Music streaming revenues

[DTMark]

Is there anyone here who knows a little about artists' revenues from music streaming?

I'm putting together a site for a music artist and I can track down their music on Tidal, Spotify, Beatport, Soundcloud, YouTube and Tidal.

Looking to embed some of the tracks directly onto the website for people to click and listen to. Doing it this way: Tidal will only stream 30 seconds so I can exclude that one. YouTube has videos, too, though this artist tends not to have many videos, so the image is static. Where there is a video it would be nice to embed the YouTube version.

Spotify and Tidal have been in the news and seem particularly contentious issues.

If you were an artist which would you prefer someone clicked on? Which one earns you the most? Any other considerations?

[gilf]

It's next to nothing in all honesty so minor I wouldn't even bother worrying about it, the only thing with it is that generally artists have always been shafted by record companies so no change there really. These sorts of services really only function for a majority of artists as publicity platforms. 

http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/7/9861372/spotify-year-in-review-artist-payment-royalties

Quote

 Spotify admits the average "per stream" payout to rights holders lands somewhere between $0.006 and $0.0084.

I suspect at those levels you won't generate anything meaningful for the artist (very much depends who they are). 

 

[Riedquat]

If the views of someone who doesn't spend much time looking for or knows much about music helps (on the assumption of "if I've heard of it then everyone will have") the only ones on that list I've ever listened to anything on have been YouTube and Soundcloud (usually after seeing something on Youtube). With Adblock on.

[The Generation Game]

As someone who used to be on the audit team for one of the best-selling bands in the world, the streaming revenue is so minuscule that it's not worth bothering about. The record companies are notorious for screwing over the artists and the costs of carrying out a royalty audit are prohibitive for everyone bar Taylor Swift and Adele (probably). 

Its one of the reasons that bands started giving their music away for free. They make their money from touring. 

[DTMark]

OK, thanks. It's all coming together now.

Annoyingly the Soundcloud applet doesn't work very well in Edge but then there are many things that don't work properly in Edge.

Having had a look around at other artists sites in that country (Italy) they're not very inspiring.

They all have a multitude of links off to lots of different sites to listen to the music, rather than being a "central hub" as it were.

Can anyone name a good artist website that doesn't look like something that a child put together, or fifteen years old. Even the Madonna one is fairly crap. The Lady Gaga one is a single pager which is probably how this one will end up too. There just isn't a mass of content. Other than the music.

[ntb]

This might give you some content ideas

http://www.harperspace.com/index.html

 

[spunko2010]

I'm in a minority, but whenever I see an embedded YouTube/Vimeo video on a website, I always make sure to click it so I can see how many views it might have. Not sure why, just curious. The answer quite often is "not many", even on bigger websites with embdedded videos on their homepage.

For example (only one I can remember off the cuff): http://uk.copify.com has a video on their homepage, only 6000 views though in 6 months...

Just not sure if people actually stream/watch videos as much as we might think... Sorry, probably not much help. Have you considered Vimeo?

[DTMark]

With all the clients "winding down" for Christmas and having used up most of their hours, all being quiet here, I thought I'd set about finally doing this website for this artist.

You'd think there would be a multitude of dazzling artist websites to look at for shining examples of how to do multimedia, but there aren't.

The Weeknd and Carl Cox's ones aren't bad. At least they're adaptive designs that scale for mobiles.

Most have some really stunning photography and there isn't very much of that for this artist; for example there isn't even one image that is big enough to cover (stretch) across a large desktop to form a background, but I can use some stock images.

Then I have the joy of translating it all into Italian for the .it domain copy of the website.

 

[OnionTerror]

Many "smaller" bands use bandcamp...Most will allow the user to stream a whole track or album.  From there, you can buy a digital downloand, physical media, merch, and so on...

https://dreamcatalogue.bandcamp.com/album/the-last-defender

[europbaron]

On 15/12/2016 at 11:29 AM, ntb said:

This might give you some content ideas

http://www.harperspace.com/index.html

 

Sorry OT but had to mention that Nick Harper puts on a great live show. Some of his fans are a bit odd though

 

[Frank Hovis]

I heard a piece on the radio last week about this and have been unsuccessful in my attempts to find it.

The piece was prompted by vinyl sales exceeding download sales in that week and interviewed a streaming website owner / partner.

