where the streaming dollar goes

[Gary]

[🅳🅸🆂🅲🅾]

So basically, an artist who doesn't do anything except record/sing the song gets nothing?

[YourFaveIsAFlop]

I'd like to see the same breakdown for a digital download and a physical single sale. The artist has always gotten practically nothing. In the 90s, TLC was getting like 3 cents per album sale, split 3 ways. The label has always made the most from consumption.

[Au$tin]

Feb 27, 2022 1:16:55 GMT -5 🅳🅸🆂🅲🅾 said:

So basically, an artist who doesn't do anything except record/sing the song gets nothing?

Basically, which is how the industry has always worked unfortunately. Performers who don't do anything else make their money in touring.

Feb 28, 2022 7:48:28 GMT -5 YourFaveIsAFlop said:

I'd like to see the same breakdown for a digital download and a physical single sale. The artist has always gotten practically nothing. In the 90s, TLC was getting like 3 cents per album sale, split 3 ways. The label has always made the most from consumption.

Yeah I cannot imagine this is all that different from sales since the dawn of the industry. It's weird that so much focus has been on this topic since streaming became prevalent when it's been an issue for nearly a century, but I'm glad it does seem to be happening. Unfortunately, it's still far behind the discussion of how much individual services pay. I do believe the discussion of how much a streaming platform pays out per stream is a good topic to discuss, though a platform could been giving $0.00000001 per stream or $10000000 per stream and the cut the artists, songwriters, and producers get are all still going to be not that great because of how the labels/distributors are distributing the wealth. The fact that the label gets 60%+ of the cut each time is ridiculous. It really needs to be dealt with and tackled first before we start harping on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, etc. on how much they're paying out.

[Gary]

Songwriters Protest Spotify in LA: ‘I Just Want to Be Able to Pay My Bills’
Led by The 100 Percenters, songwriters made a stand outside the streaming service's former West Hollywood headquarters on Monday to demand higher payouts.


AA group of songwriters led by the organization The 100 Percenters gathered outside of Spotify’s old West Hollywood office Monday afternoon (Feb. 28) to protest the streaming service’s low royalty rates. Dubbed “#WeWroteThat,” the collection of creatives began congregating around noon while holding signs with phrases like “My time costs money,” “Would you work for free?,” “Spotify is valued at $67 billion — pay artists” and “1 cent per stream.”

Event organizer Tiffany Red — a professional songwriter and founder of The 100 Percenters who has credits on songs performed by Jennifer Hudson, Jason Derulo and more — says the protest at 9200 Sunset Blvd. (a building Spotify previously occupied before moving to its current headquarters in Downtown Los Angeles’ Arts District in 2018) was motivated by a myriad of grievances she has with streaming services and Spotify in particular, including the company’s fight against increasing the royalty rates songwriters and publishers are paid per stream.

Monday’s protest is part of a larger ongoing battle over the royalties paid by services like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon and Pandora. In Oct. 2021, the National Music Publishers’ Association asked the Copyright Royalty Board, which determines the streaming royalty rates for periods of five years, for a 32.4% increase in the headline rate to 20% of a digital service’s revenue for the full five-year term for Phonorecords IV (a period covering 2023-2027). By contrast, Spotify, Pandora and Amazon proposed lower rates for songwriters and publishers in Phono IV than in any year since 2018.

Another major pain point for songwriters is that they’re still being compensated according to the rate set in Phono II (2013-2017) while awaiting a final ruling on an appeal — filed by Spotify, Amazon Music, Pandora and YouTube — of the CRB’s rate hike for Phono III (2018-2022), which would have led to higher payouts.

Other protestors point to Joe Rogan‘s more than $200 million deal to host his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, on Spotify exclusively as an impetus for the protest. “They tell us they can’t pay us more and then they go and give a podcaster that much money?” says Bianca “Blush” Atterberry, an artist and songwriter who has written for artists including Demi Lovato, Meghan Trainor and Chris Brown and is also a member of The 100 Percenters board. “If we didn’t exist, making the music, neither would Spotify.”

Rogan’s recent scandals — including the spread of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and his repeated use of the N-word on the podcast — have recently sparked criticism among several prominent musicians. Some, like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, David Crosby and India.Arie, have left the platform in protest. Red says that Arie’s criticism of Spotify’s low royalty payouts specifically was a major impetus for The 100 Percenter’s protest.

“When India.Arie started to speak out about how the artists and songwriters are paid, I realized that now the fight against Spotify is coming into everybody’s living rooms, and it’s important for us to get out there and show our face,” says Red.

