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80% of musicians earn less than £200 a year from streaming
- staticautomatic 6y agoI’m surprised it’s only 80%. I would have thought it would be higher.
- fergie 6y agoYes, but 80% of music on streaming services is not that good.
- wolco2 6y ago80% of the music you listen to which is probably part of the 20% most popular content. If you had better discovery you might find something in those under used 80%.
- airstrike 6y ago> 80% of the music you listen to which is probably part of the 20% most popular content "Did you just assume..."
- fergie 6y agoIts nice to uncover a hidden gem, and my tastes have always skewed towards the obscure. In Spotify's defence- they are actually really good at digging up old, unknown stuff that I really like. (I say all this as an ex-professional musician who spent far too much time flicking through vinyl in second hand record stores in his youth.) Its not as if 80% of the music on Spotify is offensively terrible, its just that its not good enough to buy, and therefore it should come as no surprise that 80% of artists make less than £200 a year.
- mulmen 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
- HenryKissinger 6y agoIf there was an easy and definitive way to become rich, everyone would do it.
- gogopuppygogo 6y agoBe born rich. Most people don't hit that genetic lottery though.
- irrational 6y agoI was going to say, that isn't genetic, but then realized it kind of is. Maybe saying family lottery might be more accurate.
- sosuke 6y agoCan't find it now but I remember an article talking about how to get rich like Bill Gates that started off with "pick better parents".
- klaudius 6y agohttps://philip.greenspun.com/bg/ https://philip.greenspun.com/bg/
- gotem 6y agoWhy don’t artists just release music under different names? E.g. an artist who only made $200 could create 5,000 different variations and now be making $100,000 which is awesome.
- spoonjim 6y agoDon't have the foggiest idea what you're talking about. Payouts go a lot lower than $200, all the way down to $0.00 in fact.
- amelius 6y agoI want to know how many % of developers earn less than $200 a year in the App Store.
- mlboss 6y agoProbably 80% :)
- lucb1e 6y agoExcept how hard is it to learn to code, write a actual app, pay money up front to even get in the exclusive store and have your stuff vetted, versus just record and upload an mp3 to some music service. The distribution might be much worse in music land than in commercial software repositories. (Edit: changed "spotify" to "some music service" because apparently it's not so easy to upload to spotify as an independent artist. It was more about the general idea.) Edit 2: y'all are making a good point about making music not being easy either (I did underrepresent that), but there is no point posting the same reply five times. The subthread where I replied to that is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25352484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25352484
- swiley 6y agoYou can't even pay money up front to upload to spotify, you have to get a paid subscription to a service last time I checked.
- lucb1e 6y agoPaid subscription? As an artist you pay to be on Spotify? Tried finding it just now but it just says > To get your music on Spotify, you need to work with a distributor, or with a record label who already has a distributor. They handle all the licensing and distribution, and pay your streaming royalties. Kinda odd, why would Spotify not just let you enter an IBAN and send you your share as soon as you accumulated a minimum of €10 or something? Regardless, I see this is not as easy as signing up for YouTube and making money off of adds there. I suppose I didn't mean Spotify very specifically, it just happened to be the example and I figured they'd rather have a broader selection of music for their subscribers; the point however works just as well with YouTube or other services.
- throwaway3699 6y agoA better metric is to work out if that 20% is bigger and better off than the previous generation of artists. I'm willing to bet streaming has made the industry better when looking through that lens.
- JohnTHaller 6y agoI kinda doubt it. Streaming rates are akin to radio instead of actual music purchases.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y agoWould you control for population growth? It's always tough in these questions. Do you need twice the music for twice the people? You sure need twice the music jobs, from the artist side. So even if the 20% is bigger, it might be relatively smaller.
- AlexandrB 6y agoOverall revenues are still below 2000 levels[1] and split between more artists thanks to streaming. It's probably worse for the "middle class" who are not getting millions of plays per month but also losing some of the potential income to the "long tail" of artists getting a few hundred plays each. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/272305/global-revenue-of-the-music-industry/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/272305/global-revenue-of...
- grogenaut 6y agoIt hasn't. I've seen numbers for folks like Dolly Parton. She makes less in a year than I spend on coffee in streaming revenues. It is several orders of magnitude less than she makes in music sales.
- tylerjwilk00 6y agoI wonder if 20% of musicians make 80% of the streaming revenue.
- multinational 6y ago80/20 rule?
- HPsquared 6y agoThe number of musicians who earn zero is even larger still.
- lucb1e 6y agoLarger than the number that earns less than 200 quid?
- imtringued 6y agoLess than 200 pounds already covers those who earn zero.
- nr152522 6y agoI’m not sure that’s true. I don’t think it takes much. I made a baby sushing album and that’s net me around $70/year. I made it to help put our daughter to sleep. My wife and I got really tired and it helped to have a recording. I thought that others might find it useful, apparently it does. Maybe it’s just the utility that brings in listeners, but it’s literally just shushing.
