Everyone's
talking about streaming these days (see my Blog post "Taylor
Not So Swift"). Everyone seems to be concentrating on getting
money from streams. I'm still not sure why any respectable musician
would think they could rely on streaming their own music as a source of
income? Sell your instruments right now if you think you could make a
living streaming your songs on the internet. This article also relates
money: royalties for a song stream, paying producers, paying song/ghost
writers, and of course the so called "artist" who, according to Jay_z and
Taylor Swift, usually winds up being a celebrity that needs a lot of help
from vocal autotuners. Anyways, it's all about streaming and not
getting any money for it.
But Streaming? Let's focus on Sales.
And I'll say it again, one should only get some sort of payment from a sale,
not a listen.
Let's take a look at streaming as a service which is basically another
variation on satellite radio. What "artists" would love to happen
would be to get a cent per a low-fi listen, better known as a stream.
It works out a lot better for the artist if they had a person buy the song,
hopefully in FLAC or wav. If you're stuck with iTunes, then I'm sorry.
I wouldn't even buy my own stuff through iTunes because their markup to way
too much. $1.29 for a 3 minute song? No thanks.
For starts, we'll do some basic math, complete with rounding. We'll say the
streaming company/provider (Rhapsody, Spotify, etc) pays out to an "artist"
.02 cents a listen, and for those unfortunate people that use a label, there
goes a percentage of that .2 of a cent, and if you aren't capable, you'll
have to pay the people that do all the fun stuff like writing and recording.
Here's an idea: Sell it. Seriously. Aim for the sky. Try
and sell a song. If I sell a recent song of mine on CD Baby at $0.50,
CD Baby takes their 10% or 5 cents and I get the remaining $0.45. And
I don't spend it all in one place either. Since I don't funnel my
earnings through a useless label, I get all my $0.45. I'm my own
writer, producer and publisher (it's a tough job but somebody's got to do
it).
Now for me to get that same income from streaming, assuming I get a .02
cents per stream, I'd need 2250 streams/plays/listens. I know you were
reading but, in short: 1 Sale = $0.45 for me; 2250 streams = $0.45 for me.
I have a better chance of having, and would rather have, a sale from that
one person that genuinely likes my song than 2250 people accidentally
hearing it. I don't think I've met 2250 people through my entire life.
And forget Crapple and their inflated iPrices: $1.29 per song (which is
incredibly wrong) and I don't even get to set that price, which is way more
than Apple's stated 30%. And that's why they can go to hell.
Everybody's running around lately crying about money and streaming that they
all forgot about selling the thing. To me, most of these whiny
"artists" can't get a sale and need some affirmation that they're somehow
musicians. I say, if you're song is good and/or likable enough, people
will be more than willing to pay $0.50 for the file. If everyone
stopped being so goddamn greedy and adopting attitudes of celebrities
instead of acting like people who actually make music, the world would be a
better place.
And if you bought Taylor Swift's bullshit and you're thinking she's the
champion of the working musician, buy some razor blades and cut along the
artery. You'll be doing everyone a favour. And all this fuss,
for literally, almost nothing.
Have a listen - it's free
I would be foolish if I said don't go to CD Baby, so go there now. Back to News and Letters