Why Spotify Doesn’t Make Sense for Musicians: 70,000 Listens Earns Less tha $300

Spotify requires all musicians to work through a label, and both Harrell and Keating used the label-like-company CD Baby, which aggregates indie music to online services. Spotify, though, doesn’t treat all labels equally. Keating writes in notes attached to her Google Doc:

Spotify does not pay the same per play to Indie rights holders as it does to Major labels. Majors are shareholders in Spotify and their deals are confidential. That matters to me, but doesn’t seem to matter to others.

In the same notes, Keating explains her thoughts on Spotify:

I think Spotify is awesome as a listening platform. In my opinion artists should be view it as a discovery service, rather than a source of income. […] I wish Spotify would do more to facilitate the connection between listeners and artists — i.e show that the artist is playing nearby, or add links to buy music. It’s early days, so maybe this will happen eventually. [sic]

Unlike Spotify, iTunes doesn’t require that artists work through a CD Baby-like label, and Keating sells some of her music there by herself. During the same period of time — October 2011 to March 2012 — Zoë Keating made, from iTunes, after CD Baby took its cut, $46,477.77.

via @dansinker

* This post has been updated to fix a math error: It originally claimed Keating made three thousandths of a cent when she had in fact made three thousandths of a dollar or three tenths of a cent. This, in turn, affected the next paragraph’s analysis, which said this was “much, much lower” than estimates from last year. Both paragraphs above have been corrected. Props (and many thanks) to commenter Mark Whitfield and Twitter user @WigglyTendrils for noticing the error.

Article Appeared @http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/06/why-spotify-doesnt-make-sense-for-musicians-70-000-listens-earns-less-than-300/259136/

 

Aricle Also Appeared http://blackubiquity.com/

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