[mzl]

That infographic is just wrong, I wish people could stop linking to it all the time.

The data it is based on is some small numbers from the first months after Spotify launched, before the revenue strems had actually started. No hard numbers are released, but it is generally acknowledged in Sweden that Spotify is now the largest online income for artists.

[tjogin]

Spotify pays more per listen than radio does.

If that's not enough money for an artist, then the problem is really that the artist isn't popular enough when people get to decide for themselves what to listen to.

[m_eiman]

Spotify pays more per listen than radio does.

Exactly. According to this article[1] (in Swedish) about Lady Gaga making $340 from a million Spotify listens to a single song, the same number of listeners on the radio would have made her $15.

[1] http://www.expressen.se/noje/1.1787187/lady-gaga-tjanar-1150...

[ralphc]

I clicked on that to bookmark and translate later, and holy-crap-my-eyes-are-bleeding. And I thought some sites in the US were bad with ads. Click at your own risk.

[m_eiman]

Sorry about that, Expressen is one of Sweden's two main tabloids. Here's a rough translation:

Lady Gaga had the most popular song on Spotify, with one million listens. Now she gets her money from STIM [Sweden's collecting agency for artists etc]: 1,150 SEK ($170 USD).

Lady Gaga's "Poker face" was the most popular song on Spotify during the music service's first five months, according to the first payment of STIM money made on behalf of Spotify, according to STIM's own paper "Stim-nytt". The song was played one million times - which yields 2,300 SEK ($340 USD) that Lady Gaga and songwriter partner Redone share.

Dogge [Swedish artist] upset

Rapper and songwriter Dogge Doggelito is upset when he hears the sum. - It's sick. We musicians have no rights, you don't get paid any more. Lady Gaga would have made more money driving an unlicensed cab one night at [known place in Stockholm].

"Better than file sharing"

Artist and songwriter Alexander Bard [another Swedish artist] doesn't want to comment on the sum without knowning how Lady Gaga's contract with her label looks, but says: - 2,300 is more than zero which she would have gotten from Pirate Bay. It's better than file sharing, says Alexander Bard.

The future

Both Alexander Bard and Dogge Doggelito believe that Spotify and similar services are the future. - These are teething troubles. I hope that we creators one day in the future will be paid reasonably and fairly, says Dogge Doggelito. "Stim-nytt" compares the sum to if "Poker face" had been played in the radio show "Sommar" that averages a million listeners. Then the STIM payment would have been only 100 SEK ($15 USD).

[pyrmont]

Sorry, why is radio a relevant comparison? When I listen to the radio, I listen to songs that are selected by the radio station. I don't get to play any song I want as often as I want. The correct comparison is not with radio but with an mp3 download. Radio didn't stop people needing to buy an album/single if they wanted to listen to a song. Spotify does.

(I also note that the amount referred to in this article is the amount given to songwriters. Not all musicians are songwriters.)

[m_eiman]

It's relevant since with both radio and streamed services the artist (or mostly the artist's label...) gets paid every time the song is listened to. With an MP3 you only count the number of downloads, not the number of times it's played.

This means that with downloads you get a rather crude measure of a song's popularity - you count the number of listeners instead of how often the song is actually played. It also means that a popular song will never stop being a source of income with a streaming service, as opposed to downloads where every user pays for the song only once.

About the privilege of selecting songs, according to the numbers in the article you pay 23 times (or maybe 12 times, it's a bit unclear) as much for being able to do so than you do if someone else selects the song for you.

Also, unless I'm mistaken it's the recoding's copyright owner - the label in most cases - that gets paid, and they in turn pay the artist. According to that other infographic, the artist gets about 15% of the amount the label gets.

[qq66]

Radio was never a profit center for artists, it was a promotional vehicle for CD sales. The new Spotify world yields far lower earnings for musicians.

[tjogin]

Historically, the profits of the CD era was an outlier. Ever inclining revenue is not a fundamental right.

Whether radio was a profit center or not is beside the point, but whatever, maybe touring and merch can be the new one, or not.

I for one don't feel obliged to come up with a way for them to sustain the wealth of a bygone era.

[qq66]

Increasing revenue is not a fundamental right, but deciding whether your music will be on Spotify or not certainly is.

[pyrmont]

So I got downvoted based on a comment that alleged the data in the graphic was wrong but provided no data to demonstrate that? The link later on the thread that does include some data shows that the songwriter (not artist) earns $0.00017 per listen.

Can someone explain how this makes the data in the infographic grossly wrong?

[mzl]

The data linked later on in the thread is the exact data used for the infographic, and it was just tabloid make-belive news. The reason why the numbers are wrong is that Spotify had recently launched at this point, and had essentially no real revenue stream yet (almost everybody on the free model, not a lot of ads yet).

It has been reported later on that the amount of money paid out has increased substantially, but no hard data is given since that seems to be considered a trade secret.

[dlikhten]

That data is also skewed. Notice they say "album - $10, song on amazon - $.99" thats wrong. An album may actually be say 10 songs. So 10 songs at $9.99 == 10 songs on amazon at $0.99 -- OPSE miscalculation there.

Furthermore there is the complication of "likelihood of sale". If I self-promote a CD, I may not sell my needed quota of 143 albums per month. In fact for an unknown the best chance to earn cash is playing at a bar. Streaming provides a longer-term ROI AND simultaneously possibility of having "pirates" actually buy your work, which equals profit.

Furthermore new free model for spotify = less chance that an artist will get many plays as you can't listen to that song over and over.