- swiley 6y agoSpotify pays based on popularity not streams. This means people who exclusively listen to one genre of music might have little or none of their money go to the artists they like. Streaming could be good but as it is it's just piracy without the RIAA fighting it.
- dannyeei 6y agoDo you have a source for this?
- likeclockwork 6y agoThis is well known. They pay out based on percentage of total plays rather than percentage of a given user's plays. If a band has exactly one fan total who only listens to them instead of getting whatever is left of that person's fees after the platform cut the band will get almost nothing, despite commanding 100% of one person's attention. There is some advocacy around this that explains it better: http://subscribershare.com/ http://subscribershare.com/
- likeclockwork 6y agoOh let me also describe it the other way. Let's say there are two total users of a service, you and I for the purpose of this example. You listen to your favorite band one time per month, I listen to my favorite band twice. My favorite band gets 2/3 while yours gets 1/3.
- dukeofdoom 6y agoPareto Distribution: " Originally applied to describing the distribution of wealth in a society, fitting the trend that a large portion of wealth is held by a small fraction of the population.[3] The Pareto principle or "80-20 rule" stating that 80% of outcomes are due to 20% of causes was named in honour of Pareto, but the concepts are distinct, and only Pareto distributions with shape value (α) of log45 ≈ 1.16 precisely reflect it. Empirical observation has shown that this 80-20 distribution fits a wide range of cases, including natural phenomena[4] and human activities." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution
- wittyreference 6y agoI've never been able to develop and intuitive understanding of what sort of phenomenon should obey a Pareto distribution, as opposed to a normal or logarithmic one (which I do feel I understand.) Any nuggets of insight here on HN?
- imgabe 6y agoSystems with positive feedback loops tend towards power law distributions. If some success can help increase the likelihood of later success, then for participants they'll reach a level where there's a snowball effect that runs away to enormous returns. Most won't get enough to get the snowball growing. If you're a musician and you have enough fans, they'll start creating more fans as they tell people about it, large numbers of people will be going to your shows and other people will hear about you, you get on the radio, you get listed as "trending" on Spotify, etc. There's also nothing to slow it down, since once you record a song once, people can listen to it effectively infinitely more times without you having to do anything else.
- cgh 6y agoMany phenomena that are unbounded by physical laws follow power law distributions. Nassim Taleb uses book sales as an example: popular authors get more popular exponentially. But something physically bounded like height follows a normal distribution. To put it another way, let's say you have two randomly selected authors. Their average earnings are $1,000,000 per year. Is it more likely that they each earn roughly $1,000,000 per year, or that one earns $1,000,000+ and the other almost nothing? On the other hand, you have two women whose average height is 1.7m. Is it more likely that one woman is 30cm tall and the other is over 3m tall or that they are both roughly 1.7m?
- Dumblydorr 6y agoI used to be a performing pianist in the limited gigging world. I got paid to play cocktail hours, charity events, contra dances, and folk festivals. These were once in a while gigs, netting me usually 100-150 on average. I took home 3k total over years of doing this. To record would've been a whole new world. Either shell out a years' plus worth of performance wages to get an album made, or use my coding gig to prop it up. I decided I am only good, not great, and meager streaming revenue and occasional $20 buys couldn't be worth it. In summary, play music for fun. If you see anyone making a decent wage off music, great for them, but unless you're prodigious or attractive or well connected, it's a 1% craps-shoot.
- sosuke 6y agoI recently saw some numbers from who I thought was a very popular author. Content creation is a labor of love. Thanks for playing the music.
- 542458 6y agoYeah, Devin Townsend (who I would consider a successful musician) recently discussed how much he makes in an average year - and it was something like (going from memory) 70K per year before you factor in all the expenses associated with being a musician and creating records (which are quite large!). Touring is where much of his income comes from and he had recently “invested” in creating a new album and setting up a tour, but COVID wiped that all out putting him in a less-than-ideal financial situation. I think that much like working at McDonalds or dealing drugs most people don’t make much - the financial rewards are fairly concentrated to a few individuals.
- Emphere 6y agoWould be interested in seeing a source for this if possible
- 542458 6y agoI could have sworn there was a relatively recent FB post on it, but I wasn't able to locate it. That said, there's a 2015 interview where he said $60K per year - not sure if that's in CAD or USD. https://metalinjection.net/shocking-revelations/harsh-reality-devin-townsends-reveals-his-monthly-salary-and-its-not-a-lot https://metalinjection.net/shocking-revelations/harsh-realit...
- woeirua 6y agoThe fundamental problem isn't streaming, as much as it is that natural systems follow power law distributions. There will always be superstars that make the majority of the money, and tons and tons of wannabe artists that make almost nothing. That was just as true 20 years ago as it is today. If anything, streaming makes it possible to find those smaller artists and sample what they're making without having to go to some esoteric store and pay $20 for an album that you've never heard before. The system may be broken, but I'm not sure going back to the old system is the right approach.
