The Starving Artist Gets a Whole Lot Hungrier

If you’re a 21st century, reasonably tech-savvy music-lover like me, then you’ve probably got a Spotify account. Who wouldn’t love an app that gives you access to an infinite library of music, and the ability to create and share custom-made music playlists, for free, or if you have an ad-free premium account, at the small price of $11.99 per month? As a consumer, it just doesn’t get any better than this!

But let’s role-play for a minute. What if you are an upcoming artist that still lives at home because you gave up your day job to follow your dreams, and you couldn’t afford your last takeaway meal without a discount code, let alone a one-room studio apartment in Sydney? Those studio costs aren’t going to pay themselves!

So, you are now a completely devoted full-time musician, grinding away each day in the hope of hitting the big time. When you’re not out gigging seven nights a week, you’re rehearsing. When you’re not rehearsing, you’re pouring your heart out onto paper, churning out song after song, praying that the next one will finally get your name in lights.

If you’re not qualified with a degree in music, at the very least you’ve spent years out of your life enrolled in instrument lessons, which nowadays the average rate for a one-hour lesson seems to cost you an arm and a leg.

Okay, so you’ve finally narrowed down your top selection of songs for the EP, and have saved up enough cash for your studio sesh’. After giving up your remaining arm and leg to cover the astronomical studio costs, you can finally release the album. That is of course after selling your soul (or monetary equivalent) to pay digital music distribution fees, social media marketing and advertising costs, merchandise design and manufacturing charges, session musician hire, petrol and other travel costs, additional instrument and equipment purchase and hire fees, album cover artwork design and photography costs, promotional material charges and any other additional costs involved.

After all of this combined with heightened emotions, stress and a few dozen sleepless nights, you can finally sit back and enjoy the pleasure of a hopefully positive response from your audience, not to mention those sweet, sweet, royalties!

Bah-bow! Wrong! I hate to tell you folks, but we now live in a world where people expect that music should be available for free. But let me ask you this;

Would you expect your dentist to give you a set of priceless pearly-whites at no cost?

Unlikely.

Would you hire a team of tradesmen to build you the house of your dreams for free?

Highly doubt it.

But wait for a second, you’re telling me that a mere $1.69 is too much to spare for a piece of art that an artist has put their absolute all into to bring value to your life? Unacceptable!

Spotify claims to combat pirated music downloads by providing users with a freemium service, allowing artists to generate an income from their musical works. However, while their intentions may be genuine and noble, the reality is that music streams pay artists a lot less than music purchases do.

When asking Spotify how much an artist gets paid per song stream, you’re unlikely to get a straight answer. Instead, you can expect to hear about a whole lot of estimations and various contributing factors.

After asking this question themselves, Forbes published a ‘Spotify for Dummies’ guide via their online publication.

Essentially the process is as follows:

1. Spotify calculates its monthly revenue

2. Spotify pays the record label a percentage (taking the first cut)

3. The PROS take the second cut (a percentage)

4. Spotify keep approximately 15-30% for themselves

5. Spotify’s contractors are then also paid a percentage

6. The per-play allocation is determined using the following equation: [remaining revenue/total # service plays in that month]

7. The publishers are each paid a lump sum of the total amount: [per play allocation * total # plays publisher owns]

8. The publisher then calculates and pays a lump sum payment of the remaining royalties to the artists and songwriters (deducting an admin fee for themselves)

So, as you can see, by the time the artist receives their pay check, there’s not much left. It is because of this that many artists are now boycotting Spotify completely. Aside from Prince, Jay-Z and Beyoncé, the most notable artist to remove her repertoire from Spotify is Taylor Swift, who believes the service inadequately compensates artists for their musical works.

If you check out Time’s November 2014 article which revealed an overview of Spotify’s top- earning songs of October 2014, you’ll soon understand why Taylor Swift was so bitter.

Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake It Off’ ranked #1 after accumulating 46.3 million streams, earning Swift an estimated figure of $280k-390k. If these 46.3 million streams were iTunes purchases (where the single sells for $2.19), Swift would have earned approximately $101,397,000. I’d be angry too!

In an interview with Chelsea Barnes, lead vocalist of Sydney rock band, The Last Exposure, she explains that distributing their music via Spotify as a “major digital source” was a must. “Artists want to connect their music to as many people as they can and to the right desired audiences of course,” Chelsea explains.

The Last Exposure, Sydney-based band

Chelsea also believes artists are paid inadequately, “we put all of the little money we have, as well as countless hours, effort and emotion into our music. We love it, but it is incredibly hard, and at the end of the day we are happy with the little to nil amount of money we receive.”

Chelsea says, “APRA AMCOS is an awesome way that artists can get paid royalties, but I feel it's not really cutting it for us artists battling the struggles and the balance of music, life and money.”

It appears that the Spotify sitch’ is a bittersweet battle where the artist must choose between an opportunity for exposure to Spotify’s 140 million users, vs. significantly smaller profits.

What would you choose?