I got this from Helen Bach who got it from Digital Music News who got it from Huffington Post who got it from singer songwriter Ron Pope who is given to lines like “I loved a woman like a little girl” and who really, well, I dunno, I guess he is big in Sweden but man is it painful to listen to.
So anyway, Ron shared his numbers from putting his music on Spotify: “My music was added to Spotify in September of 2010; through the most recent report, which runs through November 2013, I’ve had over 57 million plays and they’ve paid me out $334,636 with over $200,000 of that coming in 2013. I’m getting over a million streams in Sweden alone most months.”
Sure, that’s real money but there is another way to crunch that number. Ron is getting $5905 per MILLION STREAMS. If you are being streamed 57 million times that adds up to real money but while it might add up to real money how many indie musicians are reaching anything approaching those number. Ron’s most popular song, the truly truly ghastly “A Drop In The Ocean” has been streamed 22 Million times. In comparison, the Hold Steady’s most popular song “The Weekender” has been streamed 330,000 times.
In cities (countries) where Spotify is popular, Ron Pope has a whole new career in places he has never even heard of. On tour in Sweden in early 2012, Ron sold 100 tickets, last year? He sold out 450.
If it isn’t Spotify it is something else. But as Ron has proven, there is a future somehow in streaming, I just wonder if all Pope did was stick it on the platform and cross his fingers. Read the full article here.
