Spotify’s end of year feature creates a lot of conversation around music, but artists are speaking out about the reality of streaming service success.
With December well underway, Spotify Wrapped is once again the talk of the music industry. Spotify’s annual end of year roundup feature generates a lot of interesting data points that fans can use to share their musical taste and that artists use to promote their rising profile. However, there are some critical data points left out of Wrapped that many artists believe need far more attention. Specifically, how much money musicians make from the streaming giant.
One-million of anything seems like a lot. One-million houses would virtually end the homelessness problem in the United States. One-million slices of pizza could feed you and everyone you know for months, if not years. One-million dollars is considered a life-changing amount of money.
One-million plays, however, are not so impressive when you consider the amount of money earned from that level of engagement.
After sharing their end of the year stats that boasted over 1.1 million plays of their catalog on Spotify with fans, pop-rock group You, Me, And Everyone We Know shed some light on the reality of streaming success. The group’s frontman, Ben Liebsch, wrote:
“1.1 Million plays = $7,700 in gross revenue. That’s before labels and producers get their cut. Then you have to try to pay for another recording. Why do artists get paid last? Musicians deserve a better cut.”
He added, “Grateful for the listeners, but artists are getting hosed.”
Another band, Dowsing, shared a similar message with their Spotify Wrapped statistics. The band wrote, “We are thankful for your streams. Buy the physical medium to support art. Buy directly from your favorite band’s label. There is no better way to help them climb out of artistic debt. When bands work with the right label and have less financial stress they can succeed.”
When retweeting Dowsing’s message, the band Dikembe added a little math to help fans understand the reality of the situation.
“Did you know you would have to stream our songs approx 3,000 times for us to make the same amount of $$ as we would selling a record,” they tweeted. “So please listen to our records 3,000 times in a row.”
Elsewhere, Torres summarized the situation by writing, “Your favorite musician has $90 to their name and a billion Spotify plays.”
Artists aren’t the only ones aware of the problem with streaming. Countless music fans have tweeted jokes referencing the amount of money they helped an artist earn after listening to dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of hours of content.
Calculating streaming revenue, especially from Spotify, can be tricky. There is no fixed amount earned per song stream. Instead, earnings from streams are based on the total numbers of streams an artist had in relation to all the streams on the platform. For example, if there were 10 song streams on a day when Spotify had just 100 total streams would earn far more than 10 song streams on a day when Spotify had over 100,000,000 streams. Every artist is, in a way, competing against one another for fractions of pennies, while Spotify earns more as the total amount of plays continues to rise as the Spotify community continues to grow.
Dan Ozzi, former head of Noisey, posted an update to his popular Reply Alt newsletter this week where he asked several musicians how people can support their favorite artists without necessarily buying stuff. Head over here to read what he learned.
Spotify has not commented on any outcry related to the Wrapped discussion, nor do we expect them to anytime soon. Change it seems, at least for right now, is unlikely. Artists will need to work together to force a conversation about streaming royalty fairness before any giant corporation budges on the current terms of their agreements.
