UK Govt study reveals only 0.4% of artists make a living from streaming revenue
While streaming has brought significant profits to the recorded music industry, the talent behind it are losing out.
full article on: UK Govt study reveals only 0.4% of artists make a living from streaming revenue - MusicTech
That‘s a topic that‘s been discussed on here before, it‘s interesting to see some data around this.
sad reallity
Quite a different outcome to the idealism once imagined. Especially crushing given the state of live performance RN
The Guardian reporting on the impact of streaming on the power- and revenue distribution in the music industry today as well:
Full disclosure, I run a digital distribution service.
I can say that more artists are making money now than they were 5 years ago when I got started in this. I only know of a handful of my users are full time musicians who are living off what they make from their music.
The numbers is that guardian article also reflect how the revenue gets divided among the top users on Traxx. For Traxx specifically, the split is roughly 80% of revenue goes to the top 15% of users. But it’s a pretty big drop off after that. On an average month, 80-85% of users earn royalties.
While everyone wishes streaming rates would improve, until prices for those plans go up, the rates won’t go up. It’s a math problem. So the reason why Spotify pays a lower rate than Apple Music is due to the larger number of streams they get. They all use a similar system. Premium plan funds go into a bucket of money. Then they divide that bucket of money over the total number of streams from those Premium users in a given month. The idea is that all streams are treated equal. A stream for a Taylor Swift song shouldn’t be worth any more than a stream of YOUR song.
Streaming isn’t for everyone. Some embrace it, some despise it. You need to do what you think is best for YOUR music. On one hand, being on these platforms like Spotify and Apple Music greatly increases your audience. On the other hand, you trade that reach for a lower royalty rate.
So how do the artists that are doing this full time do it? What works? Those artists are constantly creating and releasing music. Mainly singles. Unfortunately, albums aren’t as common any more. They are also active with promotion on social media. They collaborate with other artists both in and out of their genre. By working with another artist, you are reaching out to their fan base too. They also work with people who run playlists. And that’s probably the biggest “luck” factor in this whole thing. If you can get a tastemaker to put a song on their popular playlist, you can very easily get over 1m streams in a month. Those streams will lead to new follows and likes.
If anyone has any questions on anything, I’m happy to answer what I can. You can send me a message too if you’d like.