Photo: Gabriel Teodros | By Gabriel Teodros, Substack | Every year Spotify rolls out these personalized graphics both for artists and listeners. For listeners, it shows what you were listening to and how much time you spent time listening to it. For artists, it shows how many listeners you had and what songs they listened to the most.
I didn’t release any music in 2021. For some unknown reason I had a song from 2014 that picked up more streams than anything else in my catalog, and I think that’s mostly what these numbers reflect. But it’s still an interesting case study. I want to end this myth that there’s any money for artists in streaming music.
I looked up every monthly statement with payments I received from Spotify in 2021.
The total amount was $150.
Back in the day that would have been the equivalent of selling 15 CDs.
I’m trying to imagine telling my younger self that one year you’ll sell a total of 15 CDs to one person who’s gonna share those CDs with 23,200 people in 112 countries who will listen to those same 15 CDs 121,800 times for about 5400 hours over the course of a year.
And at the end of the year that person is gonna make you a graphic, with his name on it, and ask you to publicly celebrate the $150 you made.
Mind you this person who is loaning out the CDs he bought from you for $150 is making at least $2.5 million annually from the fees he charges just to this group of 23,200 people who listened to his copy of your music, because he charges them (and everyone else) a monthly fee to access his music library.
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I LOVED THIS ARTICLE! Explains in “Layman’s Terms” streaming! Read the rest here:
https://gabrielteodros.substack.com/p/theres-no-money-in-streaming
[Our thanks to Jamie Krutz for sending this. http://www.jamiekrutz.com]
There’s No Money in Streaming
