Want to see my royalty statement showing payments from Pandora, Spotify, etc? | Hacker News Reader

Want to see my royalty statement showing payments from Pandora, Spotify, etc?

armen.tv

12 pointsmbesto9 comments

I don't see much issue here. Clearly you can't expect to make a living off of 14,000 people playing your song. From what I understand, most artists make most of their money from live performances & merchandise.

https://www.spotifyartists.com/spotify-explained/#royalties-...

Explains in a bit more detail how Spotify distributes royalties.

While I certainly understand the gripe, I think that larger artists are hurt more than smaller artists by streaming services. One reason is that when people have to purchase music, they blow their whole budget on a few albums, whereas when you can basically rent content you end up consuming a wider distribution, helping long-tail artists.

Furthermore, obscure artists are hurt less by these services because the services aid discovery more than older music delivery paradigms, like radio which is a hype-factory for music labels. This effect is well documented, for instance more revenue is generated by songs outside of Rhapsody's top 10,000 than in it[1].

[1] https://www.law.northwestern.edu/research-faculty/searlecent...

Notice one performance of “Ceremonies” or “Distant Lands” streaming radio show like Hearts of Space that brings in 26 cents for the full writer’s share compared to 2,088 performances of “Gypsy Rain” on Spotify that brought in a total of 60 cents.

Presumably that HoS performance covers an entire audience hearing that song, whereas the Spotify performances are per-person. Wonder if the HoS fee also includes playing back old streams from the site?

At any rate, doesn't seem like enough money to live on. But I wonder if a Spotify is even possible if 14,000 performances could make a reasonable paycheck for a quarter. That'd be, what, around a buck a play per person? Why not just buy the CD at that point?

I've never heard of Hearts of Space, so I don't know if it's reach etc. But if 1,000 people listened to that particular show, it's about the same price-per-listen as Spotify, so it's not really a valid point.

Of course, this is assuming the scope of Hearts of Space is in and around the figure I said.

I'm under the impression that most musicians (even the more popular ones), don't make their fortunes from radio, but rather merchandise, CD sales, live performances etc.

Although, this is all probably irrelevant and mentioned in his post, but I can't see it at the moment as I'm getting a 403 forbidden error

this guys music sucks and is worth about 30 bucks in royalties in a quarter. I see nothing wrong with this. The musicians can make millions or consumers can listen to everything for 10 bucks a month. I prefer the later. music is the worst business ever. You have no pricing power and you're competing with all music that's ever been recorded. if someone made a record 50 years ago and died, they're still your competition. ouch bad scene.

Insulting the artist adds no value to your point about the merits of the music industry. Nobody logs onto this site to read your opinion about whose music sucks. Please add value or don't post at all.

But he did, there's plenty of sentences after the first one.

One could argue that in aggregate the value add was not positive, since the beginning certainly has negative value. ;) Anyway, one could also argue that my comment doesn't add anything either...

The point being made is about the per-listen payment, so quality is irrelevant; even bands that get a huge number of listens make very little money on services like Spotify or Pandora. Of course, it's still better than nothing, which is what they get from piracy.

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