Spotify and iTunes have become the great alternatives to downloads and have shown that another model of online delivery it is cost effective and sustainable. However, the amounts paid to artists are very low.
Does it pay for artists to have their work on services like Spotify?Amazon or iTunes? This doubt was removed after knowing the percentage of remuneration made by the groups that broadcast their creations in this type of service. One of the members of the Parks and Garden band took on the task of opening this debate by posting on his Twitter account the amount he receives each time an Internet user listens to one of his songs, analyzed in detail in The next web.
Ridiculous amounts per reproduction
Specifically, he said that for each reproduction, the group earns $0.0033 (€0.0026) in the Apple service while they are $0.0097 (€0.0077) on Spotify. With these amounts, each song must be played at least 300 times for revenues to amount to $1 on iTunes.
At this stage, it should be noted that groups wishing to use these distribution services pay an annual fee for making their content available to the public. One of the platforms responsible for the distribution between these services, such as TuneCore load tapes $50 (39 euros) for distributing their songs for a year. In this way, the groups would have to make at least 15,000 reproductions on the Apple service and 5,000 on Spotify to recoup this investment.
This brings us to a clear conclusion, and that is that only the best known bands among the audience they manage to make make this distribution model profitable of his creations. For bands just starting out or not well known, it’s not worth paying that $50 to bring their content to a small audience, as it would take thousands of plays to recoup that royalty. So it seems an unattractive path for indie bands but not for record companies, let’s remember millions of dollars come in paid contributions provided by these platforms.