Why My Album Won't Be On Spotify

hello again I recently put out an update on my forthcoming debut album super sexy heartbreak which wait for the plug is currently up for pre-order on my website one of the comments on that video gave me food for thought so here it is is it better for you as an artist to sell hard copies or rely on streaming as a subscriber to a streaming platform it will need to be something special to make me shell out for a CD to sit on a shelf if I bought a hard copy it would sit on a shelf and probably only ever get played once I assume that this would generate some income but I presume over the course of a decade or more of streaming there is actually a better return on investment just interested on which method fits better with Roi the answer one CD equals actually give me a moment to explain I've given streaming a lot of thought over the past few years because it's been one of the major Innovations in the music industry and has also had a profound effect on artist income first of all yes I am part of the problem as I do subscribe to Spotify YouTube premium and apple music the ability to play pretty much anything I want within a few clicks is incredible it's meant I've broadened my tastes quite significantly and save time by not listening to or watching adverts the algorithmic recommendations are also just incredibly good on these sites I have discovered some of my favorite new songs and artists through its suggestions and if you're putting out your own music it's still one of the best chances of being discovered and quickly gaining traction particularly if you're added to a popular playlist but it's also true that my experience of listening to music is very different even with the artists I absolutely love I don't cherish the work and in the same way new releases are quickly forgotten about or not even gotten around to in the first place I'll save them and maybe forget about them and there are other downsides too particularly to do with artists income which you may or may not be aware of as a casual user so I thought it would be an interesting topic to dive into by the way if you do enjoy what I do please consider subscribing it would really help me out now I fully admit that I haven't put as much time into building my Spotify following as I have YouTube I have about 4 000 monthly listeners That's Unique users who stream my music at least once within a 28 day window in the grand scheme of things that's really very low Ed Sheeran as one of the world's biggest artists has over 82 million monthly listeners Rosalia has just shy of 41 million Lizzie McAlpine has 11 and a half million but I'm not too worried because these are major artists with major labels behind them whereas I'm only just releasing my first album haven't really been delivering anything to Spotify recently and trying to work on that sustainable long-term career as an independent artist definitely not worried not worried at all my top five songs have between 347 038 000 streams streams officially count once a listener has reached the 32nd mark on the song which is why a lot of these songs nowadays are doing away with long intros each time you listen to the same song it counts as a different stream my most streamed song is Primrose so let's look at the stats for streaming income to keep it simple I'll list the income in US Dollars on Spotify the rough total income for this song is one thousand three hundred and eighty eight dollars and five cents apple and Amazon music are roughly comparable at Seventeen hundred and thirty five dollars so per stream I earn around 0.03 cents for comparison title a rival artist owned streaming site pays quite a bit better around 0.12 cents per stream Primrose came out as a single in 2019 so that income has been spread over four years my most recent release The Great Wave which came out March 1st 2022 that's had around 38 504 streams which equates to 154 dollars and two cents or naught Point naught naught four cents per play The Great Wave was recorded at Birmingham conservatoire with a string quartet and cost roughly four thousand dollars to record mix and master expensive yes but it was a special event for me and I partnered with universal audio so it would take one million streams to break even and recoup the cost if that's one of 10 tracks of a similar cost on an album then let's call it around 10 million as for a sustainable yearly income using the federal minimum wage of 7.25 cents per hour or 13 920 annually an average per stream revenue of 0.03 cents I would need four million six hundred and forty thousand streams per year to earn minimum wage if you've been good enough to pre-order my album from my website you've equated to 833 streams on Spotify go you Spotify pays royalties based on what they describe as the artist's market share or stream share which is the number of streams of their songs as a proportion of total songs streamed on the service this is from their website we distribute the net revenue from premium subscription fees and ads to rights holders to calculate net revenue we subtract the money we collect but don't get to keep this includes payments for things like taxes credit card processing fees and billing along with some other things like sales commissions from there the rights holders share of net revenue is determined by stream share we calculate stream share by telling the total number of streams in a given month and determining What proportion of those streams were people listening to music owned or controlled by a particular rights holder contrary to what you might have heard Spotify does not pay artist royalties according to per play or per stream rate the royalty payments the artists receive