FARK.com: (7439049) How much do bands make off services like Spotify and Pandora? Nearly nothing. But hey, it's more profit than Pandora and Spotify is currently making

If you can read this, either the style sheet didn't load or you have an older browser that doesn't support style sheets. Try clearing your browser cache and refreshing the page.

		How much do bands make off services like Spotify and Pandora? Nearly nothing. But hey, it's more profit than Pandora and Spotify is currently making (pitchfork.com)		47
		More: Interesting, Pandora Media Inc., Spotify, satellite radio, Tim Westergren, Damon & Naomi, songwriters

• • •

1861 clicks; posted to Entertainment » on 17 Nov 2012 at 6:41 AM | Favorite | share:

Share this link:

URL:

http://fark.com/go/7439049

Bookmark:

Article Comments close

47 Comments (+0 »)

View Voting Results: Smartest and Funniest

Archived thread

cman		2012-11-17 06:17:49 AM

Spotify? Pandora?

HA

NOTHING CAN UNSEAT THE BEAST KNOWN AS ITUNES

/Unless of course if it is for radio streaming which Shoutcast is good at

Alphax		2012-11-17 06:47:54 AM

cman: Spotify? Pandora?

HA

NOTHING CAN UNSEAT THE BEAST KNOWN AS ITUNES

/Unless of course if it is for radio streaming which Shoutcast is good at

I remember listening to Shoutcast almost 10 years ago.. didn't know it was still around.

cman		2012-11-17 06:51:27 AM

Alphax: cman: Spotify? Pandora?

HA

NOTHING CAN UNSEAT THE BEAST KNOWN AS ITUNES

/Unless of course if it is for radio streaming which Shoutcast is good at

I remember listening to Shoutcast almost 10 years ago.. didn't know it was still around.

I miss Launchcast. Twas a great service before Yahoo purchased them.

enderthexenocide		2012-11-17 07:01:33 AM

i don't use pandora or spotify or any of those online music services. i torrent albums from pirate bay, and then if i like them, i purchase them from amazon. sometimes i just buy the mp3s, but i also buy physical albums. whenever possible, i buy the albums at concerts because that way the band gets all the money from the sale.

jso2897		2012-11-17 07:01:45 AM

cman: Alphax: cman: Spotify? Pandora?

HA

NOTHING CAN UNSEAT THE BEAST KNOWN AS ITUNES

/Unless of course if it is for radio streaming which Shoutcast is good at

I remember listening to Shoutcast almost 10 years ago.. didn't know it was still around.

I miss Launchcast. Twas a great service before Yahoo purchased them.

What the hell is the deal with Yahoo? Why do they insist on using their own media players, and why don't any of them work worth a damn?

ReapTheChaos		2012-11-17 07:02:15 AM

Oh goody, another article with a musician biatching about not getting paid for something he did 25 years ago.

cman		2012-11-17 07:09:58 AM

jso2897: cman: Alphax: cman: Spotify? Pandora?

HA

NOTHING CAN UNSEAT THE BEAST KNOWN AS ITUNES

/Unless of course if it is for radio streaming which Shoutcast is good at

I remember listening to Shoutcast almost 10 years ago.. didn't know it was still around.

I miss Launchcast. Twas a great service before Yahoo purchased them.

What the hell is the deal with Yahoo? Why do they insist on using their own media players, and why don't any of them work worth a damn?

Yahoo likes to buy things, fark them up, then shut them down losing millions in the process. Yahoo seems to not care about making money. I think Yahoo wants to beat WWE's Vince McMahon's record of losing the most money possible

moothemagiccow		2012-11-17 07:10:51 AM

Musicians don't get paid for selling recorded music. It's been this way for a long time.

TheGhostofFarkPast		2012-11-17 07:13:17 AM

Alphax: cman: Spotify? Pandora?

HA

NOTHING CAN UNSEAT THE BEAST KNOWN AS ITUNES

/Unless of course if it is for radio streaming which Shoutcast is good at

I remember listening to Shoutcast almost 10 years ago.. didn't know it was still around.

