87% of songs on streaming services don't qualify for royalties

[lotus2035]

The only people getting rich are a small group of dickheads at the top of the pyramid. It's always been that way you will say but the ratio is skewed far more in their favor these days. Best release your music on blank cassettes and sell them to 100 niche fans for 5 bucks each, the masses will never hear of you but you'll make far more money than you will with trillions of listens on Spotify .

[bermudagold]

It's never been a better time to be a music consumer, you can find music from all over the world, most of it doesn't cost anything to listen too. There's no paid shills at music magazines "curating". I think people have a short memory, they weren't curating, they were gate keeping. Finding new music is WAY better than it was and all these thousands of songs per day that go uncared about wouldn't have even got recorded back in the day or they would have just stayed as local bands that can only got their friends and family to come to their gigs.

People sign up for these distrokids and what not when they shouldn't, that's why they don't get paid. Nobody is taking from them, they are mugging themselves. It's this were the curation should be involved to stop participating in nonsense schemes.

there is definitely some truth in that...but current system is killing the gold and sub gold artist that used to be able to make a humble living...only the diamond artists succeed now along with the infrastructure owners...and I have always said that regardless of the vertical, there has always been a fine line between curation and gatekeeping,...but the alternative of the wild wild west chaos has rarely worked either

also, since you feel it has never been easier, please share your low effort/overhead methods for discovering music that the avg joe can use...because in my coming s and goings that is the number 1 complaint I hear expressed...folks don't know how to go about it in a way that doesn't become a turnoff altogether which makes them miss the curation of old even though there was clearly gatekeeping

[VitaminD]

there's a youtube vlog (i forget who authored it) which explains how streaming audio is usually a rip-off and is no way to make money and is actually a complex financial bubble that can't last.

There are several youtube videos of people showing you how to make low effort music and release it for streaming dollars. Youtube itself has become a venture of making a line of monthly income. It's all about the money for most..

And online services have amplified this to the point we now have totally uninspired shovelware by the mountains. Especially in the ambient and some electronic genres where it is easy to loop a pad at a low tempo drenched in reverb and release hundreds of these as tracks (as one of the example youtubers has done) or rap generic garbage lyrics over a reheated drum loop, all for the sake of making money. Which is probably most of that 87% and probably some of the remaining 13% that do get royalties.

Clearly the streaming services are using most artists as a means to pad their library, but there aren't great means to filtering who really becomes part of that library either.

So there is bad with the good. Way back you needed to have some sort of musical chops, start a band, get gigs, get seen or find an 'in' to drop your tape into a label's hands, get signed, get polished, release what the label wants, and then get a cut of the proceed of your labor.

Today you can skip most of that and just release online what you want, how you want, when you want. But a lot of it is uninspired garbage. We have hundreds of thousands of low skilled, novices releasing anything that sounds even remotely musical in the hopes of fame and fortune. This with no filter from it like the labels used to largely be for the mainstream.

Even local music scenes would act as a filter as you probably weren't playing anywhere desirable if you really stunk and no one liked you.

Today -- no filters. A plus but also a minus.

[vurt]

curation and gatekeeping, gave the world agadoo and shaddupayaface

[starflakeprj]

A lot of people complaining about the payouts from Spotify, Deezer, and similar platforms. Honestly, I don’t quite understand the frustration. If your primary reason for releasing music is to make money and you’re unhappy with what these platforms pay, why not take a different approach? Print hard copies, sell vinyl, CDs, or merch directly to your audience.

The way I see it, it’s not much different from someone complaining that their job doesn’t pay enough. If that’s the case, wouldn’t the logical step be to look for another job or find a way to increase your income?

Streaming platforms aren’t the be-all and end-all for musicians. They’re just one tool in a much larger toolkit. If they don’t work for your goals, there are always other ways to reach your audience and make a living from your art.

[dexrow]

Out of 432 (royalty views not counting videos) 84% of them came from youtube and then 11% of them came from spotify 3% from amazon and apple and pandora at 1% each. For whatever reason youtube does alot better job of generating traffic than anyone else but since I want to control my brand I am on the other platforms. I generate alot more traffic on video's on YouTube and rumble, but I am well below the payout numbers. I think it is all of media that suffers and I am just fine generating ad views from a webpage in addition to the music if I could.

