3 ms·

What's the median payout? i.e. is it skewed by some very high earning artists?

hedora 3y ago
$0. 13,400 bands (not artists) got paid over $50K by spotify in 2020: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/how-many-artists-are-generating-more-than-50k-a-year-on-spotify-over-13000/ https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/how-many-artists-are-... There are 8 million artists on spotify, and over 80% had under fifty monthly listeners: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/over-75-of-artists-on-spotify-have-fewer-than-50-monthly-listeners/ https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/over-75-of-artists-on... Put another way, 0.16% made over $50K. That's median income in the US. If you assume the money gets split across 5 band members, that's median income in Indonesia.
- jstummbillig 3y ago
  This will also roughly be true for Bandcamp (albeit for each commercially failed band there's at least 3 friends and a mom, who will buy something off of the store and at a show, once when given the chance but I hope no one is cynical enough to argue about that being a lot better than $0). The fact that every creative endeavour or sport is a mix of a few pros and a lot of amateurs (in the sense that they do not make a living) is not an issue. The value of Spotify and the like to most artists is enabling them to publish to everyone for basically free, no matter how fringe or bad, and to do it all the time. I think that's wonderful.
  - hedora 3y ago
    They don't break down the distribution of how many artists got paid at all, but it looks like they're probably close to the estimated 15K bands that got non-trivial payments from Spotify this year: https://bandcamp.com/about https://bandcamp.com/about > In the past year alone, they’ve spent $194 million on 14.2 million digital albums, 10.4 million tracks, 1.75 million vinyl records, 800,000 CDs, 350,000 cassettes, and 50,000 t-shirts. Note that $194M is less than 10% of Spotify's revenue. I'd love to see a breakdown by percentile income per band, but one thing's clear: If I buy something there, then more of my money goes to the artist I'm trying to support than they get from me streaming their album.

$0. 13,400 bands (not artists) got paid over $50K by spotify in 2020: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/how-many-artists-are-generating-more-than-50k-a-year-on-spotify-over-13000/ https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/how-many-artists-are-... There are 8 million artists on spotify, and over 80% had under fifty monthly listeners: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/over-75-of-artists-on-spotify-have-fewer-than-50-monthly-listeners/ https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/over-75-of-artists-on... Put another way, 0.16% made over $50K. That's median income in the US. If you assume the money gets split across 5 band members, that's median income in Indonesia.

jstummbillig 3y ago
This will also roughly be true for Bandcamp (albeit for each commercially failed band there's at least 3 friends and a mom, who will buy something off of the store and at a show, once when given the chance but I hope no one is cynical enough to argue about that being a lot better than $0). The fact that every creative endeavour or sport is a mix of a few pros and a lot of amateurs (in the sense that they do not make a living) is not an issue. The value of Spotify and the like to most artists is enabling them to publish to everyone for basically free, no matter how fringe or bad, and to do it all the time. I think that's wonderful.
- hedora 3y ago
  They don't break down the distribution of how many artists got paid at all, but it looks like they're probably close to the estimated 15K bands that got non-trivial payments from Spotify this year: https://bandcamp.com/about https://bandcamp.com/about > In the past year alone, they’ve spent $194 million on 14.2 million digital albums, 10.4 million tracks, 1.75 million vinyl records, 800,000 CDs, 350,000 cassettes, and 50,000 t-shirts. Note that $194M is less than 10% of Spotify's revenue. I'd love to see a breakdown by percentile income per band, but one thing's clear: If I buy something there, then more of my money goes to the artist I'm trying to support than they get from me streaming their album.