Songwriters have long complained about streaming rates on internet radio, with major publishers and even members of Congress getting involved. But what about on-demand streaming services like Spotify, Tidal, Google Play Music, Deezer, and Xbox Music?
Just this morning, DMN received this anonymous email from an ‘average american band’ that received more than 1.4 million streams last year. It goes into heavy detail on a variety of streaming services, not to mention downloads (or, what’s left of them).
Hi Paul.
These are royalty statements from my band for 2015. We released our first album in February and have been playing out pretty regularly since then. I don’t want to the publicity so I’d like to remain anonymous. Plus the rest of my band doesn’t […]
Our marketing plans have shifted since the release. Early on we REALLY pushed iTunes on business cards at our shows with QR codes to our album on the iTunes Store. We picked up some decent radio play regionally through mostly college stations and I think that really helped our streaming numbers. But as time went on, we started seeing our streaming base grow as we focused more on social media and internet marketing in general. Now we HEAVILY promote our music on Microsoft Groove and Tidal.
But as you can see, downloads are dead. Hell, we made more on Microsoft Groove in 4 months than we did in 11 months of iTunes downloads. And as far as I can tell, we didn’t see ANY downloads form Google Play. The numbers we have all appear to be streams.
Tidal pays really well…when they pay. As you can see from the numbers below, it looks like they aren’t reporting all the plays we are getting. I find it really hard to believe that we can get a few thousand plays one month and then under 40 for 3 months in a row and then all of a sudden shoot up to over 8,000. We didn’t’ change anything we were doing. But I guess this is why they are being sued, right?
Royalties.
The post My Band Got 1.4 Million Streams. Here’s What We Got Paid… appeared first on Digital Music News.