscription fee ONLY goes to the stuff i listen to. that is now not the case.  making the world a popularity contest is what's wrong with it in the first place.  i just really dont think its fair to have my money going to something i'm not even listening to.  its more complex to calculate, but a more equitable formula should be used that allocates money from each individuals listening to what they listen to, up to a point. ie if i listen to rick wakeman's journey to the center of the earth 3,000 times, and that's the only thing i listen to in a month, rick should get $7.  if i listen to three tracks from three artists in a month, they should each get $7/3.  i know that's not a perfect formula, but at least its a step in the right direction. 

sadly, i dont think any other streaming services work this way. so i'm inclined to just give this company less money (forgo the mobile feature), and call it good. 

[tobias_hedlund]

I totally agree with "cmscode". I primarily want to use Spotify as a substitute for buying records. If I listen to only one artist one month, I want that artist to get the whole chunk of my individual subscription fee. There is a difference between "radio-listening" and record-listening, I think. Today Spotify works as a substitute for radio, rewarding quantity over quality-listening which is so WRONG!

[cmscode · Accepted solution]

I think that spotify is big enough to renegotiate with the big labels. spotify tells me they are at the mercy of the labels, and that's why they made this deal.  well now they have such a huge subscriber base that nows the time to re-negotiate.  if someone wants to listen to lady gagas new song 8 million times they can do it on youtube or use torrents.  i want to support real musicians, not stage performers whos songs are written by old men. i'll even pay MORE per month to do this. sign me up on the 'i dont support **bleep**ty pop music' plan for $12.99 a month and only give my money to what i listen to.  lets use the internet for what it was meant for, to create and perpetuate creativity, not to make it another way to feed the crap media machine empire.  sound good?  🙂 

[BeVeR]

I agree with what your saying. 

  I just bought a premiumgiftcard and i think it's money well spend for unlimited and undisrupted music, but -as you know- the money I spent does not get devided over the artists i'm listening to. In other words, I am buying Britney Spears albums, while im listening to Venetian Snares. Not that there is anything wrong with Britney, it simply doesn't interest me. This is an unfair system for the artists, my money should get devided over my streams.

I know I'm just repeating what you said, but I hope more people will think about this flaw in the 'spotify'-philosophie. And hopefully spotify turns into a true win-win situation. 

[Peter__]

Well, it's not quite as simple as that either, what you stream does influence how much artists get paid:
http://www.spotifyartists.com/spotify-explained/#royalties-in-detail