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Artists Continue to Lash Out at Spotify's Pittance.
Indie | Wednesday 30th October 2013 | Alex
Oh, Yannis. We can always trust you to set it straight, can’t we? His comparison between Spotify’s penny pinching and a dine and dasher seems quite apt. While being interviewed for Channel 4, Yannis stated that Spotify was “…like going to a restaurant where the chefs and the waiting staff have worked their arses off, and you leave coppers as a tip, and you don’t even pay the bill. That’s basically what Spotify’s like, I think.” 'Is right, Yan lad' to use the Scouse vernacular.
"I'd rather somebody stole the record on vinyl...than streamed it on Spotify" - Foals frontman meets #C4news http://t.co/kb4yVKqWUI - video
— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) October 29, 2013
Spotify has garnered a lot of negative press lately after Thom Yorke said something and the whole world had to listen or else be deemed out of the loop or, god forbid, uncool. While the whole “fart of a dying corpse” thing didn’t quite sit right with me, at the rates it pays, if you’re a struggling artist trying to get your music out there, Spotify is NOT the way to go.
In August, an article arose on The Guardian’s website offered us some facts and figures donated by Zoe Keating. It was pretty grim reading too if you’re a struggling musician. Basically, poor Zo makes less than half a penny (0.3p) everytime you listen to a track of hers. That was from little over 200,000 views and she made about $808. Does that seem fair? Haven’t the majority of artists always been underpaid? Are Spotify the slave drivers of modern audio media?
Obviously, if you’re a solo artist you get every last drop of your 0.3p and more power to you. If you’re in a band of, let’s say, four (two guitarists, a bassist and a drummer) then that gets hacked up further. To be honest, a few google searches later and the outlook is quite upsetting for all of you music makers out there. It seems that, unless you’re HUGE, then steady incoming revenue is a tricky thing to come by. Although, there is a consensus on where we can help out the strummers, pluckers and drummers; merchandise and gigs.
The aforementioned duo go hand in hand. Play a great show to a lot of people and the guys selling your t-shirts will be swamped for the half/three-quarters of an hour after you finish up. Take Wired.com’s piece in 2010, we all know how hard Kiss sold out, but they did make a lot of money. Merchandise is the key to financial security as, the internet seems to tell me, you earn around 30% of the total cost of a t-shirt or whatever. So for every £15 t-shirt you sell, £4.50 of that goes straight into your pocket. Therefore, from one sale of a t-shirt, you’ve made as much as 1500 plays of one of your songs would have on Spotify.
It’s a tough gig. There really isn’t a lot of money going around but Yannis was right. The coppers that Spotify leaves are all the artists get to buy their bread. It’s pretty scandalous that this is allowed to happen yet with 24 million users worldwide, the reign of Spotify is set to continue.
Alex Taylor https://twitter.com/alextaylor18