- vlovich123 6y agoIsn't that just a truism of the Pareto principle? Is there any field where that's not the case? 20% of lawyers make 80% of the money. 20% of doctors make 80% of the money. etc etc. The difference I think is if 80% of professional musicians can't make a living & it's not clear that's actually the case (i.e. streaming isn't the only source of revenue). Similarly, music may have a higher "stickiness" for tenacity where people see it as a higher calling for them even if they're not making money (vs someone not cutting it as a lawyer/doctor to even pay the bills is going to quit & find something else if they weren't even weeded out during school).
- rtx 6y agoI don't think it's true for doctors, the wealth there is more distributed.
- ghaff 6y agoSome professions are lottery professions. Others aren't. I suppose a lot of it is a demand/supply thing. Also independent contractor vs. employee. Not to say employees all make a lot of money. Janitor probably makes a fairly predictable minimum wage level in the US. On the other hand an employed software developer or other engineer might have a 5-10x wage disparity (even within a given country) for various reasons. But it won't be an "actor" waiting tables versus an A-list celebrity.
- geodel 6y ago
- jackson1442 6y agoI'm curious how much content these artists produce on the platforms. That is, what percent of the content on the platform is produced by these artists rather than simply how many artists there are. I thought this was a more interesting takeaway from the article-- > 92 per cent of respondents said that less than five per cent of their earnings came from streaming last year
- nostromo 6y agoI have friends that love pottery, knitting, photography, painting, and a million other creative pursuits. But they also have day jobs because it's difficult to make money in the arts unless you have millions of fans. With any other job we would say, "well, if you're only making £200 a year, maybe you should get a better-paying job." I'm not sure why this is different.
- munificent 6y ago> I'm not sure why this is different. There isn't an industry with a handful of corporations like Spotify making billions of dollars off your friends' pottery while millions of people spend hours gazing at it.
- 542458 6y agoSpotify has never posted an annual net profit. If you want to blame somebody, I’d say you should blame the listeners who overwhelmingly listen to a small number of popular artists. Alternatively, blame the record labels who contribute less and less value while still skimming massive amounts of money. See: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110707/03264014993/riaa-accounting-how-to-sell-1-million-albums-still-owe-500000.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110707/03264014993/riaa-...
- munificent 6y ago> Spotify has never posted an annual net profit. Because a company choose to roll all of its revenue into growth does not mean that somehow that money doesn't exist and couldn't have instead gone into musicians' pockets. Spotify made $7.4 billion in 2019. Imagine a world where Spotify had only made, say $1 billion, and all of the world's streaming musicians had made $6.4 billion more, distributed among them. Call me crazy, but that latter world sounds more like the one I'd prefer to live in.
- Negitivefrags 6y agoWhat do you think they spent that 7.4 billion on exactly? They literally did give it to the artists, or at least, the record companies.
- athms 6y agoIt has been this way for a long time, including selling albums. Musicians and singers make money by performing. The real money is made by song writers.
- aqme28 6y agoNot a professional musician, but I have some friends with some success in the industry. I don't think any professional popular musicians expect to make money from streaming. They seem to make their money from (pre-COVID) performances or from "sync deals," which is basically when you license music for an ad/show/movie/etc.
- sien 6y agoWhy don't the musicians get together and make their own streaming service where they get more of the revenue?
- lucb1e 6y agoI guess they're not Apple or Google with instant access to a huge number of users. Bandcamp is a place where, as far as I know, it's very artist-oriented, but how many people use that compared to the established services? The network effect is a bitch, is what I assume the problem is here.
- radicalriddler 6y agoI think this was the idea behind tidal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_(service) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_(service)
- ghaff 6y agoBecause the issue isn't the skim. It's that there's only so much money to spread around in a world where "everyone" expects to get access to all the world's music for $10/month.
- gh02t 6y agoServices like Bandcamp are working on a similar premise to that, but it's stuck in a bit of a catch-22. They need a lot of cash to sign licensing deals with the sort of big ticket artists that attract the numbers of mainstream customers they need to have that amount of cash. They have carved themselves out a nice niche as an artist-friendly music store, but their path towards competing with companies like Apple for the mainstream is about as uphill as it gets. Bandcamp isn't exactly a streaming service, but it's the same battle to be fought.
- corobo 6y agoBecause nobody will sign up for that and they'll get zero. People don't sign up to Spotify for the mentioned 80%, and if you include the mainstream music then you have the exact same problem with different branding
- AdmiralAsshat 6y agoI'd like to see, in turn, how much the average musician makes a year from Bandcamp sales.
- willtim 6y agoThis is one reason why I still buy CDs. I know that a far bigger proportion of my money will be going to my favorite artists.
- lucb1e 6y agoDoes it? I'm not really asking for sources, but more if you ever looked that up or if it's an assumption. Not saying it's an unreasonable assumption, just wondering whether I should be doing the same or if I should look into it first. Because afaik record labels still get the vast majority of cd sales whereas concerts and merch is where it's at to help the artist.