All shoutcast has ever been is just a listing of online radio stations, not really much to it. The website now is pretty nice compared to older designs and you can find a lot of great stuff.

sadbad		2012-11-17 07:18:25 AM

I will say this for Spotify - despite its quirks and kind of awful interface I'm deeply in love with it. There is truly nothing better than having nearly anything you want to listen to at your finger tips. Example: tonight I was layin around reading, listening to a cutesy indie pop band, briefly looked on their wikipedia, read about the new band of one of their ex-members, immediately found that band and listened to their absolutely amazing-mindblowingly-good second album thanks to the beauty of Spotify.

If you like intelligent indie pop-rock listen to this album. Seriously it's great - pops to Spotify
If you like adorable girl group tinged indie pop this band is adorable. - Spotify linky

DeathByGeekSquad		2012-11-17 07:23:15 AM

Bit of a propaganda piece that completely glosses over the value of Spotify and Pandora in favor of supporting a physical copy approach....

AdamK		2012-11-17 07:49:58 AM

i mostly use pandora like you would use internet radio - to discover new music, that i then buy

i also sub, so i can listen without ads, i think it's worth it but if pandora or spotify went out of business i'd try to find another form of internet radio

Jones_Boy		2012-11-17 07:50:53 AM

For Pandora, they received $0.21 for 7800 plays, which equates to $0.002 per play.
On radio, they receive $0.005 per play, and he is biatching about the difference.

Lets think about that. With a traditional radio station, he would have received 20 cents more for the same number of plays. With Pandora, 7800 plays equals access to 7800 listeners. Each radio play is between say 500 and 100,000 listeners. Does it even dawn on him that this may be the difference? Nope. Thick headed. Does he realize no small band is making a living off radio royalties? Does he think the Rolling Stones do concerts because they are bored? Does he realize that Pandora and its ilk are offering promotion of his album with one click access to purchase?

This guy is freaking thick. Here is a business model that is promoting small bands directly to targeted audiences, and paying royalties at 50% of what the broad brush radio stations are paying. Not to mention, online radio is telling people what the song and band names are, lyrics, and giving them the opportunity to purchase the music.

Pandora has opened me up to a lot of new bands, and I have been buying a lot more new music. I hope shortsighted idiots don't screw it up. Or Amazon with their $%#ed up new cloud player downloads that just make it more difficult for me to give them money for something.

soj4life		2012-11-17 07:56:14 AM

Counterpoint

moothemagiccow		2012-11-17 08:05:53 AM

I've seen a lot of examples already, but listeners, where do you buy music?

Itunes? AmazonMP3? CDs?
Is anyone comfortable buying music from say, bandcamp or soundcloud?

EvilMonkeyBoy		2012-11-17 08:20:02 AM

AudioGalaxy

TheChaosPath		2012-11-17 08:24:32 AM

moothemagiccow:
Is anyone comfortable buying music from say, bandcamp or soundcloud?

I've bought things from Bandcamp from time to time, and have never had a problem with it whatsoever. Its great for buying physical media also (I use it to buy vinyls from time to time) because the bands will also give you a free download of the album so you can listen to the digital copy before your package arrives. Wish more bands used it, tbh.

DontBeSoDigital		2012-11-17 08:24:35 AM

I buy strictly from Amazon for two reasons:

1) Free unlimited cloud storage for my purchased music (which mostly comes from Amazon in the first place) and no need to pay $26 a year or whatever to Apple to do the same thing.

2) The music is just that much cheaper. Bought the new Soundgarden, and most new albums, for under $5. Plus they give a lot of music credits for $2 off your purchase. I've bought way more music in the past 2-3 years using Amazon then I've ever done before, and I save a shiat-ton of money too.

I'm not interested in Spotify or Pandora. I love my iPod classic. 112gb of music at any given time without having to worry about streaming issues and can be listened to at anywhere at any given time.

oOCAKESOo		2012-11-17 08:47:07 AM

AdamK: i mostly use pandora like you would use internet radio - to discover new music, that i then buy

i also sub, so i can listen without ads, i think it's worth it but if pandora or spotify went out of business i'd try to find another form of internet radio

this.

to say that Pandora or Spotify do "nothing" for the music industry is a stretch. It at least opens up new artists to listeners who would potentially buy the an album.

Deadwing		2012-11-17 08:50:36 AM

enderthexenocide: i don't use pandora or spotify or any of those online music services. i torrent albums from pirate bay, and then if i like them, i purchase them from amazon. sometimes i just buy the mp3s, but i also buy physical albums. whenever possible, i buy the albums at concerts because that way the band gets all the money from the sale.

