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I ditched Spotify and set up my own music stack

(leshicodes.github.io)
275 points starkparker | 3 comments | 04 Sep 25 22:47 UTC | HN request time: 0.349s | source
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cortesoft ◴[04 Sep 25 23:21 UTC] No.45133347[source]▶
So the author talks about how little money per stream artists make... but how much SHOULD they be making? What is fair compensation for writing a song?

In the old days, artists would join a label and put out an album. The artist would earn about 10% of sales or so (varies of course, but on average). So a $15 CD would earn an artist $1.50.

The article lists the 'price per stream' as about $0.005. So it would take about 300 streams of a song to earn the same amount as selling a CD used to make.

I feel like that isn't categorically less money than artists used to make per song listen? There are many albums I own that I have listened to way more than 30 times, which is what it would take for a 10 song album to get 300 song 'streams'

Is that a fair compensation? Why or why not?

I think artists should be able to earn money from creating music, but I don't know how we decide how much they actually deserve if we aren't just going based on the price the market sets.

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1. the_gastropod ◴[04 Sep 25 23:33 UTC] No.45133431[source]▶
I used to work with a former member of a moderately successful rock band (they had a song in Guitar Hero, for example). He'd talk a bit about the royalties he'd received. His royalties from Spotify were negligible. Like single digit dollars per month.

Think about a ~$15/hour job. A solo artist would need ~500k streams per month to hit that. Only the top fraction of a percentage of artists on Spotify hit that.

Music has always been a tough business with middle men taking the lion's share of the upside. Streaming services just add another layer of middlemen.

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2. cortesoft ◴[05 Sep 25 00:05 UTC] No.45133646[source]▶
> A solo artist would need ~500k streams per month to hit that

How many hours did it take to create the songs? You can write a song and then keep making money off it for years. There are also other revenue streams, with live performances and merchandise, etc.

I don’t think you can really compare music streaming to a full time job unless someone is ONLY making music for streaming and doing it 40 hours a week.

3. dagi3d ◴[05 Sep 25 00:24 UTC] No.45133752[source]▶
how much did their label get?