The Impact of Music Streaming
In a recent article by Sharky Laguana, he evaluates the abundance of issues contained within online streaming services, such as Spotify. When most of us hear the name, we don’t think of a big and evil entity that sleeps easy by taking money from artists. The main issues seen with Spotify might be that it uses too much data over 4G LTE, or that it cost too much — $9.99/month for almost unlimited music streaming.
Just the title of the article grabbed my attention, “Streaming Music is Ripping You Off”. How is one supposed to react to that? Obviously I wanted to check it out. From the first sentence, I began to question my loyalty to streaming services such as Spotify, and by the end I was red in the face of how the system works. Each time I listen to a song, the artist gets $.007?! How ridiculous is that? I pay $10 but I have to listen to 1,428 songs in a month to make sure that my money goes where I want it to, basically.
Now imagine the power of some sort of larger corporation or entity that streams music at almost all hours of the day, every day. With this much airtime, a company would control much more of the general pool of money than one person.
After seeing this article, there’s a part of me that continues to want to challenge the way that’s most convenient to receiving music. When there are real numbers and it’s possible to see just how the artists are impacted by a big pool approach, it creates a sour taste in the mouth of consumers.
For example, say the Top 5 songs by “Us the Duo” have 39 million hits cumulatively. When multiplied by the royalty amount per song ($.007), this comes out to $273,000. This may seem like a stifling figure for just having songs played, but it’s important to realize the responsibilities that come with being popular enough to tour. A good example being Us the Duo, mentioned earlier, a duo that tours the country and plays gigs at smaller venues. These two have several hits, but their income from Spotify is not enough to supplement a majority of their travels, and that’s where a lot of their fans listen to their music. $273,000 is a lot to a normal person, but when attempting to supplement the lifestyle of being a traveling musician, it’s not enough. Touring is their other source of income, but it also costs them money in the forms of gas, food, lodging, and other expenses. Merchandise sales is their remaining major form of income.
It’s just appalling how little the artists actually earn from “subscribers”, “followers”, because none of that really matters, it’s all about how many times their songs have been played — whether they got listened to doesn’t matter. The article by Sharky certainly got me thinking, and maybe it should do the same for all of us about how we listen to our music.
