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I bumped into a discussion of how much streaming music pays, and thought I'd take a look at the numbers, to try and understand better where the issue is.
Spotify is £11/month. 70% of that goes to the labels, which is £7.70.
If you listen to about 4 hours of music per day* then that's about 60 songs/day, that's about 1800 streams/month. Which would work out to £0.0042 (or 0.42p) per stream**. Which is what they pay.
So if you want to pay more per stream to artists then you need to be paying more to Spotify each month. I did spend more than £11/month on music for most of my 20s. But I'd dropped down to about 2 albums/year by the time Spotify appeared, so I actually started spendig a lot more on music when it came along than I had before.
And, of course, £11/month isn't what it was when Spotify first appeared, the monthly streaming cost has gone up by £1 over the last 15 years. If it had matched inflation then it would be £15/month (or about 0.6p/stream to the artists).
*Clearly chosen to make the figures work. But doesn't seem unreasonable - I probably only listen to a couple of hours a day at the moment, but have listened to up to 12 hours a day at other times in my life, between having it on in the background at home and having headphones on all day.
**If you're wondering, the split of that 0.4p that goes to the artist, rather than the label is....about 15% on a major label. 50% on an indie label, but you obviously get a lot less marketing there, and no advance.
Spotify is £11/month. 70% of that goes to the labels, which is £7.70.
If you listen to about 4 hours of music per day* then that's about 60 songs/day, that's about 1800 streams/month. Which would work out to £0.0042 (or 0.42p) per stream**. Which is what they pay.
So if you want to pay more per stream to artists then you need to be paying more to Spotify each month. I did spend more than £11/month on music for most of my 20s. But I'd dropped down to about 2 albums/year by the time Spotify appeared, so I actually started spendig a lot more on music when it came along than I had before.
And, of course, £11/month isn't what it was when Spotify first appeared, the monthly streaming cost has gone up by £1 over the last 15 years. If it had matched inflation then it would be £15/month (or about 0.6p/stream to the artists).
*Clearly chosen to make the figures work. But doesn't seem unreasonable - I probably only listen to a couple of hours a day at the moment, but have listened to up to 12 hours a day at other times in my life, between having it on in the background at home and having headphones on all day.
**If you're wondering, the split of that 0.4p that goes to the artist, rather than the label is....about 15% on a major label. 50% on an indie label, but you obviously get a lot less marketing there, and no advance.