When asked why The 100 Percenters chose the site of Spotify’s former office, Red replied, “Because we wanted to start where they started. Our next in-person event will be going to where they are now in Downtown.” She points to how the company upgraded from the significantly smaller West Hollywood location to their new sprawling Arts District campus as a sign of the company’s wealth. “They were able to make that move easily and comfortably,” she says.

Rogan and Spotify aside, the #WeWroteThat protest comes down to the fight for better pay for working creatives overall. “I just want to be able to pay my bills. I just want to afford basic expenses. We struggle every day,” says Kaydence, a songwriter and board member of The 100 Percenters. “I’ve written for some of the biggest artists in the world, like Ariana [Grande] and Beyonce, and it’s still hard.”

“We give our all to make music and then we watch has other people make millions and billions off it,” adds Caso, another professional songwriter who was at the protest. “People see the credits of the song and they think dollar signs, but the reality is different.”

[YourFaveIsAFlop]

Feb 28, 2022 14:44:52 GMT -5 Au$tin said:

Feb 28, 2022 7:48:28 GMT -5 YourFaveIsAFlop said:

I'd like to see the same breakdown for a digital download and a physical single sale. The artist has always gotten practically nothing. In the 90s, TLC was getting like 3 cents per album sale, split 3 ways. The label has always made the most from consumption.

Yeah I cannot imagine this is all that different from sales since the dawn of the industry. It's weird that so much focus has been on this topic since streaming became prevalent when it's been an issue for nearly a century, but I'm glad it does seem to be happening. Unfortunately, it's still far behind the discussion of how much individual services pay. I do believe the discussion of how much a streaming platform pays out per stream is a good topic to discuss, though a platform could been giving $0.00000001 per stream or $10000000 per stream and the cut the artists, songwriters, and producers get are all still going to be not that great because of how the labels/distributors are distributing the wealth. The fact that the label gets 60%+ of the cut each time is ridiculous. It really needs to be dealt with and tackled first before we start harping on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, etc. on how much they're paying out.

Is 60% ridiculous? I don't know. It's a discussion to be had, but a label is fronting a lot of costs that they have no guarantee of recouping. In addition to the A&R costs of finding and getting an artist release ready, they're paying all of the studio musicians, sound techs, producers, song writers, and artists up front with a project's advance advance, plus the costs of promotion of a project. Unless artists are going to take all of those costs on themselves, they're reliant on labels for the cash to be able to actually make music.

[myhouse911]

Feb 28, 2022 7:48:28 GMT -5 YourFaveIsAFlop said:

I'd like to see the same breakdown for a digital download and a physical single sale. The artist has always gotten practically nothing. In the 90s, TLC was getting like 3 cents per album sale, split 3 ways. The label has always made the most from consumption.

For what it's worth, TLC were getting 56 cents (split 3 ways) per album sale prior to renegotiating their contract.
They summarized it in a point system way, in which they received 6 points per sale.

[jenglisbe]

Feb 27, 2022 1:16:55 GMT -5 🅳🅸🆂🅲🅾 said:

So basically, an artist who doesn't do anything except record/sing the song gets nothing?

They get their initial pay (as in what the contract is worth), but "nothing" in terms of royalties. That's why Mariah and others always stress writing your music and owning your catalog.

[YourFaveIsAFlop]

And even if you do get royalties, you have to earn out your advance before you can start collecting.

[jenglisbe]

Another point to consider; the amount we're paying for these streaming subscriptions of around $10/month (even for, say, 40 years continuously) really shouldn't and could not possibly be the proper price for having permanent access to the providers' full libraries. I think that's the point being missed by the artists who demand that they be paid way more than they currently are from streaming, as if it's equivalent to the revenue from CDs that used to cost $16 a piece when new. That's not to say they aren't justified in asking for a little more compensation, especially relative to the share of profits by Spotify et al. But really, streaming should be more analogous to what they were getting from radio play, which doesn't even pay artists (per US law at least). Only the songwriters and publishers (50/50) get paid by radio. So streaming is somewhat of a hybrid between retail and radio with the latter being weighted heavier because we don't really own the music that we play through streaming.

[jenglisbe]

Here's one graph that shows everything pretty clearly, with all figures even adjusted for inflation. So in 2021, they were already at approximately the same level of revenue of $15 billion ($12.4B from streaming alone) right after 1990. The slope and shape of streaming's growth is even following almost exactly the same pattern as that of CD sales, which peaked at $23.7 billion in 1999. They really could all get together to determine the proper compensation that's comparable to the 90s for everyone given how these numbers actually show that they're already right on track to recapturing and possibly even exceeding the peak revenue from CD sales. This is also talking about revenue from the US alone.

Attachment Deleted
www.statista.com/chart/17244/us-music-revenue-by-format/