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.

[BeVeR]

I take that back, i thought about it under the shower and read some more on spotifyartist.com i think the system works. my streams are worth a certain value (higher than the freeusers) and my streams go to the artist i listen to. and i like to think that i listen more music than the average pop-music-listener. there is something to say for the labels that are between spotify and the artists, but that is up to the artists and how they arrange their deals. 

[BeVeR]

yup, thx, just realised that

[user-removed]

Hey there and thanks for your question about payments.

I did some research on the Internet and Spotify seems to pay for stream 0.005-0.007 cents to label. Label take a own percent and everything else goes to artists, remixers, composers etc. Let's say one track in Amazon is 1,29 €, so to stream it for 1,29 € you need almost 215 streams if payment is 0.006 cents (which I think is average). In other words when you get track by 1.29 on Amazon, you pay only once, no matter how much years you play it. Spotify pays little, but every time.

Today released on Spotify DJ Gollum and DJ Cap - Emotions in Dance (Original Remix Edit) and I have streamed it already tons of times this day... I think it is a close to 1,29 € now, and if no, It will be close very soon 😉 I have also purchased it, as it is so cool. Just to support, I still stream it. So in other words Spotify is great, but you need also to show your love otherwise to artists.

If this party song don't already earned more from my streaming than todays purchase, this will very soon. I'm on Spotify Premium since 2010 and I think Spotify pays more to artists if user on Premium rather than Free. Free compensations are from ads and are less than Premium payments. So if you like music, go for Premium. Three, two, one... action!

When you pay 9.90 € for Spotify, 30 % goes to Spotify, 24% is VAT in Finland and everything else 46% goes as royalties to labels. The other stuff depends on deal between label and artist. So how much artists etc. get from these 46% after labels.

YouTube pays for officially added music like VEVO videos and official music content similar way to Spotify from ads.

In fast way artist an label can get more from purchase, but in long way one user can stream even more than one track purchase. It depends how much user listens tracks. Let's say track is bad and you don't add it to list. You don't purchase that track too. So this model is great, playlist tracks especially can do a lot money in year for rightholders.

spotify:track:6N5Pi58rE5LZT7uhA8GG0u

Thanks for your time reading this.

[AlexZandretta]

The Problem to me personally is the loops holes used in the current laws that allow companys to utillize amounts they have set up.

I checked out the leaked sony contract last month and have to see theirs allot of questionable tatics being used by allot of these companys.

Back in the day when i was on mp3.com,as an artists i was pulling in around 2-5 grand ever 2 weeks,the traffic and stream amounts were 90 times higher then anything id seen online,sadly when vivendi and the big 5 took out mp3.com it also took out a massive communtiy of artists that were making a reasonable living.

In all honestly their needs to be 2 levels of income for artists a flat set rate thats atleast a cent.......fraction of a cent is a bit rediculous,I know the current rate on google play ia about .045 per stream......(and apparently its going down which sucks).

Second problem artists are faced with is the simple fact that marketing these services are almost impossible.

Example of how its controlled,you can follow people but cant send out a request to be followed,theirs no community building(or atleast its poorly designed)

plus the fact that people are forced to sign up to the services,so traffics not going to be anywhere near as good.

(mp3.com i was doing 6500 people a day......)these days I do maybe a fraction of that.

the social networking needs to be amped up,especially for the artists,as one thing we had seen on places like mp3.com,the indies killed most of the majors for traffic.......I had friends on their making 1.2 million every two weeks at one point.

If these sites step up and build a more robust community to allow the artists a fair shot at getting their stuff heard,then you'll see places like spotify take off.

example of how bad things are,just off the top of my head,on sites like reverbnation,we pulled number one in metal in canada for a few weeks......and it just doesnt translate into the sales that  it used to.

Thing is its setup for the business to the people,and the middle man"the artist"is left scratching his sack trying to figure out why he's not making money*lol*.......I know i sound bitter sorry.

Im giving spotify a hardcore shot to see if we can get a larger following going,but right now just going through it,the site looks grim......

And considering how well allot of times this song does.....ill be curious to see what the reults are.

The Current track we are pushing is this one here,the songs called "Vampire Sight"

https://open.spotify.com/track/67c4shDriSAf5IOlJuZBef

[marmot_man]

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@Peter wrote:

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.

---

To the contrary, Peter, I'd say the idea that simply not being in breach of copyright laws makes something "above board" is similarly ludicrous. Copyright laws aren't able to even close to keep up with the changing business of music technology, and there's a big difference between legality and decency. A system can be totally legal but still not be right, and I'd argue that the current level of streaming pay to musicians is unequivocally not right, regardless of who's at fault. Some blame may be with record companies, but the rate of pay from Spotify to independent artists is no better. To my view, the most fault lies in our newly-developed societal idea that we should be able to listen to all music for free.

I don't know how to fix this. Clearly, I'm here anyway. But instead of trying to justify it, I'll at least acknowledge that I am complicit in a flawed system. Hopefully we can come up with a better way at some point.

[arpepe25]

As an artist, thank you. My family helped me pay 2k for each song on my album. 15 songs. 30 THOUSAND dollars. They believe in me. For all these years I have been listening to artists who will never get the recognition or pay they deserve. I don't feel I am at the same teir as they are yet (I was in middle and high school when I wrote the album), but I am starting to feel their pain.

[jmacofearth]

This is not solved. And this response is not a solution. Artists that used to make $1,000 or more a month from royalties are now making $10 per month. And Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube Red, and Apple Music are the reason why. If you don't pay the artists for their music you are stealing their creative output.

Don't hide behind "we paid millions in royalties" when you know that money went to U2, The Rolling Stones and Aerosmith, bands that don't need the money.

[Shoegaaze]

Love your thoughts... so frustrating. It’s illegal for them to pay a dollar or less if you do 1000 streams. At .004 cents per stream that’s at least four dollars. How do we fight this.

[denispotify]

British Government (DCMS Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport) Opens Investigation Into Whether Streaming Music Platforms Are ‘Fair to the Writers and Performers’.

The DCMS is inviting written statements to be sent in by 6pm on Monday, November 16, 2020.

[Ondrey]

I think the best solution is to not support Spotify. We pulled the plug, feels great