You think Performers have it bad with streaming/webcasting services? Check out my performance royalties as a songwriter. This is why we must end the Government mandates that force us to license our songs to these services at below market rates. It’s a subsidy to multi-billion dollar Silicon Valley companies.
This is all songwriters on the song. Not just my share. My share is 1/5-1/2 of this total. varies by song.
This is total that all the songwriters earned on my 200+ published songs. If streaming is the future? It does not include professional songwriters. This can not stand.
| Summary | Spins | $ | Per Spin in Cents!!! |
| YouTube | 551,275 | $30.57 | 0.00555 |
| Pandora | 1,499,396 | $67.20 | 0.00448 |
| Spotify | 400,955 | $113.92 | 0.02841 |
| Rhapsody | 61,235 | $30.14 | 0.04923 |
| All other internet services | 1,000,915 | $15.96 | 0.00159 |
The blues bar gigs don’t look so bad
I don’t understand how the Spotify royalty, in particular, can be that low. I assume that most of the streams are played in the USA. According to Spotify’s recent ‘transparency’ statement, Spotify Explained, ‘In the United States… statutes dictate that publishers receive ~21% the amount that master recording owners receive’. Since the master owners get about half a cent per stream, publishers should receive about a tenth of a cent. If publishers take 50% of that (which incidentally would be money for old rope, but let that pass), the songwriter(s) would still get about a twentieth of a cent. That is not much, but it is still about twice what you are getting. So is Spotify’s claim incorrect, or is there some other explanation?