He conceded that unless you are a huge band you won't make much from streaming but said that there was a real trend where people who liked a new artist would stream their music but then would go out and buy their vinyl release, partly because they liked having it but partly because they knew it gave real money to the artist and so would encourage them to do more work.

He suggested that this was common so my offering to the debate Mark is that you get your client to consider a vinyl release along with the streaming if they wish to make other than trivial amounts of money.

[ntb]

2 hours ago, europbaron said:

Sorry OT but had to mention that Nick Harper puts on a great live show. Some of his fans are a bit odd though

 

Saw him a couple of weeks ago. He's touring with a band atm but agreed, his solo shows are fantastic. That wasn't me btw.

[shindigger]

I use Distrokid (highly recommended) as an aggregator for my musical meanderings.

The only real money i see is from itunes download purchases. Bit of Amazon. I never look at revenue from the streamers. Its nanopence as has been mentioned.

I do no publicity, dont gig, the only links to my work are on my personal twitter page. I've made about $200 dollars in 18 months.

I also had a single deal (vinyl and download) with Acid Jazz back in 2013. Had a £120 royalty after first years sales. Nada since.

Its a hobby.

[MrPin]

Mr Shindig, you need a talented artist like the Pin. I finger some, bang others, and blow the rest! I am a fairly talented ex-musician, who will try any instrument!

[shindigger]

43 minutes ago, MrPin said:

Mr Shindig, you need a talented artist like the Pin. I finger some, bang others, and blow the rest! I am a fairly talented ex-musician, who will try any instrument!

Talent not required these days Mr P. Just connections, mostly from private school. Rock n roll yah...?

[MrPin]

10 hours ago, shindigger said:

Talent not required these days Mr P. Just connections, mostly from private school. Rock n roll yah...?

Ah the dynasty of talent! I have seen it many times

[shindigger]

6 hours ago, MrPin said:

Ah the dynasty of talent! I have seen it many times

"Yah, Sebastian has just got a job in PR, reckons he can get us a deal....ok guys, this one's about depravation and alienation yah....."

Stick it up your **** Josh.

[Craig_]

18 hours ago, shindigger said:

I use Distrokid (highly recommended) as an aggregator for my musical meanderings.

The only real money i see is from itunes download purchases. Bit of Amazon. I never look at revenue from the streamers. Its nanopence as has been mentioned.

I do no publicity, dont gig, the only links to my work are on my personal twitter page. I've made about $200 dollars in 18 months.

I also had a single deal (vinyl and download) with Acid Jazz back in 2013. Had a £120 royalty after first years sales. Nada since.

Its a hobby.

Any links to your stuff?

[shindigger]

3 hours ago, Craig_ said:

Any links to your stuff?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Croak-Dilemmas/dp/B00MGGCRT8/ref=sr_1_1?s=dmusic&ie=UTF8&qid=1482000340&sr=1-1-mp3-albums-bar-strip-0&keywords=dilemmas+croak

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fahrenheit-Dilemmas/dp/B01M0QLA43/ref=sr_1_1?s=dmusic&ie=UTF8&qid=1482000393&sr=1-1-mp3-albums-bar-strip-0&keywords=dilemmas+fahrenheit

 

[ntb]

Nice one. The tracks that grab me are
Rosemary Falls
Love That I Hold
Fahrenheit

 

[shindigger]

1 hour ago, ntb said:

Nice one. The tracks that grab me are
Rosemary Falls
Love That I Hold
Fahrenheit

 

Thanks very much.

On "Croak" there is, in my opinion, a much better version of Fahrenheit, with female vox on.

I wrote all the tunes, and played guitar on em, but didn't sing on either version of Fahrenheit.

[DTMark]

On ‎16‎/‎12‎/‎2016 at 7:22 PM, Frank Hovis said:

I heard a piece on the radio last week about this and have been unsuccessful in my attempts to find it.

The piece was prompted by vinyl sales exceeding download sales in that week and interviewed a streaming website owner / partner.

He conceded that unless you are a huge band you won't make much from streaming but said that there was a real trend where people who liked a new artist would stream their music but then would go out and buy their vinyl release, partly because they liked having it but partly because they knew it gave real money to the artist and so would encourage them to do more work.

He suggested that this was common so my offering to the debate Mark is that you get your client to consider a vinyl release along with the streaming if they wish to make other than trivial amounts of money.

