This post is nothing more than a shameless plug for my friend and old college colleague Nick at The Littlest Winslow, who’s been mentioned here more than once in terms of music selections to which he’s introduced me. (He was the lead inspiration for the Music Other People Like series you find here as well.) Continue reading
In just yesterday’s post, I mentioned Ronika while talking about the similarities between her and Sky Ferreira. I then looked up Ronika on Spotify to listen to her music after writing the post, and lo and behold, she’s just released her first full-length album, “Selectadisc.” Continue reading
Having been around writers for a good portion of my career, I’ve found over time that certain styles of writing draw me in (as I’m sure it does for most). Keri Hilson’s songwriting style is definitely one that pulls me in, and although both of her solo albums to date have plenty going for it, I favor her first release, “In a Perfect World…” Continue reading
I’ve shared here previously my enjoyment of singer/songwriter Cathy Dennis, and it’s great to see things pop up involving her now and then. Two recent developments worth checking out that I’ve tripped across recently: Continue reading
Spotify has 10 million paid users paying $10 a month, but still isn’t profitable? That’s a concerning statistic, but the company is still growing, and the U.S. market has been slow to catch on to the service. Continue reading
When I was first getting into music, I was a fan of WKTU out of New York, and it led me to explore a number of dance compilations. A big name at the time was the “Dance Mix USA” series from Quality and Radikal Records. At their peak in the mid-90s, they were the go-to collection of dance hits, well mixed and put together, with a lot of great tracks that I recognized from the radio. Continue reading
The second Christmas Present season comes to a close today, given today is Christmas day. To give you something to enjoy the holiday, this year I’ve compiled 20 posts of Christmas Present selections (at least what’s available anyway) into a Spotify playlist. Continue reading
Somehow in the midst of everything, I failed to post on a subject I had been waiting awhile to because an anniversary was coming. Well, it passed, but it still was a game changer for me and how I shop for music: The launch of iTunes and the iTunes Store for Windows, which happened in October of 2003. Continue reading
I was a bit intrigued by a post at the A.V. Club about how much an artist was paid for his song being streamed at services like Spotify. The article’s big splash was that, despite a million plays and then some, Cracker’s lead singer was only paid $16.89 by Spotify for those plays. The article then compared the amount to other services:
Terrestrial radio earned Lowery more than $1,000 for about 19,000 plays. Sirius XM paid him about $180 for 179 plays, technically making it the most profitable. Spotify and YouTube were more on par with Pandora, doling out $12.05 for 116,000 plays and $1.95 for 153,000 plays, respectively.
Initially I was as shocked as the majority of people in the comments section, but then it hit me: Isn’t a play on radio or Sirius XM a boatload more exposure than on Spotify? Some quick math approximates a penny for every thousand listeners on Spotify; by comparison, radio’s paying 5 cents per play… does the average play on radio net roughly 5,000 listeners? That seems reasonable enough. Sirius XM was close to a dollar per play, which would mean 100,000 listeners would need to be listening to be comparable. Now that definitely seems like more of a stretch, but it’s a national service, so there’d assumedly be more listeners than on a radio station, so it’s hard to compare.
It’s certainly something to be sympathetic about, particularly when the argument can be made that services like Spotify are a replacement for purchases for a growing segment of the population. (Of course, the record companies are only hurting themselves by changing purchases in the physical era, complete with resale rights, to non-transferable licenses in the digital era.) But to compare amount paid per play alone is a bit simplistic, and in many cases, services like Pandora, which act as a discovery mechanism, can lead to incremental sales – I know I’ve bought songs that I tripped across because Pandora recommended it. Spotify’s more shaky, but if Spotify encourages more consumption, is it a bad thing? And further, given the way things were going a decade ago, where Napster was invading college campuses and students were building libraries of music for free, isn’t having Spotify as an option for those people better than nothing at all?
This isn’t to say the rate is fair; it’s never really been all that fair for artists, and the switch from mass market to individualized control causes segmentation and splintering. But a broad comparison rarely tells the whole story.