The band usually has to split the merch with the venue, and the smaller the band, the bigger the cut the venue takes. If you want the band to keep most, if not all, buy from their website.

FeedTheCollapse		2012-11-17 09:18:25 AM

ReapTheChaos: Oh goody, another article with a musician biatching about not getting paid for something he did 25 years ago.

I think the point was more that some people are using these services under the impression that it is paying the artists. While that is true, it is more or less paying them a pittance and isn't really much better than a crappy royalty check from a record label. [cue Steve Albini chart] Granted, a small band like Galaxie 500 is probably never going to be a cash cow for anyone, but he linked to his bandcamp page as alternative to listening for free instead of more or less just paying the middleman.

that said, I do think that his argument somewhat misses the appeal of spotify, et al. in that they provide a mobile service.

The Evil That Lies In The Hearts Of Men		2012-11-17 09:52:46 AM

Jones_Boy: For Pandora, they received $0.21 for 7800 plays, which equates to $0.002 per play.
On radio, they receive $0.005 per play, and he is biatching about the difference.

Thanks :) I was going to come in to ask what royalties a band could expect if a radio station with 7000 listeners played their song once.

sokolnikov		2012-11-17 10:22:27 AM

for streaming, I'm a huge fan of the tune in radio app, which is basically a slick interface that seems to stream a lot of the same stuff as shoutcast. It's search is pretty good at finding radio stations and podcasts.

Also, Dood's Music is a pretty slick app for streaming from the grooveshark data base. Of course, it depends if the stuff you want to listen to is actually available via any of these services.

Glockenspiel Hero		2012-11-17 10:26:32 AM

One of the annoying things about this is that Spotify doesn't have a very large ad pool, so you tend to hear the same ads over and over

Most of them are Spotify promos, which talk about how priracy is dead and it's important to pay the artists for their work. You'd think they were actually paying enough for the bands to live off of.

/Oh, and the ads for "all the world's music" are hilarious when I'm listening to the one album you have from a band out of the dozen they've produced.

giantpiraterobot		2012-11-17 11:29:17 AM

The Evil That Lies In The Hearts Of Men: Jones_Boy: For Pandora, they received $0.21 for 7800 plays, which equates to $0.002 per play.
On radio, they receive $0.005 per play, and he is biatching about the difference.

Thanks :) I was going to come in to ask what royalties a band could expect if a radio station with 7000 listeners played their song once.

Even still...on Pandora it's being played to a very selective group that want to hear music in a category that the band fits in, radio is more of a crapshoot. Also, trying to get your stupid little band played on a station was FAR more difficult in the old days than the current system where suddenly your nobody band is treated exactly the same as Springsteen if you've got the same "similarities" and catalog of music to offer. Never would have had a chance in the 90s... now it's so simple.

Pretending that Spotify and Pandora are the same is silly... Pandora is radioplay, just far more valuable and targeted. Spotify... that I understand being a problem of competition with sales.

ModernPrimitive01		2012-11-17 11:34:47 AM

moothemagiccow: I've seen a lot of examples already, but listeners, where do you buy music?

Itunes? AmazonMP3? CDs?
Is anyone comfortable buying music from say, bandcamp or soundcloud?

I but my music up for download on bandcamp with a pay as much or as little as you want option. I find that for every 10 downloads, 1 person pays something for it.

/it's black metal so don't bother looking

Johnsnownw		2012-11-17 11:57:25 AM

Artists should be making the majority of their money on recordings anyway. If you can't sell concert tickets, don't expect people to pay for your music.

Johnsnownw		2012-11-17 11:58:09 AM

Johnsnownw: Artists should be making the majority of their money on recordings anyway. If you can't sell concert tickets, don't expect people to pay for your music.

shouldn't

HoagieBoy		2012-11-17 12:16:33 PM

I see others have mentioned it, but I thought all bands knew they needed to tour to make money nowadays. If you're not a big fish then you're not making money unless you're touring. And the big fish make ALOT of money when they are touring.

/Who the heck is Galaxie 500?