As she's a dance artist all her older work is available on vinyl (including a rare promo EP that I have ;)) however her record label, formed a few years back, has not, to my knowledge, released anything on vinyl

I keep meaning to ask if she has the studio quality master copies e.g. 24/192 or better, of her work.

On ‎16‎/‎12‎/‎2016 at 8:44 PM, shindigger said:

I use Distrokid (highly recommended) as an aggregator for my musical meanderings.

The only real money i see is from itunes download purchases. Bit of Amazon. I never look at revenue from the streamers. Its nanopence as has been mentioned.

I do no publicity, dont gig, the only links to my work are on my personal twitter page. I've made about $200 dollars in 18 months.

I also had a single deal (vinyl and download) with Acid Jazz back in 2013. Had a £120 royalty after first years sales. Nada since.

Its a hobby.

Might be a hobby but I remember buying the album (on iTunes IIRC) and I still have it - put it on last night. It's very good.

[shindigger]

1 hour ago, DTMark said:

As she's a dance artist all her older work is available on vinyl (including a rare promo EP that I have ;)) however her record label, formed a few years back, has not, to my knowledge, released anything on vinyl

I keep meaning to ask if she has the studio quality master copies e.g. 24/192 or better, of her work.

Might be a hobby but I remember buying the album (on iTunes IIRC) and I still have it - put it on last night. It's very good.

Cheers for your support DT.

[DTMark]

4 hours ago, shindigger said:

Cheers for your support DT.

Your album is on the NAS drive.

I still buy music  

Yes, I probably did buy it in support of another member. That was probably the major influence.

Would I buy without that? 50/50. Maybe. But then it's not especially "my style of music". I probably wouldn't have come across it. But, I listened through it all the way through then and again recently. So maybe that says something? Out of interest, you say it's a hobby. Others pursue this with the hope of making millions. Probably more pragmatic to regard it as the former but when there's so much crap popular music around, which you are better than - what does it take to really push it? How can it "make money"?

[shindigger]

14 hours ago, DTMark said:

Your album is on the NAS drive.

I still buy music  

Yes, I probably did buy it in support of another member. That was probably the major influence.

Would I buy without that? 50/50. Maybe. But then it's not especially "my style of music". I probably wouldn't have come across it. But, I listened through it all the way through then and again recently. So maybe that says something? Out of interest, you say it's a hobby. Others pursue this with the hope of making millions. Probably more pragmatic to regard it as the former but when there's so much crap popular music around, which you are better than - what does it take to really push it? How can it "make money"?

It didnt used to be a hobby. It was all i wanted to do, but partly getting too old (50 now) and partly the music biz being infested with careerist claptrap at the "serious" end, and brain dead shite at the other, its now a club i wouldn't want to be a member of anyway.

The whole process of being in a band is so shaky and transitory that its amazing any new ones stick at it long enough. We had "our time" at the turn of the 80s/90s where you could see dance and guitar coming together to give rise to Baggy. We tried to let that baggy tide wash us in like many bands got washed in on Punk. We never caught the wave. . Were always quite well regarded live on London pub circuit, but really knew nobody of any influence.

We got mired in the revivalist Mod scene which was so limiting, but those small record cos were the only ones who would give us any sort of deal.

In all likelihood at that point we weren't good enough anyway. We had the Charlatans managment co quite keen for a bit. Liked our demos etc etc. Wanted to see us live.

Then half of my band started a tribute act, and got more cash/females than at any stage doing original stuff and we fizzled.

And thats really the crux of it, when there's a chink of light at the door, you all have to give 100% to kick it open. We never had the discipline. Its the British way to make it look like you're not trying, but under the surface you have to be paddling like mad. We never did that.

I'll always have a tune in my head, and thanks to modern tech the means to record them. Often to a way better standard than we got from studios in the 80s/90s, shelling out thousands in the process.

Distribution has changed out of all recognition, though its now made the haystack planet sized.

No desire to form another live band, musicians?...yuck, so apart from solo spots, which i could do, there's no way to promote what i do.

Maybe someone will use Fahrenheit on an ad in the States. That'd do me.

 

Just to add, and reiterate, if anyone is looking to get their stuff online for sale quickly, easily, and cheaply, i highly recommend Distrokid.

Not affiliated in any way i might add.