Steve says: Shared from a friend: Some of y’all post that you are happy to save money by streaming music you like instead of buying it. I like saving money, too. But do you realize you’re taking food out of creators’ mouths? If I were starting out now, I might have to decide not to pursue a career in music.
I believe in 1968, my father charged $1 in his drugstore for singles. They are mostly now 99¢ for a download. Did you get a raise within the last few decades? [Note: Those records had TWO sides so you got TWO songs for your $1!]
Our gear costs a lot of money. We have to travel for gigs that most times pay nothing for tavel. We drive home tired, after the gig, to save paying for rooms. We get no health insurance, or pensions. We get little respect and are often told to get “real” jobs.
Our beloveds often tire of the constant struggle and decide to find someone with more stability.
Therefore, we lose our families.
And yet, we keep coming back. We practice for hours, we constantly seek out new collaborations, we do odd jobs to pay the rent and still find the time to rehearse with the band.
We find innovative ways to record our music, yet most of you won’t spend the commonly used price of $9.99 to download our albums, rather than stream all your favorites for around that for a month. So we get basically nothing for the streams. Yet we keep coming back.
Do you get paid in “exposure” at your job
Do you make these salaries?
“The exact number of plays to earn $100 on Spotify can fluctuate due to varying royalty rates. However, based on an average payout of $0.0033 per stream, you’d need approximately 30,303 plays.”
Yet, still we come back.
If you’re not sure, please stream and share our music, it’s why we do it. But if you stream an entire album over and over, PLEASE pay the artist directly. Those emails I get when someone downloads my music mean so much more than telling me I can buy another rack of yogurt, it means I was appreciated enough to actually be paid for my effort.
If you’ve read this far, thank you! And if it’s changed your mind, kudos to us both!
(Steve)