Streaming and Independent Artists

As technology continues to advances, the future of the music industry is at best a blur. At the fore front of music technology, streaming continues to be a highly debated topic among artist, producers, record labels and publishers. While streaming is a great response to fighting piracy, the biggest complaint among professionals in the industry is the same, streaming doesn’t pay enough.

Currently the largest streaming service by number users is Spotify, with 30 million paying subscribers and over 100 million users world wide, Spotify should surely be making a profit. While Spotify’s revenue rose 80% from $1.18 Billion in 2014 to $2.12 billion in 2015 they still reported a lost of $188 Million. This is because most of the profits go back to the music labels, artists and publishers. Most streaming services have struggled to make a profit because the expenses to license the music increases as the same rate as their growth as a company.

But indie songwriters and artist still only make a fraction of a penny per stream, making this model virtual impossible to make a viable living. YouTube is infamous for paying even less to their artists, and many others steaming services may offer better rates but insignificant exposure.

In the end, independent creators still have to recoup the majority of their profits from ticket sales at live shows and merchandise. Most artists still will want to have their music placed on streaming services as a calling card to gain more followers, but unless they’re receiving millions upon millions of streams, they cannot expect to receive a significant profit. A common argument I hear upon defending the streaming model is that streaming is better because it still pays more then piracy and while this is technically true, something still needs to change if we want our songwriters and artists to be paid appropriately.

Kastrenakes (2013), Spotify gets serious with a new streamlined logo. Retrieved June 6th, 2016 from http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/28/4157210/spotify-debuts-new-logo-serious-redesign