Just for the hell of it, I took a look at some Spotify numbers. At 4 cents a stream, if an artist is streamed 2 million times, they’ll received $80,000.
Now, at first, second and third glance this isn’t much much money but look at this: Spotify has 24 million subscribers which means one of twelve has to stream it once in a year.
So who gets 2 Million streams? I just took a look and Macklemore and Lewis did 3.7M streams of “Can’t Hold Us”, so that makes about $160,000 in revenue of which the band get MAYBE 25%.
Which means one of the biggest songs of the year is making the band $40,000. Now, there is a company like ASCAP that collates all the money from streaming and forwards it in a big fat check and all parties are happy.
But what if you release your own album, sell 5000 copies and get 20,000 streams. You make $50,000 off sales and off streaming you make $800. Every 25 streams is worth $1.
The thing, the Taylor swifts are so reluctant because in their scheme of things they are losing sales to gain streams and it isn’t worth it. For the poorer musicians it isn’t worth it because the money they get is so small, there is no reason to cannibalize themselves.
That leaves the mid-sized acts. The touring bands, say Saint Motel, where fans wil strem their music before they play a town and have a strong introduction and even have a better reason to see them live.
There is something else as well: no other choice. To be part of the music business is to deal with not being paid as much as you used to for your music and it has happened. It is over. Like the man says, information wants to be free.