Does Spotify compensate artists fairly for their content?

Hahahahahahahahahahaha.

Spotify is the reason why you cannot make a living off of recorded music as an artist anymore.

My music is not terribly popular so I’m going to use my friends band, who had just over a million streams last year.

One million streams is a lot! Using averages, one can make a rough assumption that those one million streams came from 150,000 people or so. In the 2000s with iTunes song downloads, that would be about $105,000 after apple takes their share. And then with physical sales (CDs, etc), you could expect them to make an extra $80,000 or so after the label takes their cut. (rough estimate based on stats). So had his band been as successful in the aughts, they would have $185,000 to split among the three of them on recorded music alone. Not bad!

However, they had the vast misfortune of releasing their music in the Spotify era. Guess how much money they made off of their 1 million Spotify streams?

$6,000.

Yup. Not $60,000 dollars, six thousand. That’s .006 dollars per stream. I’m not sure what deal they have in place with their label, but even if they got 100% of that money, it wouldn’t be enough to pay rent or utilities or literally anything. Additionally, physical sales, being a relic of the past (except for the resurgence of vinyl) have brought in negligible amounts of money.

So there you have it, a middle-of-The-road band is making almost 18 times less than what they would be making before Spotify came along.

Bands used to tour to promote album sales, now they release albums to promote live shows, where they actually stand to make some money thru covers and merch. That’s very telling of the climate Spotify created.

Edit: one time I did create a 30-second song (the minimum length to register as a play on Spotify) and looped it on repeat forever and made $80 before they took it down. Not relevant really but a fun story nonetheless