Your Spotify data proves recorded music’s devalued.
Artists are often told by pundits or industry folks, “Your audience isn’t big enough. No one is listening to your music. That’s why you aren’t getting paid through streaming!”
I tend to agree, to a point. But what about artists that do have audiences? What about our TOP streamed artists from our own listening behavior?
Spotify’s sharing that with Year In Music. Look your’s up!
I queried my friends for their data about how many minutes of music they streamed, and how many streams their top artists accumulated from their accounts.
Six of my friends wrote back. All of them are major music consumers. Five streamed more than me, four almost doubled my 14,000 minutes. (I thought I was a major music consumer, but maybe I’m average!)
But how long will it take those streams to equal one sale? Here’s the streaming for folks top artist:
- Dan (from my favorite jam group Liquid Monk) streamed Flying Lotus 720 times.
- Brian streamed Wilco 600 times this year.
- Jake streamed Elliot Smith 600+ times
- I spent 409 streams with Gabriel Kahane
- Nate spent 276 streams on Catfish and the Bottlemen
- Josh Woodward (a songwriting hero!) streamed Death Cab 232 times.
- James said his top artists were between 200-300.
None of that equals a sale yet, folks. (1500 streams is one album sale; 150 streams is one single sale.) And that’s our top artist!
How long would it take for just our top artist to get one sale from us? If we still stream their music at this rate, three years? Five years? (Plus, if you are using the ad-tier, which might pay out $0.002 or less, forget it!)
What about our fifth most streamed artist? How long would it take them to earn a sale?
Plus, next year, do you see your top five artist staying the same? It could take five to ten years to stream our top artists enough to earn one sale.
Ten years? Really?
I’m not saying this is right or wrong, but the debate is over: recorded music has been devalued by this system.
1000 true fans on a streaming platform is not the same as 1000 true fans buying a CD, or vinyl, if you are lucky to have an audience that buys those beautiful, black records.
I’m not suggesting we should take our music off of streaming sites, nor am I suggesting selling CDs is an answer when computers don’t come with CD drives. I do understand why major artist are pulling some punches windowing releases, but we don’t make royalties off piracy, off folks trading hard drives, off folks ripping CDs off of libraries.
So musicians and songwriters, we have to adapt to survive. I don’t know what that looks like, but everyone’s road is going be unique.
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PS: Fewer than 10% of ad-tier consumers on Spotify streamed a full album. Playlists and singles were their choice. – via Hypebot
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