- angst_ridden 6y agoIt does if you buy the CDs (or MP3s) directly from the artist!
- willtim 6y agoIf the artist makes and sells the CD themselves, it could be close to 100%. This old article from 2013, says a typical figure for major labels is 13%: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23840744 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23840744 How many times would I have to play an album on iTunes or Spotify before the artist received the same contribution? A thousand times? This source suggests so: https://soundcharts.com/blog/music-streaming-rates-payouts https://soundcharts.com/blog/music-streaming-rates-payouts
- magicalhippo 6y agoSince I have limited space, I use Bandcamp and buy digital releases. They take 10-15%[1], which leaves quite a lot to the artists. [1]: https://bandcamp.com/pricing https://bandcamp.com/pricing
- ghaff 6y agoAnd a ton of books through publishers probably earn in the four figures range. (Independently published probably less on average.) It's really hard to earn a good living directly based on anything along these lines.
- ng12 6y agoI read things like this but most indie bands I listen to heavily promote themselves on streaming services. One of my favorite artists actually releases music on Spotify before anywhere else. As always, most of their money comes from gigs and merch. Streaming is advertising more than it is an income source.
- hh3k0 6y ago> As always, most of their money comes from gigs and merch. Streaming is advertising more than it is an income source. It hasn't _always_ been this way, though.
- ng12 6y agoWell no, but it's been this way for a very large chunk of the time between the invention of the LP and the advent of streaming music. Historically unless you were in the tiny minority of gold/platinum artists album sales were not a major income stream. Even with non-independent labels it was common for album proceeds to reimburse the label for recording costs and fund advertising and touring. If you received a non-negligible amount of money from recording an album you've certainly already "made it".
- cm2012 6y agoI used to make $100 a day singing on the subway in NYC. Live and in person is the way to go.
- lucb1e 6y agoPardon me but I'd pay for some peace and quiet on my commute. In Europe, so much as a loud phone call, let alone playing music on loud, is generally considered rude. Is that different in NYC?
- switz 6y agoI don't think anyone experiences quiet in Manhattan. Doing it on the platform is generally considered acceptable by all; doing it on the train leads to mixed responses, but NYers just kind of accept it, despite any muttering under their breath.
- varjag 6y agoThere's a metric ton of street performers (during the better times) in throughfares of most European cities. So no, not that different.
- lucb1e 6y agoFrom my experience the more touristy cities might have a handful (e.g. Amsterdam yes, most other Dutch cities no), so for me it's way more rare than "a metric ton" in "most European cities", but maybe I haven't been in the right places, I wouldn't know if it's more common around the mediterranean for example. Also, on the street it's much louder and more bustling around than in a subway (or on a train or even in a bus for that matter).
- varjag 6y agoshrug I see them everywhere. Hague, Nuremberg, Minsk (again in better times)… and certainly here in Norwegian cities. And since there's a lot more life going on on Manhattan than in any European city it's nothing surprising.
- chrisseaton 6y agoIf we want artists to earn more where do we think that money is going to come from? People aren't going to be willing to double their streaming bill - just not going to happen.
- Invictus0 6y agoIn the past people spent more on music than they do today. Extracting more rent from consumers is definitely still an option on the table. [0] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-sales/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-sales/
- chrisseaton 6y agoBut I don't think music delivers the same value it used to. It's competing with other things. People compare to things like Netflix, and they have fatigue with how many services they need to pay for. It doesn't matter what they used to pay. And people are poorer now than they used to be! They're not going to pay more now.
- Invictus0 6y agoHousehold incomes are at an all time high, even after adjusting for inflation [0]. I disagree that music doesn't deliver the same that it used to: music is one of the great joys of being alive, as essential to mankind as food and water. The value of being able to instantly stream hundreds of millions of songs on demand is a significant service improvement compared to the CD days, where you had to go to a store to shop for music and could only discover new music based on the radio or a friend's recommendation. [0] https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/ https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-...
- chrisseaton 6y ago> as essential to mankind as food and water I think we all know this is nonsense. I've got a couple of friends who never listen to any music. I don't have any friends who never eat or drink.
- jeremiahlee 6y agoI really wish Deezer's user-centric payment system would get traction. It would apportion royalties based on a subscriber's listening instead of all plays across all subscribers. https://www.deezer.com/ucps https://www.deezer.com/ucps
- IshKebab 6y agoThis is a stupid metric. Maybe 80% of artists don't earn much because nobody wants to listen to them. A better metric is how much artists are paid per stream. If it's the same for everyone then I don't really see how you can complain. If big artists get sweetheart deals then that is an issue.
- em500 6y agoSpotify's total revenue is around 8bln/year. It's a bit hard to establish how many musicians are active on Spotify, but the sparse info on the web suggests that it's at least a million. Those 2 numbers tell you enough if you're want to make a living from music and are not already famous.
