(Hypebot) – Musicians regularly and understandably complain about the payments they receive from streaming music services and release stats to prove they’ve been wronged. Too often, however, the numbers are incomplete or fail to include the publishers, labels, etc. – that can reduce what the artist finally receives. Here Tony van Veen offers facts without the emotion based on averages payments that he receives for his own indie band.
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By Tony van Veen, CEO of DIY Media Group (Disc Makers, BookBaby, Merchly)
When you analyze the money you can earn from music streaming, you’ll find it’s difficult (at best) to earn enough to support yourself as an artist. But streaming is valuable as a gateway to discovery and other means of monetizing your fan base.
Every so often there’s a dramatic industry headline about how little streaming pays artists and songwriters – artists like Pharrell lamenting they received a pittance for their millions of streams. I also regularly hear from independent artists who tell me that streaming just doesn’t pay: “I used to pay some bills with my income from CD or download sales,” the common story goes, “but I can’t even buy a cup of coffee from my streaming royalties.”
That got me curious to know, “How much does streaming actually pay me as an independent artist?”
So I decided to do some research. To get the answer, I logged onto the CD Baby dashboard for my own personal account (where I released my music, and that of another artist, back in the day) and looked at the recent history of payments (for the past 90 days) I’ve received from the various streaming companies. I documented what I found in this short video:
Continue reading HERE.
