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Artists & their income


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1 hour ago, Graham said:

Tool and Taylor Swift at the big end both didn't have their music on Spotify for a long time, they do now, so I assume they had the clout to negotiate a better deal.

Taylor swift did have her music on spotify and then removed it because she didn't want her music to appear on the free tier, as she didn't think music should be given away free, but an artist couldn't choose that as an option. Then spotify whizzed her off a bit. So she wasn't there for a few years, and windowed a few albums so they were available on album for 3 weeks before streaming (which seems sensible). Obviously a bit harder for her now as she seems to be producing a new album every month.

Tool was a weird one - they weren't on any streaming service for a long time, then with the latest album, they released it as only a £45 luxury album or streaming only. So for someone like me who wants the £10 album version, there wasn't anything. 

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19 hours ago, Doctor J said:

Regarding CDbaby, you have to register each song and get a UPC/EAN code for your music as part of a digital distribution setup in order to get payments. If you're registered with them already it will probably be cheaper but you still have to pay to upload and get the songs published to their "digital partners". You need the UPC/EAN codes to qualify for PRS payments. 
 

I would say it's worth doing but, financially, it might not be worth doing, if you know what I mean.

This is the sort of mis-information put out by CD Baby and other Aggregator services who are based in the US and aim their advice mainly at US based artists where the rules on getting royalties (especially for publishing are different). What you need first and foremost is ISRC codes which in the UK you can get yourself for FREE simply by registering your "record label" with the PPL. That gets you a unique record label identifier code and then ability to generate as many ISRCs as you need forever. It's the ISRCs that are used by the PRS to identify tracks for performance royalties.

The UPC/EAN codes are part of the service the Aggregators provide, and IIRC are a tiny percentage of the admin fee for getting your music on the streaming and download services.

Also if you are a UK-based artist you don't need any of the Aggregators' "publishing services" because what they offer is entirely covered by PRS membership, and they don't actually do any proper "publishing" - i.e. services that songwriters would expect for someone taking a percentage of their performance royalties such as promoting the songs for use in TV and film production, or trying to get other artists to cover them. In fact before the rise of using "rock" music (in all it's various sub genres) as the sound track for films and TV programmes I would have said their was very little point in any non-mainstream artist having a publishing deal as they were unlikely to get any benefits but simply lose a fair percentage of their income.

Also if other people have uploaded your music to YouTube you can find and register these with the PRS and claim the royalties. One of the bands I'm in does quite nicely out of this arrangement.

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23 hours ago, Lozz196 said:

Me too

And me. Partly to support the artist, and admittedly partly for my own benefit - I like listening to albums in their entirety, without skipping tracks. I also like having the physical item in my hands, complete with artwork etc. We’ve certainly lost some of the experience by just having tracks at the touch of a button on a phone screen. Admittedly I do use spotify, but only where I can’t practically use my vinyl, such as in the car or on a run.

13 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

Tool was a weird one - they weren't on any streaming service for a long time, then with the latest album, they released it as only a £45 luxury album or streaming only. So for someone like me who wants the £10 album version, there wasn't anything. 

I heard that one of the reasons Tool weren’t on streaming services for a long time was linked to my point above - that they regarded their music as something more than just a digital track - the artwork of an album, and having to listen to it in a very specific order were both critical to the story they were trying to tell.

More on topic - a friend of mine had a single that went silver a couple of years ago. When I last saw him before lockdown he was using an app where local shops sold food they’d otherwise throw out on the cheap, as he was struggling to pay all his bills. That was even factoring in his income from production work at his home studio, along with his band stuff. 

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Daniel Ek (Mr. Spotify) is worth $4.5 billion. The creators of the commodity he sells get paid pennies. 

No matter how much people blame musicians for not moving with the times, record companies for dubious past practices, etc. etc., we must never lose sight of the above.

Edited by wateroftyne
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11 minutes ago, wateroftyne said:

Daniel Ek (Mr. Spotify) is worth $4.5 billion. The creators of the commodity he sells get paid pennies. 

No matter how much people blame musicians for not moving with the times, record companies for dubious past practices, etc. etc., we must never lose sight of the above.

If you look more closely he's only worth that much because the Spotify share offer and the fact that gullible investors have gone out and bought them, despite the fact that Spotify have still not managed to show how to make a profit running a streaming service, even at the bargain basement rates that the record labels have agreed upon with them. It's all "Emperor's New Clothes" and at some point the investors will realise that and pull the plug.

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21 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

If you look more closely he's only worth that much because the Spotify share offer and the fact that gullible investors have gone out and bought them, despite the fact that Spotify have still not managed to show how to make a profit running a streaming service, even at the bargain basement rates that the record labels have agreed upon with them. It's all "Emperor's New Clothes" and at some point the investors will realise that and pull the plug.

I'm not sure I buy their 'not running at a profit' official line. I'm confident there's some creative accounting going on, even if it's not in the billions.

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5 minutes ago, wateroftyne said:

I'm not sure I buy their 'not running at a profit' official line. I'm confident there's some creative accounting going on, even if it's not in the billions.

Once they have done an IPO and the founders plus initial investors have cleaned up no-one cares about the company. Being profitable is never the goal as long as it doesn't prevent the shares being unloaded onto mugs.

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On 04/03/2021 at 00:13, Woodinblack said:

The maximum you would get for 1,000,000 streams at spotifys maximum pay out is $4366, which is just over £3000. Before tax. Yes, that is more than £33 and more enough to finance a round of recordings, but not a living, which sounds a bit crazy for those sort of numbers.

So yes, if you were getting half a million streams a month, you might be able to manage minimum wage.

Ignoring the fact that gigging currently isn't possible, if one of my bands was popular enough to be getting a million streams in a year, then we'd probably also be selling more than enough physical product and downloads to be close to making enough to completely finance all the band's activities and turn a profit. Certainly IMO the revenue made from streaming has always a tiny proportion of any band's overall income. I've always looked on it as nice little extra bonus.

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If we all felt so strongly about how terrible Spotify are (and remember that Spotify are only bad at paying musicians because their record companies sold the streaming rights for a relatively small amount and keep the lion's share of this money for themselves) then we could vote with our wallets and cancel our premium subscriptions.

But we don't.

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We had a really good deal from Spotify:

$5 USD/month for a year, first 3 months free

which included Hulu's video-streaming service

TBH we got it for the Hulu & thought 1 of us might use Spotify, but never did.

That's a deal only available for students, so you need a EDU eMail addy & a copy of your current class schedule.

 

Cut to the end of that year & I let it ride to see if they'd keep billing only $5, but it jumped to $10 w/o the student verification, & we lost Hulu.

Good luck getting your money back from those bastards, you cannot get a human on the phone & AFAIK there's no way to get a refund.

All-In, a year of Spotify+Hulu only cost us $45 USD, so not bad, but probably never again. Right now I'm on a Black Friday deal with Hulu, $2/month!

 

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