MPs to investigate whether artists are paid fairly for streaming music

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Re: MPs to investigate why artists aren't paid fairly for streaming music

Post by Drew Stephenson »

merlyn wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 12:24 pm
RichardT wrote: Sun Dec 05, 2021 1:22 pm The second is giving different amounts to the artist per play depending on how much music a subscriber listens to in total, and how much they listen to a given artist in particular. I can see the good sides of that, but it’s also a little untransparent and unpredictable.

It's not completely transparent at the moment. The £0.0004 per stream is transparent in that it is out in the open and everyone knows that's what one stream gets. But the money from the £0.0004 is the smaller part. A Spotify subscription is £10. Let's say Spotify take half. To spend £5 at £0.0004 per pop would take 12,500 streams, or over 400 streams per day.

1,000 streams per month, or over 30 per day would be a lot for one Spotify user and that comes to 40p. So the bulk of the money is distributed in other ways that aren't made public -- e.g. deals between Universal Music and Spotify.

Spotify don't actually pay per stream though.
If I recall correctly, Spotify take 35% of income and distribute the rest to rights holders based on the proportion of plays. That means if you have two months with the same income, but more plays in the second month, it's a lower payment per play.
Also, your example above is about a factor of 10 out. Payments generally vary from between $0.003 and $0.008 from Spotify.
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Re: MPs to investigate whether artists are paid fairly for streaming music

Post by BigRedX »

Where are we getting this £0.0004 per stream figure from?

None of my Spotify streams have ever paid that little. Mine average out at about 10x that figure.
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Re: MPs to investigate why artists aren't paid fairly for streaming music

Post by merlyn »

** Attack Of The Free-Marketeer Daleks **

[In Dalek voice]

Exprofitate! Exprofitate! Supply and demand! Exprofitate!

blinddrew wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 12:57 pm Also, your example above is about a factor of 10 out. Payments generally vary from between $0.003 and $0.008 from Spotify.

I got the figures here : https://committees.parliament.uk/writte ... 10156/pdf/

Are you forgetting that the record company take some of the streaming payout?

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Re: MPs to investigate why artists aren't paid fairly for streaming music

Post by James Perrett »

merlyn wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 1:18 pm Are you forgetting that the record company take some of the streaming payout?

But the record company share depends on the deal that the individual artist has negotiated with their record label. We hear quite a bit about the bad deals but there are plenty of people with better deals too. For the sake of understanding the issues it is more helpful to talk about the payment before the middlemen start creaming off their share. Your figures also talk about the songwriter's share which a totally different pot of money to the figures that Drew is talking about. The real figure here is around 0.0007 for Spotify and slightly higher for iTunes.

I get very fed up with people pointing the finger at Spotify when the real villains are the major labels. They have no defence when they can pay their top management more than all their music artists combined.

The only streaming service that isn't really playing fair is Youtube which has much lower payment rates than the others.
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Re: MPs to investigate whether artists are paid fairly for streaming music

Post by Albatross »

Does it make any sense to say that, say, Radio 2 pay less per pair of ears because they have 14m listeners?
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Re: MPs to investigate whether artists are paid fairly for streaming music

Post by Drew Stephenson »

To Merlyn, what James said. ^^^ :)
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Re: MPs to investigate why artists aren't paid fairly for streaming music

Post by Drew Stephenson »

But also...
James Perrett wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 2:25 pm The real figure here is around 0.0007 for Spotify and slightly higher for iTunes.

My figures from my latest statement (platform / plays / payment / rate):
Spotify / 530 / £2.02 / 0.38ppp (pence per play)
Apple Music / 23 / £0.19 / 0.83ppp
Youtube Music / 19 / £0.10 / 0.53ppp
Boomplay Music / 84 / £0.02 / 0.024ppp

A few things to note:
1) firstly the low number of plays mean that rounding errors might be significant.
2) I think Youtube Music and Youtube have different payment rates but I'm not sure?
3) Boomplay is a site based in, and focused on, Africa - hence the much lower rates.
4) Being the sole creator here, and paying my distributor upfront, means there's no middleman costs here. This is what the services are paying out to rightsholders.
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Re: MPs to investigate whether artists are paid fairly for streaming music

Post by James Perrett »

Those look like fairly healthy numbers Drew but my 0.0007 figure in the quote above (and the payment in Merlyn's post) is for the songwriter's publishing - not the standard payment.
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Re: MPs to investigate whether artists are paid fairly for streaming music

Post by Drew Stephenson »

Ah, sorry, yes I see now. My bad. :oops:
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