

Want to see my royalty statement showing payments from Pandora, Spotify, etc?  - mbesto
http://armen.tv/want-to-see-my-royalty-statement-showing-pandora-spotify-etc-736/

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jhgg
I don't see much issue here. Clearly you can't expect to make a living off of
14,000 people playing your song. From what I understand, most artists make
most of their money from live performances & merchandise.

[https://www.spotifyartists.com/spotify-
explained/#royalties-...](https://www.spotifyartists.com/spotify-
explained/#royalties-in-detail)

Explains in a bit more detail how Spotify distributes royalties.

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seizethecheese
While I certainly understand the gripe, I think that larger artists are hurt
more than smaller artists by streaming services. One reason is that when
people have to purchase music, they blow their whole budget on a few albums,
whereas when you can basically rent content you end up consuming a wider
distribution, helping long-tail artists.

Furthermore, obscure artists are hurt less by these services because the
services aid discovery more than older music delivery paradigms, like radio
which is a hype-factory for music labels. This effect is well documented, for
instance more revenue is generated by songs outside of Rhapsody's top 10,000
than in it[1].

[1] [https://www.law.northwestern.edu/research-
faculty/searlecent...](https://www.law.northwestern.edu/research-
faculty/searlecenter/workingpapers/documents/Yang_Targeted_Search_and_the_Long_Tail_Effect.pdf)

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biff
_Notice one performance of “Ceremonies” or “Distant Lands” streaming radio
show like Hearts of Space that brings in 26 cents for the full writer’s share
compared to 2,088 performances of “Gypsy Rain” on Spotify that brought in a
total of 60 cents._

Presumably that HoS performance covers an entire audience hearing that song,
whereas the Spotify performances are per-person. Wonder if the HoS fee also
includes playing back old streams from the site?

At any rate, doesn't seem like enough money to live on. But I wonder if a
Spotify is even possible if 14,000 performances could make a reasonable
paycheck for a quarter. That'd be, what, around a buck a play per person? Why
not just buy the CD at that point?

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SlashmanX
I've never heard of Hearts of Space, so I don't know if it's reach etc. But if
1,000 people listened to that particular show, it's about the same price-per-
listen as Spotify, so it's not really a valid point.

Of course, this is assuming the scope of Hearts of Space is in and around the
figure I said.

I'm under the impression that most musicians (even the more popular ones),
don't make their fortunes from radio, but rather merchandise, CD sales, live
performances etc.

Although, this is all probably irrelevant and mentioned in his post, but I
can't see it at the moment as I'm getting a 403 forbidden error

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barlescabbage
this guys music sucks and is worth about 30 bucks in royalties in a quarter. I
see nothing wrong with this. The musicians can make millions or consumers can
listen to everything for 10 bucks a month. I prefer the later. music is the
worst business ever. You have no pricing power and you're competing with all
music that's ever been recorded. if someone made a record 50 years ago and
died, they're still your competition. ouch bad scene.

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seizethecheese
Insulting the artist adds no value to your point about the merits of the music
industry. Nobody logs onto this site to read your opinion about whose music
sucks. Please add value or don't post at all.

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Gigablah
But he did, there's plenty of sentences after the first one.

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seizethecheese
One could argue that in aggregate the value add was not positive, since the
beginning certainly has negative value. ;) Anyway, one could also argue that
my comment doesn't add anything either...

