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I'm hating the pile ons this week from musicians who get small %s from their labels, or just aren't big enough to make a living from it, blaming streaming. As a punter, value music, try to buy direct, support their art, you can do this in addition to this 2.9p per stream https://twitter.com/ginawalterssing/status/1334760659461017601
I worked out that my 30k plays this year works out at 1p per 2.5 plays (£10 a month), a low user at 5k plays is paying about 2.5p per play. In addition I've been buying vinyl, t-shirts, livestreams and gig tickets for next year (hopefully)
Spotify and others aren't perfect, radio royalties are worse, if you're lucky enough to get a play on a big station it's per minute rates to potentially millions, now this traditionally has been seen as advertising and the money is a nice bonus, the aim is to get on a playlist
Repeated plays over the course of a week, potentially thousands in revenue. How do you get on a playlist, well it's not by having the best song, it's through paying distributors and pluggers, the same people who can get you on the illustrious streaming playlists
The big commercial artists have this all worked out, remixes in multiple styles so they can appear on multiple playlists, alongside pluggers and close relationships with distributors, all of which costs money but for some pays back dividends
So smaller artists, what hope so they have, it's the same as it's been for decades, 'sell out' try to get some fame, hope for that lucky break or blow loads on what becomes a 'one hit wonder' to help pay the bills as you keep churning out music that's more your style
Or go DIY, cut out the middlemen, the distributors and labels, you'll never get the same level but you'll get a bigger cut of a smaller pie. Rely on a small group of dedicated fans and offer something for all levels, those with pocket change upto those who'll spend much more
I fully sympathise with all the artists who've lost a huge chunk of their income this year in live music and associated merch, but blaming a big easy target with some flaws instead of recognising there's complex long running structural problems all seems a bit 'Brexity'
I've not seen very many artists try something different this year, we've all been sat at home bored, I've seen tons of livestreamed acoustic gigs, a few relaunched bits of merch, a couple of online festivals. We're ready and willing if you have music we like and can find us