- cactus2093 6y agoSurely you could say this about almost anything? 80% of an unspecified group of self-identified musicians don't make a lot of money in music isn't a very interesting statistic. This just in as well, "over 80% of basketball players make less than $200 playing basketball" if you count recreational leagues.
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y agoThere was also a line "Including some that have millions of streams" but it looks like those are the ones in the 20% that didn't earn less than 200 in the year. Maybe someone with more knowledge can answer this for me but what exactly is a label for these days? You don't need funding to distribute CDs these days so why can't the artist just put the content on Spotify and Youtube themselves?
- judge2020 6y agoAFAIK you still need to have a label to publish on streaming services, but there are now services that will act as your label and publish for a very low membership fee (<30/yr).
- cactus2093 6y agoA label will often pay to record your music, including hiring the best producers or session musicians, getting other established artists featured in your songs, getting the best people to mix and master it to make it sound great. Then they pay to market it and put it on the radio (which is just one big ad network these days). Really it's very similar to raising venture capital. You don't need to do it, you can bootstrap a company with almost no money and people do it all the time. But if you have the chance to work with an expert who's willing to put in a lot of money upfront, it can really accelerate your trajectory.
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y agoRight, so if you aren't forced to use one, how can they possibly overcharge since if the value wasn't in the service you would just drop the label.
- LatteLazy 6y agoHow much were they making from cd sales before?
- dfilppi 6y agoThat's a sign of excess supply vs demand
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y agoIt seems like art consumption doesn't keep up with population growth, especially for art like music. Twice the population doesn't need twice the songs, so more people leads to fewer music jobs per capita. That alone is going to make it harder and harder to make it as an artist. Exponential population growth is probably making it exponentially harder to compete. I really feel for these super impacted fields everyone wants in on. That probably applies to our field eventually too. You don't need twice the google workforce to serve twice the population. Hopefully by the time it's relevant to us, population growth isn't particularly exponential.
- iamben 6y agoLots of my friends are musicians. I have every sympathy for artists that can't live off their art (because that's the dream, right?). But I'd be curious how any of this would compare to record sales and artists that made money in the past. Arguably your chances of "getting heard" now are far, far greater than previous generations when you'd actually have to get out and play (or sign a deal with a label). Now you can have fans without ever leaving your bedroom (assuming you understand a little bit about marketing), you can operate completely without a label, or distributor, or manager, or anyone but yourself - if you choose. I think the trouble is a lot of people are literally equating streams to record sales, a bit like an extension of the old MP3 argument (every download is instead of a sale, but now every stream should equate to a sale). A rough google reckons a PRS royalty for a Radio 1 play to be about £38 for the song. The Radio 1 breakfast show is 5.13m listeners. I'd hazard a lot of the plays on Spotify are just as passive as the radio (and it's probably replaced the radio for a lot of people). If you're working to the same metrics, Spotify pays considerably more per play (again, based on some Googled numbers). Not everyone is going to make a living from music. Even in a world of hyperconsumption there's still more music being shared than ever before and can ever be heard. And I keep seeing this argument about how awful Spotify is (and YouTube, and streaming etc etc), but personally I think it's fantastic. And I say this will a box of unsold "I was in a band once" records under my bed.
- ratww 6y ago> A rough google reckons a PRS royalty for a Radio 1 play to be about £38 for the song. The Radio 1 breakfast show is 5.13m listeners. I'd hazard a lot of the plays on Spotify are just as passive as the radio (and it's probably replaced the radio for a lot of people). If you're working to the same metrics, Spotify pays considerably more per play (again, based on some Googled numbers). I don't disagree with your whole point, but I have to point out that Radio used to be a marketing channel for a product (a record), and any profit was secondary, while Spotify streams are the end-product itself, which replaced both the marketing channel and the previous products.
- iamben 6y agoSure, it's not a precise equivalent, but then Spotify pays more - and it's (again, arguably!) easier to end up on some Spotify playlists than it was/is to get played on the the radio in any significant promotional sense. But I get your point :-)
- xwdv 6y agoI would say it’s probably almost exactly the same situation for AppStore developers.
- tibbydudeza 6y agoCovid-19 obviously impacted festivals and touring which makes up most of the income for smaller musicians.
- cortexio 6y agomusic is a hobby. u could earn money with it, if you are lucky. some people earn thousands of dollars a month for eating food on stream. and that's great. if u think this musician not earning enough thing is an issue, then you are crazy. If this is an issue, chances are, everything in life is an issue for u. Grow up.
- simonsarris 6y agoIf it's an "outdated model" the first questions to ask are about what came before that model. How much did 80% of musicians make in 1990 from radio? And from all sources, for that matter? It seems very dishonest to have a discussion without those numbers.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> If it's an "outdated model" the first questions to ask are about what came before that model. How does what came before have anything to do with the issue? Wouldn't for an “outdated model” the question be “what new model exists that has rendered the old one obsolete?”, not “what existed before this model?” I mean, unless it was proposed to be “outdated” specifically in a two-model alternating cycle.
