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Same here, wouldn't be shocked if it's 100x more.
But one of the problems is that the specific artists you listen to don't get credit for your monthly subscription.. it goes into a big pot and even though you may never listen to Ed Sheeran or Cardi B they get some of your cash. If you only listened to Joe Smith for a whole month, he would not benefit as much as he should. SoundCloud has just introduced proper payments based on actual listen. It is easily calculated but the biggies are not interested
 
I wish Apple Music would just license Pandora’s Music Genome algorithm. IMHO, that is the best music discovery and mood-matching music selector in the business. THAT would pry me away from Spotify...
 
Is it out of the realm of possibilities that worldwide, top songs are played 1,000,000 times a day? That's $10,000 per day @ 1 cent, $5,000 @ 1/2 cent. PER DAY. I don't feel too sad for artists.
Top songs, which is usually by a few known artists, which are usually repped by big studios that makes deals to ensure their songs get advertised a lot.

That means 99% of the artists aren’t getting much. Especially indies that can just be as good as these rich artists.
 
Exactly why I won't use Spotify. They are the biggest by so much, where do they spend the money they don't pay artists? Not in quality software, must be CEO pay and such.
LOL, how cute 'quality software'

If there is one thing that Spotify does miles better it is software.

Apple Music on Windows is horrible (iTunes) for years.
The webplayer is suuuuuuuuuuuuuperslow (like iCloud.com) and is missing 80 percent of functionality
The MacOS Music app is now also not good in performance.
Apple Music is not on Xbox and PlayStation, while Spotify is integrated and can be used while gaming
There are Spotify Connect enabled apps in my car, my Bose soundbar, my chromecast and LG TV. Apple Music has nada
 
Either Spotify has better negotiators or the music industry wants to give Spotify a break so Apple doesn’t dominate the streaming market like they did downloads.
 
Is it out of the realm of possibilities that worldwide, top songs are played 1,000,000 times a day? That's $10,000 per day @ 1 cent, $5,000 @ 1/2 cent. PER DAY. I don't feel too sad for artists.

rationalizing and excuse to steal music. A lot of media pirates do this crap. “Justin Bieber is rich so I steal indie bands music!”

90%+ of artists are streaming less than 1,000 plays a day.
 
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The way I understand it is that Spotify (and Qobuz confirmed in a podcast), negotiate revenue with the music publishers not the artists. Both Spotify and Qobuz return 75% of their revenue to these publishers. That leaves 25% to pay all the costs related to running the business. As someone who has owned his own business a gross margin of 25% is not a lot. Now before someone says "well if they make a $1B, and that leaves $250M", think about the number of people and the infrastructure you would need to run and operate a $1B business. Yes they get their inventory (the songs) for free, but think about just the hosting costs involved in delivering all those streams. So, did the publishers negotiate a better deal with Apple? Possible. But keep in mind that Apple only has a "pay to play" option (as does Qobuz). Spotify has a lot more listeners but most of those are on the free plan, and so it is only getting ad revenue from those listeners. Now, granted that could be significant, but I would venture a guess that it is not $10 a month, otherwise their business model would not have a "pay to play" option because they can generate more revenue from ads.
 
Further, this model is a lot better than CD sales because it encourages people to make good songs that people listen to multiple times, and not crap that people listen to once or twice then regret owning.

It also favors saccharine music that doesn’t challenge a listener in any way because they only have one shot at getting a second listen.

Most of my favorite music grew on me over time. My brain had to change before I could really appreciate it. The album construct allows an artist to package more challenging or experimental tracks alongside expected hits. Track by track streaming or purchase drives the industry to make only hits which means just giving us more of what we already think we like.
 
Soundcloud recently changed how they pay artists, it seems to be a much better deal

From Soundclouds website:​

Who is eligible for fan-powered royalties?

Independent artists who monetize directly with SoundCloud are eligible for fan-powered royalties

This sounds positive for the independent artist, but excludes anyone tied to a publisher. And, obviously this is Soundclouds way of getting more listeners.
 
The money goes to whoever owns the music, usually the label. Not many artists or bands are getting checks from Apple. They have to sell tickets and merchandise to make anything.
 
Corporations keep making money on Artist content while paying below child labor rates!
Not even talking about when they offer free trial service, which only benefits the corporations and screws the artists even more.
 
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Exactly why I won't use Spotify. They are the biggest by so much, where do they spend the money they don't pay artists? Not in quality software, must be CEO pay and such.
Apple pays 52% of its subscription revenue to the rights holders, Spotify 75-80%. So Apple keeps a bigger share for itself.

It's a bit of an apples/oranges comparison. This article explains some of the differences between the two:

 
With these rates, Musicians are an endangered species. Music is an art on the verge of extinction...
 
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How come a person that works at Apple or Spotify from 9-5 job earns more than a song than streamed over 100 million times...?
 
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do some math. If you bought an Album and played it only 30 times with an average of 15 songs, that is $4.50 directly to artist. In traditional CD sales "Artists can receive 10% – 15% of suggested album retail minus packaging costs." https://www.recordingconnection.com...epreneurs/how-do-record-labels-turn-a-profit/

So that is $1.50 on a $15 Album

Um.... It is $4.5 to Music Right Holder. Not Artist

Sportify is a public company. And despite having HQ in Sweden, it is listed in NYSE in US. Unless you think the US government and All Accounting of public company are scams. You can read everything about their company 's financial, basically, Spotify paid 70% of their revenue to music right holders.
 
If you download a song but never stream it, does that account for anything?

And when does a 'stream' become official? When it ends (100%), after it hits a certain percentage maybe (50%)?
 
It still doesn’t sound very much for the artists!!!!
It's not. It's also can be harder to get noticed on Apple Music. That said, the smaller number of streams from AM do pay a lot better than Spotify. And at least on AM I've had downloads (which pay a LOT more), where that hasn't been true for me with any other streaming service.
 
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