NetOwl		2012-11-17 12:23:04 PM

I get most of my new music from Bandcamp. I can't say enough good things about it.

katerbug72		2012-11-17 12:27:27 PM

Rdio.

meade2001		2012-11-17 12:28:22 PM

It's a silly argument - I would bet most people listening to "Tugboat" already own it, so he's getting paid twice, and a certain percentage were never going to buy it anyway. If Spotify didn't exist, he wouldn't sell 7800 more copies of his record. Will his next article be about how he's mad that people buy his album and play it at home over and over again without paying him each time?

Walt_Jizzney		2012-11-17 02:09:27 PM

A musician shouldn't HAVE to tour just to make money. That old bromide is nonsense. They should be able to sell their wares for a fair price to support their trade.

There are many artists and musical styles that don't lend themselves easy to touring or playing live.

HoagieBoy		2012-11-17 02:19:23 PM

Walt_Jizzney: A musician shouldn't HAVE to tour just to make money. That old bromide is nonsense. They should be able to sell their wares for a fair price to support their trade.

There are many artists and musical styles that don't lend themselves easy to touring or playing live.

That would be nice, agreed. But for the smaller bands hasn't it been this way forever? I've read stories of how the record companies have been screwing the little bands for a long time. The screwer may have changed but the screwee hasn't.

kab		2012-11-17 02:32:47 PM

moothemagiccow: Musicians don't get paid for selling recorded music. It's been this way for a long time.

And rightly so. It's common knowledge that albums cost absolutely nothing to record, mix, master, and distribute. And all tours / live events, for the folks that even bother with it, are completely profitable.

/this is what your average listener actually believes.

kab		2012-11-17 02:36:30 PM

moothemagiccow: I've seen a lot of examples already, but listeners, where do you buy music?

Itunes? AmazonMP3? CDs?
Is anyone comfortable buying music from say, bandcamp or soundcloud?

CD's, all from various sources (including bandcamp). The only way I'll spend a penny on digital is if I have absolutely no other choice.

Carth		2012-11-17 02:40:37 PM

Walt_Jizzney: A musician shouldn't HAVE to tour just to make money. That old bromide is nonsense. They should be able to sell their wares for a fair price to support their trade.

There are many artists and musical styles that don't lend themselves easy to touring or playing live.

Musicians have had to tour and/or have a patron for as long as music has been around. Why should today be different?

kab		2012-11-17 02:46:58 PM

Johnsnownw: If you can't sell concert tickets, don't expect people to pay for your music.

Right. Why would anyone have the gall to as you, as a music fan, to spend 10-12 bucks once for something that is infinitely reusable, when you can spend 2-3 times that (or more), possibly pay Ticketmaster for being transactional middleman, and maybe even a Stubhub scalper along the way for the privileged of attending a single event?

In short, stop eating paint chips.

kab		2012-11-17 02:52:11 PM

Carth: Musicians have had to tour and/or have a patron for as long as music has been around. Why should today be different?

Why should I have to effectively quit my day job to reach an audience / market my art?

kab		2012-11-17 02:53:31 PM

kab: Johnsnownw: If you can't sell concert tickets, don't expect people to pay for your music.

Right. Why would anyone have the gall to as you, as a music fan, to spend 10-12 bucks once for something that is infinitely reusable, when you can spend 2-3 times that (or more), possibly pay Ticketmaster for being transactional middleman, and maybe even a Stubhub scalper along the way for the privileged of attending a single event?

In short, stop eating paint chips.

gall to ask you.

Silly eyboard

Carth		2012-11-17 03:09:16 PM

kab: Carth: Musicians have had to tour and/or have a patron for as long as music has been around. Why should today be different?

Why should I have to effectively quit my day job to reach an audience / market my art?

You don't. I know plenty of musicians that do shows around the state. If your art is good enough to tour nationally and be a full time job your day job won't be an issue.

Mad_Radhu		2012-11-17 04:10:40 PM

DontBeSoDigital: I buy strictly from Amazon for two reasons:

1) Free unlimited cloud storage for my purchased music (which mostly comes from Amazon in the first place) and no need to pay $26 a year or whatever to Apple to do the same thing.

2) The music is just that much cheaper. Bought the new Soundgarden, and most new albums, for under $5. Plus they give a lot of music credits for $2 off your purchase. I've bought way more music in the past 2-3 years using Amazon then I've ever done before, and I save a shiat-ton of money too.