- bird_monster 6y agoMost of the data I've seen around music streaming and revenue still applies the out-dated mindset about plays. In the past, an album on CD sold for ~15 dollars. With that, a purchaser owned unlimited plays as well as the ability to copy the CD. Now, with streaming, 1 play is nothing more than 1 play. Sure, the argument that a musician used to make more off of 1 CD sale than they currently make off of streaming, but I'm not understanding where this perceived value is from? If I only stream 1 song, off of 1 album, I would assume that's worth less than a single cent to the musician. Most musicians don't make money selling their music - this has always and will always be true. 80% of musicians make less than 200 a year, but compared to pre-streaming tech, would they have made more?
- longerthoughts 6y agoFrom the article: >The figures come from a survey of members belonging to songwriters’ body The Ivors Academy and the Musicians’ Union Combined membership of the two organizations is around 32,000 [0][1] dues-paying members in the UK. We can safely assume the survey response rate was not 100%. I believe that most musicians make little to nothing from streaming. I would be shocked if this survey data was representative of professional musicians more broadly. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ivors_Academy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ivors_Academy [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musicians'_Union_(United_Kingdom) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musicians'_Union_(United_Kin...
- john_moscow 6y agoIt is inevitable given the network effects, the scale, and the limits of human attention. Specifically: 1. A single consumer has the attention span to follow/support only a handful of performers. 2. Performers with higher number of followers are more likely to get recommended, hence get new followers. 3. Having 100 vs. 100000 followers doesn't change the performer's costs. Hence, once a few superstars are established in a niche, you have very low chances of outcompeting them. If you want to realistically make a decent amount of money, you need to either look at the markets where your costs scale up with the number of clients (e.g. doctors, lawyers, consultants), or at emerging/rapidly moving niches where the dominance has not been established yet. Of course, the human brain is bad at natively feeling linearity at large scales [0], so a tiny chance of a huge payoff will always feel lucrative, even if the actual chances are against you. There are whole industries relying on people NOT calculating the chances [1] and the whole "become a streaming superstar" thing appears to be one of them. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber%E2%80%93Fechner_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber%E2%80%93Fechner_law [1] https://theconversation.com/designed-to-deceive-how-gambling-distorts-reality-and-hooks-your-brain-91052 https://theconversation.com/designed-to-deceive-how-gambling...
- aminozuur 6y agoThe vast majority of musicians have nearly no one playing their music.
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- tanilama 6y agoHow much did they earn from their music prior to streaming? Musician for most isn't a job that sustains your livelihood, to speak the truth. Most musicians takes it a passion driven side gig besides their regular day job.
- djaychela 6y agoMuch more - see my post elsewhere on here... for me it's 10% of what I was getting when sales were a thing.
- deelowe 6y agoThe pareto principle rears it's ugly head!
- young_unixer 6y agoWithout a definition of what counts as a musician on Spotify, and how hard it is to be considered one, these numbers are useless. By simply increasing the difficulty of uploading your music to Spotify, they could easily make that 82% a 40%. Or by letting anyone upload anything, they could make it a 98%.
- jonplackett 6y agoImagine if 20 / 30 years ago when MP3 was first going mainstream the music industry had, instead of suing Napster, just bought them out and turned the whole thing into a subscription music service. Back then it cost £4 to buy ONE SONG (RIP Woolworths). I’d have signed up to £20+ a month for unlimited music even at 2005 prices. Instead they let everyone get used to the idea music could be free so Spotify had to price incredibly low to compete. Hence, crap money for artists.
- herbertl 6y agoThat's just the business model of streaming—unlike labels, there is no cross-subsidization (e.g., a more popular artist "paying for" an obscure critically acclaimed artist who doesn't sell well). You're incentivized to get plays, which ultimately gets everyone to converge. It's going to be really tough for the "middle class" of independents—whether you're in content creation or apps. But if you use streaming platforms purely as a way to get discovered, and build direct relationships with your audience, you can price and sell your own stuff. No more $0.006 per stream or whatever. (https://qz.com/1507361/mariah-careys-record-breaking-day-shows-how-little-musicians-make-from-spotify/ https://qz.com/1507361/mariah-careys-record-breaking-day-sho...) That requires self-reliance, which is tough, but will be worth the payoff. I write more about it here: https://herbertlui.net/own-your-marketing-own-your-income/ https://herbertlui.net/own-your-marketing-own-your-income/ Ryan Leslie is a good example of this—took his music of Spotify and went direct to audience, sold fewer albums but made more money. https://shift.newco.co/2017/03/10/ryan-leslie-shifts-the-connection-between-artist-and-fans/ https://shift.newco.co/2017/03/10/ryan-leslie-shifts-the-con... Increasing more relevant: Derek Sivers writes the way to be happy while being creative is to keep a good, steady, easy, full-time job and to create just for its own sake: https://sive.rs/balance https://sive.rs/balance
- munificent 6y agoIn almost every discussion of musician income and Spotify that I've, two entirely different questions seems to get conflated together: 1. How big is the pie? 2. Who gets what share of it? Here in this thread, almost everyone is saying that the total pie for music isn't that big compared to the number of people making it today. As production costs get lower and lower, more and more people can be become musicians and that pie gets sliced into smaller and smaller pieces. Meanwhile, there are only so many hours in the day one can listen to music, so demand is relatively fixed. I agree with others that this is maybe unfortunate, but is basically just reality. Just like writing and working in zoos, occupations that have massive intrinsic reward are rarely compensated well financially. But there's an entirely separate question. Given some pie of whatever size, are companies like Spotify getting a fair share of it relative to musicians? It's sad if musicians can't make a living can't make a living off their music. But theatre actors and poets rarely do either. But it seems wrong that at the exact same time, businesses are raking in billions of dollars off that exact same music. We aren't outraged that poets are underpaid because there simply is no money there. There isn't much money to go around in music, but even so, the distributors are taking almost all of it and leaving little for the actual musicians.