might vary according to differences in how their music has streamed or the agreements they have with their labels or Distributors Spotify says it distributes approximately 70 percent of its total revenue to rights holders who then pay artists based on their individual agreements with their label and we all know that labels often have really fair and reasonable agreements with artists don't we that was sarcasm some big names have decided to fight back against the system over the years major acts like Coldplay Beyonce and Adele have all imposed delays of weeks or even months before their new releases are made available Taylor Swift has used her considerable power as the world's biggest artist to raise attention to I'm not willing to contribute my life's work to an experiment that I don't feel fairly compensates the writers producers artists and creators of this music and I just don't agree with perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be free obviously she's working in a slightly different manner now back on Spotify and re-recording her older material but that's for another video in March 2014 Wolfpack created an album called sleepify which was an entirely silent record they asked their fans to play the album on a loop while they slept to help them earn a living Spotify pulled the album in April 2014 citing an unspecified service violation but not before the band earned around twenty thousand dollars in royalties Tom York the Radiohead front man and solo artist has also been critical of the service in a 2013 interview he said I feel like as musicians we need to fight the Spotify thing I feel that in some ways what's happening in the mainstream is the last gasp of the old industry once that does finally die which it will something else will happen like Taylor Swift Radiohead have since allowed their albums on Spotify but only with a six-week weight from its initial release date they're a brilliant example of artists with a fan base exploring new ways of making an income from their music brought out at the height of the music piracy Boom the 2007 album in rainbows was initially released as a pay what you want download on their website with the band saying this liberated them from conventional promotional formats and removed barriers to audiences the move garnered huge worldwide attention both positive and negative Time magazine called it easily the most important release in the recent history of the music business whereas Lily Allen called it an arrogant move that set a bad precedent saying you don't choose how to pay for eggs why should it be different for music the band's Publishers admitted that despite the experiment illegal downloads for In Rainbows outranked those that paid for it but Radiohead still reportedly made an instantaneous 3 million dollars from downloads with an average price paid worldwide estimated at six dollars per customer now with more traditional media for every major label CD album sold the label receives about 30 of the profits with 10 to 13 Going to the artist depending on their deal if you bought an album on iTunes that costs 9.99 the label receives 5.35 cents of that while the artist gets somewhere between 90 and 99 Cents the rest gets eaten up by distribution manufacturing retail costs taxes and so on distribution charges made a whole lot more sense when it required warehouses and physical labor less so when it's just uploading files remember too that the label recoups all of their costs from the artist's share the cost of recording or even that steak dinner they so kindly treated you to it's all built from your own income Radiohead didn't have a label at the time but they did have the benefit of years of major labels support behind them in growing a fan base and that's where you come in if you've watched this far you are directly helping support my music career I have put a lot of heart and soul into this record and it will be me sitting at my kitchen table hand signing all these CDs and stuffing envelopes I think with my family members I've been putting a lot of work into making a beautiful object so yeah trust me it's it's going to be a nice experience and when the time comes I will be releasing the album track by track on streaming services in the meantime if you feel like helping me out then please go and follow me whatever streaming service you use give some of my other songs a spin and add them to any playlists that you have and share them with friends or if you'd be so kind pre-order the physical copy it will come with a high-res digital download too so yes you don't even need a CD player but you are truly supporting the cause so thank you so much for watching I hope you've learned something and as always I'll be seeing you here again very very soon

Channel: Mary Spender

Views: 249,422

Keywords: Mary Spender Music, shelby church, making money on youtube, making money online, how much youtube paid me, 1 million views, how much i made from 1 million viewed video, how to, how to make money on youtube, my youtube project, my first youtube paycheck, how much i make on youtube, how much i make on youtube in a month, music copyright, copyright strike, streams, spotify, tidal, apple music, independent

Id: jJr_TVbJYcU

Length: 11min 4sec (664 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 20 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/calibuildr]

Mary Spender has a pretty cool youtube channel and here comes the awful debate about how much (or little) streaming pays, and the effect it has on artists.

I noticed the same discussion going around among some indie country artists recently.

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Support your favorite artists, people!