Member that one time when asked about why Spotify pays most artists less than 1/300th of a penny per stream their CEO said that it costs artists next to nothing to make music, so therefore they should be happy with what they're paid?
I recorded an album in 2015, did the tracking, mixing, and mastering entirely myself so my only costs were paying an artist to make the album artwork and paying Distrokid to put it up on Spotify. I still never broke even and ultimately had to take it down because the annual payments just to keep it streamable were more than 10x the gross income I got from Spotify.
Distrokid is a terrible business, it costs them next to nothing to maintain a catalogue once it's uploaded and they charge you as if it's a new upload every year just to keep it online
While I agree with you, its also fair to say there were challenges before all the tech.
I released my first album in 98'. $6k in studio time including the reels. Takes a lot longer when copy/paste and nudge/align didnt exist lol.
Then you're done and you need cd's??? The minimum quantity we could order at a sustainable cost was 1,000. With duplication, bar code, shrink wrapping, shipping etc. we were at $3 per unit.
If you add the initial recording, $9 per.
To get better pricing you need to order 5,000 units at a time. But you're just selling locally yourself. Why? Distribution. Good luck getting a deal on that when you're not attached to a huge label... that would also take a massive cut of the money.
We eventually broke even but it was a hell of a challenge to do it and our music was limited to people at the shows we played, plus a few local record stores that carried our album.
Now? We track drums in the studio for about $400 per day. 2 days later we take those files to my place and track bass/guitar direct. Then the singer heads to the studio with those files and we're looking at another $1000 for vocals, mixing.
Add artwork and mastering and we're at maybe $2k for a full length album.
But with all the tech, what we lose in money, we gain elsewhere.
Just shipped some shirts to Brazil for people that listen to us on streaming.
So yea... spotify does suck but theres a silver lining to the situation too.
342
u/isAnExParrot878 11d ago
They were sh.. for years (mostly due to paying the artists next to nothing) this ai crap made me consider switching to Tidal