- aclimatt 6y agoAbsolutely right. It seems almost every other thread here is missing the crux of the article, which has nothing to do with some alleged musician-listener supply-demand issue. Rather: Graham Davies, CEO of The Ivors Academy said: “This survey is further demonstration that the song and the songwriter are undervalued. Too much streaming money is going to the major labels, this is an outdated model and needs reform.” The survey results come amid an ongoing government inquiry into the impact of “the business models” operated by the likes of Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and Google Play. It doesn't sound like musicians are (necessarily) arguing that we should pay more than $10 to stream their music. Or that they should get more than their share of the pie relative to other artists. It's that musicians' share of the $10 as a whole should be way more than it is now, and Spotify + labels should get less. And that's a fair claim to make that's worth talking about.
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- Rochus 6y ago> The vast majority of musicians earn less than £200 a year from music streaming platforms This is no surprise and also corresponds to what you can expect if you're a member of a copyright collecting society as a "normal" (i.e. not super famous) musician. I have had this discussion again and again with my musician friends who still think they can live as musicians from copyrights. Just have a look at an annual report like e.g. https://www.suisa.ch/de/suisa/publikationen/geschaeftsbericht.html https://www.suisa.ch/de/suisa/publikationen/geschaeftsberich.... I did a detailed analysis some years ago and found that the probability for a decent living from copyright income is < 0.1%; in comparison the probability of being seriously injured in a traffic accident in Switzerland is > 0.2%. The personnel expenses of the collecting society are roughly equal to the amount paid to the composers and musicians. For the given number of full-time positions, this results in an average annual salary of over 100,000 Swiss francs. A musician therefore earns considerably more when working as a clerk for the collecting society than when working as a musician. What an irony. It is not without reason that most of the musicians I know work as music teachers in permanent positions.
- fitba1969 6y agoShouldn't wealthy musicians, mainy of whom claim to be socialist or at least progressive, redistribute their wealth to the poorer musicians?
- djaychela 6y agoAnecdata: I make music with a friend of mine [1]. It's mostly a social thing, but we release music fairly regularly, and have done for about 9 years. When sales were a thing, we used to make some money. Not a lot, but every year or so, we'd break the payout boundary, and get £60 or so. Always a running joke between us about 'phoning Sunseeker' or whatever. Since streaming became the thing, we make almost no money, and it's a tiny fraction of what we used to make. In 2013 Q2, we made £29.49 In 2020 Q2, we made £3.00 Don't get me wrong, I know we're nobody, but I'm sure it scales in the same way for a lot of people who are taking this more seriously. Unless you're doing a lot of streams, then you make no money, and certainly not the money you did from sales. Another bit of info, looking in a recent statement. 723 streams of a track earned us £0.0236. 1 sale of a track earned us £0.4297 Looking at the data, I'm pretty sure that people who listen to our tracks do so multiple times (if you filter by area, demographic, etc., you can pretty much tell that the same person in the same area likes a track and listen to it a lot - say 20 or 30 times) - exactly what you would do if you bought it. But now even if someone listens to a track 100 times (which, let's face it, you probably would in a lifetime), it will earn a tiny fraction of what a sale would for you. [1] - https://open.spotify.com/artist/6mCvg6sz3K2WfFLaVYvHGl https://open.spotify.com/artist/6mCvg6sz3K2WfFLaVYvHGl
- tus88 6y agoIs this like Amazon though where 80% of books and authors are basically unknown amateurs?
- slmjkdbtl 6y agoIt's pretty standard artists have to do other day jobs to sustain, there's simply no way to change the public's taste, it's not a problem that can be solved.
