With physical sales no longer an option, artist rely hugely on streaming numbers to get a faily decent compensation for their music. Unfortunately for music makers, streaming services don’t pay that much.
On Wednesday (December 29) T-Pain shared a chart on his Twitter page, detailing how many streams artists need on popular digital platforms to make one dollar.
The chart revealed that Napster was the highest paying platform while YouTube Music paid the least, and requires artists to have outrageous streaming numbers.
The tweet generated a lot of attention from Twitter users who were shocked by how little artists make via streaming.
“The crazy thing about this chart is that the ARTIST doesn’t make that dollar. It still has to be split up with the label, distributor, etc,” wrote Michael Harriot.
“If you’re wondering if the music industry is broken, yes, yes it is.”
“To be clear, 1,000,000 streams on Spotify nets $3,000,” wrote @Mikel_Jollet.
Of this, 84% goes to the label (if the artist is on a major, 50% if indie) and a whopping $480 goes to the artist.”
Others argue the compensation per streams is fair.
“on Spotify, with 10,293,423 listeners a month T-pain, your making over 32k… Per month. 384,000 per year on songs you made in 2007,” a Twitter user @BradCjennings wrote.
“Combine that with other platforms and your making over a mill a year just sitting on the couch.”
Do artists deserve more compensation for their music? Keep reading to see more reactions.
