How Much Should Music Streaming Services Be Paying Musicians?

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Anthony Sullivan, Columnist

          Ever since the release of “iTunes” by Apple, streaming services have come a long way. From streaming music to podcasts, using these applications have become a daily routine of many lives. Getting your daily dose of music virtually is basically rendering CD’s obsolete. Most CD’s sell for around $6.99 on average; a good chunk of change compared to paying Spotify or Apple Music $10 a month for millions of songs. With CD’s being so expensive, you would come to think bands would be getting paid much more than streaming services. Yes, the revenue bands get from online is low, but so low it’s almost insulting to musicians.

         Streaming services have a pattern of paying musicians much less than what physical CD’s would make. Spotify is ran off of a system of plays; if I listen to the song, that counts as one “play”. Spotify pays $0.006 every play your band gets. That means as much as a million plays would only make a band $6,000. iTunes pays a little more than other traditional streaming services. iTunes is ran off of paying for songs or albums. Songs are usually $0.99 and albums somewhere from $4.99-$9.99. Apple gives you 10% royalties for all of your music sales. That means of you sold 1,000,000 single songs for $0.99, you would get $100,000 in revenue. Still not a lot of profit when broken down.

Musicians, especially local bands, are usually never so adequate on funding. They can sell merchandise, accept donations, sell tickets, but in the end their actual music should the component making them money. With a multi-million dollar company such as Apple, I feel they should at least pay musicians more; let alone Spotify and other streaming services. Local bands must keep up with equipment, funding tours, and merch. This can be extremely difficult without being signed to a label where they fund everything. I think if Spotify payed 1-2 cents per play and Apple payed 25% royalties then I think musicians including myself would be much more content on how much streaming services pay us.