I'm not interested in Spotify or Pandora. I love my iPod classic. 112gb of music at any given time without having to worry about streaming issues and can be listened to at anywhere at any given time.

This. They just started their Black Friday music deals and they have had a lot of good $3.99 albums so far. I grabbed the new Cat Power and Soundgarden, and I'm sure the deals next week are going to be great. If you don't like the MP3 format they use and prefer iTunes AAC since it is a newer, better compression algorithm, you can actually convert Amazon purchases over to iTunes pretty cheaply using the iTunes Match service. You just buy the music from Amazon, import it into iTunes, and then wait for iTunes to match the tracks (you may need to edit the metadata for any Amazon Exclusive albums to get the titles to match). Once the tracks are matched, you delete the MP3 versions out of your local iTunes library and then redownload the tracks using Match, which replaces the original MP3s with 256kbps AAC DRM free iTunes tracks. For $25 a year, iTunes Match is pretty handy if you are a stickler for sound quality, and can hear some of the compression issues present even in high bitrate MP3s. The Match trick is also a cheap way to strip all of the Fairplay DRM from track bought off of iTunes previous to iTunes going DRM-free. Match, delete, and redownload and all of your 128 kbps .m4p tracks will be replaced with 256 kbps .m4a tracks. Hell, I was even able to use that process to basically "launder" a bunch of crap quality tracks I downloaded off a Napster back in college over a decade ago and replace them with high quality encodes. Sure, it is not FLAC or anything the true audiophiles will swoon over, but high bitrate MP3 and AAC format files are fine for my uses.

narkor		2012-11-18 04:11:42 AM

Carth: Walt_Jizzney: A musician shouldn't HAVE to tour just to make money. That old bromide is nonsense. They should be able to sell their wares for a fair price to support their trade.

Musicians have had to tour and/or have a patron for as long as music has been around. Why should today be different?

Why should you get music for free? Oh, that's right - you know how to use the Internet. I forgot that you're entitled to it.

In the past - you know when artists didn't get paid for their stuff - you didn't get to enjoy it either. But now I guess your entitled to the results of someone else's effort for free.

zunkus		2012-11-18 04:29:14 AM

enderthexenocide: i don't use pandora or spotify or any of those online music services. i torrent albums from pirate bay, and then if i like them, i purchase them from amazon. sometimes i just buy the mp3s, but i also buy physical albums. whenever possible, i buy the albums at concerts because that way the band gets all the money from the sale.

I use pandora and spotify but I am the same as you in that I purchase physical media whenever possible.

Skr		2012-11-18 04:58:51 AM

Been curious about Spotify. Sounds like a really great service for musicians and listeners. Music should be heard.
In my opinion as a musician, the money should be an afterthought, and the online listens just advertisement for the live concerts.
As a counterpoint though, the Radiohead experiment seemed like a great way for a band to get paid well for album sales (albeit it was a "pay what you feel is right" deal)

Personally plan on tossing things up on Spotify once I get things mixed up. Hopefully it is still around then and with free play/download with optional pay.

tillerman35		2012-11-18 12:29:05 PM

I think the good news for the artists is that technology is making the creation process more accessible every day. For under $2K, you can have a home studio that blows away anything that existed in the 60's and 70's. Start with Ubuntu Studio or a "Hackintosh," pay Paul Davis what you can for a copy of Ardour 4, buy a decent audio interface and a good microphone, and start making music. Some things are still going to require additional outlay, like finding space for your studio and making the room's sound work FOR you instead of against you. But those things you can do yourself. Previously, the equipment side was an insurmountable obstacle.

enderthexenocide		2012-11-19 09:52:38 PM

Deadwing: enderthexenocide: i don't use pandora or spotify or any of those online music services. i torrent albums from pirate bay, and then if i like them, i purchase them from amazon. sometimes i just buy the mp3s, but i also buy physical albums. whenever possible, i buy the albums at concerts because that way the band gets all the money from the sale.

The band usually has to split the merch with the venue, and the smaller the band, the bigger the cut the venue takes. If you want the band to keep most, if not all, buy from their website.

i was not aware of that. if that's the case, then the venue should give the band a cut of any alcohol sales.

Displayed 47 of 47 comments

View Voting Results: Smartest and Funniest

Redisplay/refresh comments

This thread is closed to new comments.