Spotify Seems Like a Bum Deal

For a long time now, there have been murmurs that Spotify, while an amazing service for fans of all kinds of music, isn’t that great a time for the bands and artists looking to make a living from this “revolutionary” distribution method. Now on the heels of a large Indie Label recently disclosing what they’ve received from Spotify comes new disclosures from a small indie duo called Uniform Motion. It spotlights the dismal earning structure and ridiculous amounts of plays an album or song has to receive in order to generate the most paltry of financial compensation. What’s additionally interesting is that Spotify seems to have increased their payout structure nearly 56% from 2010 to 2011. Their information below paints a pretty clear picture of unsustainability for bands looking to get paid more than $51 dollars for their album getting listened to 1000 times…

Spotify Payouts

2010: $0.0036 per play
2011: $0.0057 per play
Gain: 56%

"So if you listen to our album all the way through, we'll get $0.051.
If you listen to the album 10 times on Spotify, we'll get $0.51.
If you listen to it a hundred times, we’ll get $5.13.
If you listen to the album 1,000 times (once a day for 3 years!) we’ll get $51.34"

It appears to be a pretty bleak outlook for Uniform Motion and many bands like them.  If you'd like to find out more about these transparent hipsters you can check out their blog here.

Check out the original article here.
 

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