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Comment by anoonmoose | Hacker News Reader

RJD2 only has about 100K followers on Spotify. For comparison, that is about the same amount as two of my favorite bands, Opeth and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.

It's not Spotify's fault that RJD2 is only as popular as obscure Swedish death metal or obscure 80's folk goth music.

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I don't know RJD2, but does Opeth and Nick Cave really only make $.22 a month from Spotify?

If that's true, something is deeply and terribly wrong with the license agreements. These are not some amateurs, but pretty big acts with fans from all over, and while I despise saying they "deserve" this or that I would at least expect the sum to matter.

Yeah, Opeth has 735,477 listeners on last.fm - that's comparable with the best known artists in the genre ever like Deep Purple or Black Sabbath (around 2 million both).

I've been using last.fm for a long time and I've spent a lot of time looking at the data. I would argue that the average person on last.fm is much, much more likely to have heard of Opeth than the average YouTube or Spotify user. I'd also argue that straight up listener count isn't a very useful number, since Kanye West (the most listened to artist on last.fm last week by about 33%) only has about 4M listeners. I don't think Kanye is only 5x as popular/successful/listened to as Opeth.

Sure, but look at it this way. If an artist who has 100K followers removes their music from music sharing services and decides to sell MP3 versions of their album directly for $2. That is 200K. 22 cents a month is obscene.

RJD2's most popular song has more than 17 million streams. Opeths has 500k, the other band you mentioned has a number of songs around 2 million streams. Spotify pays artists based on number of streams, not based on how many followers they have accrued.[1]

So RJD2 should be making significantly more than the bands you mentioned given that his number of streams should represent a larger portion of spotify's total streams.

[1]http://www.spotifyartists.com/spotify-explained/#royalties-i...

RJD2's first two albums were done on two different record labels. His more recent two albums were done on his own record label. His songs with a lot of plays were on his first two albums. It's probably his old labels that are making all the money here.

I have a Youtube video with 17k views that earned me $22.

So assuming one follow ~= one view per month, that means Youtube is 600x more profitable than Spotify. Interesting since Youtube is free and Spotify has paid stuff.

You owned the video. Who owns his song? Spotify could be exactly as profitable as YouTube if he only owns one-sixhundredth of the song.

But still, $.22 for 100k followers is not very much.

Do remember it's also based off plays, not follows. I could have 100k followers, but if I get 500 plays a day, I'd get barely anything.

Ha i kindof just want to repeat exactly this: "But still, $.22 for 100k followers is not very much."

I understand there are technicalities but 22 cents/month is what you'd expect your complete unknown "electronica in basement" neighbor to make off a major distribution outlet, not known artists, even if they are obscure (which I think is a ludicrously out-of-scale term considering these bands have international followings).

I'm sure someone in this equation is making money, thats why it rubs me the wrong way.... it is an extension of the industry rather than a correction of it.

Did he have 100k followers 2 years ago when he posted that or does he have it now?

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