[dexrow]

I am not agains't signing with someone like puremagnetik that sells software with the music esp if they take care of the graphics. I spent $20 on a few of those vst's with music album and there is no reason why it cannot be music that I have already released.

[Largos]

there is definitely some truth in that...but current system is killing the gold and sub gold artist that used to be able to make a humble living...only the diamond artists succeed now along with the infrastructure owners...and I have always said that regardless of the vertical, there has always been a fine line between curation and gatekeeping,...but the alternative of the wild wild west chaos has rarely worked either

also, since you feel it has never been easier, please share your low effort/overhead methods for discovering music that the avg joe can use...because in my coming s and goings that is the number 1 complaint I hear expressed...folks don't know how to go about it in a way that doesn't become a turnoff altogether which makes them miss the curation of old even though there was clearly gatekeeping

These gold and sub gold artists can only make a living with a market that is rigged for them?

Youtube is good for finding music, bandcamp also. You can look up local small venues to see who is touring and check out their stuff. Podcasts, internet radio. If people are "turned off" by having to look round the internet for new music, then I'd say they don't really care about finding new music anyway. The main obstacle to discovering is musicians that put their promo stuff behind login walls of facebook, instagram etc. These sites need to confined to the dustbin of history already.

[jancivil]

So tons of music is produced which no one listens to.
1. That seems a lot of waste

I'm blissfully unconcerned to have google/youtube host many copies of what I make (none of it terrifically efficiently reduced even with their codec (been forcing it to use OPUS for some years) with my dozens or at most thousands of views. Most of which gets bailed on within one minute

I'm not on Spotify! what a joke

[Bunny_boy]

curation and gatekeeping, gave the world agadoo and shaddupayaface

So are you for or against curation & gatekeeping?

[osiris]

I've been seeing this pop up in my news lately:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigatio ... 025-01-29/

//Spotify convinced a New York federal judge on Wednesday to dismiss a lawsuit that accused the streaming service of underpaying songwriting royalties for tens of millions of songs.
U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres rejected a complaint, from the royalty-gathering nonprofit Mechanical Licensing Collective, which argued that Spotify had misreported its revenue to avoid paying millions of dollars owed to the group.//

[FranklyFlawless]

Same link on my Neuters instance:

• Spotify defeats US licensing group's lawsuit over royalties

[dexrow]

I've been seeing this pop up in my news lately:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigatio ... 025-01-29/

//Spotify convinced a New York federal judge on Wednesday to dismiss a lawsuit that accused the streaming service of underpaying songwriting royalties for tens of millions of songs.
U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres rejected a complaint, from the royalty-gathering nonprofit Mechanical Licensing Collective, which argued that Spotify had misreported its revenue to avoid paying millions of dollars owed to the group.//

The question is does it treat people that have less streams unfairly and does someone like landr that owns a percentage of alot of small streamers decides it is owed money... I tend to just promote the brand and requiring more streams might be a way to lower the number of providers boing promoted.. It is an interesting topic for sure.

[harryupbabble]

one can ignore all that?
be like vincent van gogh?

googled "how many paintings did van gogh make"
result:
"He produced more than 2,000 artworks, consisting of around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches."

he was 37 years old when he died
he was in his 30s when he started painting
he sold one painting when he was alive
he never priced his paintings below normal price

vincent had perks though:
he was able to be a full time painter because his brother theo paid for his needs
vincent believed his painting were really good and would stand the test of time
theo and a few others also believed the same thing
vincent really loved painting

no matter the era, people had trouble selling their stuff?
but if their stuff is really good, it would eventually surface in a big way?

[vurt]

he was 37 years old when he died
he was in his 30s when he started painting
he sold one painting when he was alive
he never priced his paintings below normal price

point of order: vvg sold many paintings in his lifetime, having worked in his brothers gallery, he did only sell one of his own paintings, this is true.