- dalbasal 6y ago"New media" economics have been enlightening. It's been kind of a dump on ideas of openness, and its economic consequences. Here we are in a world where artists don't really need a "label" or whatnot, for any of the legible reasons of the past. Recording is cheap. Artists reach audiences themselves (or via algorithm). No one needs to front a million dollars to press records or print books. The digital version of cable channels, or broadcast licenses are basically free and unlimited. In theory, it's totally open. Musicians can record music. Get it to audiences. DIY talk radio. DIY TV shows. It's popular. Obviously, monopolies control all the distribution channels... but I don't think the money problems stem from this. The problem is that a sufficiently open (economically) system does not generate much cash. Producers are commodified, their power totally diluted. The only way to make money is cutting exclusive deals with strategic advantage for a monopoly, aspiring monopoly. That serial show which will covert netflix users to amazon. The half dozen podcasts who cut a deal with spotify to help them "own" podcasting. The Beatles or Metallica, holding out for something similar. It's not a (simple) Competition Problem either. Yes, being open means more competition, but some still find large audiences. Youtube's ad sharing, spotify's streaming royalties, etc. These all pay pennies (or less) on the dollar like-4-like to old media. X number of viewers on TV can support a professional TV show. The same viewers and the same show on youtube cannot. The actual economic mechanics are different, but openness results predictably regardless.
- m3kw9 6y agoSimilar situations across a lot of platforms. Just look at apps
- HeyZuess 6y ago£200, divided by £0.0045 (rough conversion or payouts) is 44444 streams a year. 44444 is an exceptional small audience. Even if you 10x the payouts, they would still on make £2000 a year, and the complaints would still be there, 80% of artist are making less than £2000 a year narrative. The Nadine Shah mentioned in the article, has 5 recording labels, I would say at least one manager, pr manager, marketing manager, producer etc etc. Of course she is finding it difficult. The majority of artists in any field do, in fact a lot of people find it difficult, athletes, musicians, painters, etc, the majority being from the creative or talent side of the fence. 80% of artists probably have extremely low streams per month, and maybe even 0. 80% of 80% make music which 80% don't listen to and make 80% of basically nothing. If you turn your art in a commodity, then you get paid for its market value. Currently 80% of musicians aren't worth £200.
- phillipseamore 6y agoIn 2017 Forgotify[0] had playlists with songs that had 0 plays on Spotify. It was 4 millions songs or about 10% of Spotify's 2017 catalogue. [0] https://www.zmonline.com/the-latest/spotify-releases-playlist-of-all-the-songs-that-no-one-has-ever-played-before/ https://www.zmonline.com/the-latest/spotify-releases-playlis...
- ogre_codes 6y agoThis article is too thin, details are almost non-existent. We need some kind of reference numbers or artist names to really understand what this means. Who sits at that £200 mark? Are we talking bands with 200 die hard fans I've never heard of? A band who was popular in the 80s but almost unknown now? What about a band like Cake who have a few hits and actively tour?
- adamlangsner 6y agoAlternative headline: “80% of musicians aren’t good”
- wavefunction 6y agoThat's why I like buying mp3s/flacs from bands. They may not make much off me but at least the money is headed to the band, largely.
- timoth3y 6y agoI put myself through college largely by playing in clubs and bars on the east coast. Because the change happened so slowly, many people don't appreciate exactly how streaming killed musician's incomes. For the most part, they were cover bands, and we never made much money at the door. Most of our income came from selling $15 CDs to drunk patrons who were having a great time. Live music isn't as popular as it used to be, but the move to MP3 and streaming took away the impulse purchase that made so many local bands profitable.
- Guthur 6y agoThe problem is that on the small scale you are one of hundreds maybe thousands of on average equally good musicians that are producing songs that can be copied and distributed ad infinitum, why exactly is there an expectation that this should be worth significant sums of money? Performances of some form are potentially more unique and engaging for an audience and potentially provide more opportunities for monetisation if that's the desire.
- 72deluxe 6y agoReminds me of what Joe Bonamassa said a year ago: https://youtu.be/JJERw-JSVO4 https://youtu.be/JJERw-JSVO4 The current music industry model is not sustainable. It was barely sustainable before the current system but now it's well and truly dead, and with the inability to make money by performing live at the moment, it seems nobody would ever make a living wage from being a musician.
- solarkraft 6y agoI've seen this mentioned here before, but not really that clearly, so let me try: This is not an unsustainable model. Musicans nowadays get their money through fans, not casual listeners. Music is released for free (Soundcloud) or semi-free (Youtube, Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, whatever) and the real money is moved through concerts and sometimes merch. This isn't always enough to pay everything, indeed many of the musicans I listen to have day jobs to pay the rent and the revenue through music is a bonus at best. Has it been different for unsigned artists at any point in time? After all you basically had no distribution channel before the internet, now you have one that doesn't make much money, but also doesn't cost anything. That sounds like a mild win for getting an audience to me. People do it because they like making music, not because they want to make money. One of my favorite artists, Professor Kliq, offers his music for free and under a Creative Commons license. He makes money through his day job as a web developer, licensing it on music portals and selling music on Bandcamp. I personally like that model a lot (along with the music itself), which makes me much more likely to send over some money for an album on Bandcamp.