After one get’s past the debate about whether webcasting and streaming pay artists fairly, you find there is a more complicated question.  How much of webcasting and streaming is “discovery”  and how much is just plain old consumption.  Listening to familiar tracks we already know.  This is not an academic question.  This fact can be taken into consideration by Copyright Royalty Board judges when they set the rates for webcasting. (Yes believe it or not in the year 2013 the prices to webcast songs and music are set by the US government!!).

Clearly all forms of broadcasting and webcasting are a little of both consumption and discovery (or promotion).   But the Webcasters have been arguing that they are better suited for “discovery” and thus are giving unknown artists and listeners something of value.  That argue they are better for music “discovery” than traditional broadcasters. Is that really true?

Yesterday I took my top 5 bonafide radio hits from the 80’s and 90s and subtracted their spins from each service then I looked at the percentage of spins “left” on each service.  The idea being the more a service plays the non hits the more likely listeners are discovering music.  I found something surprising.   Sirius XM and “Piped in” Airline Radio played more deep tracks or non-hits  than any other format.  Thus listeners were more likely to discover songs they didn’t know on these two services.  At least from my catalogue.

Following up with yesterdays post.  I’m digging deeper into my catalogue and subtracting spins for the minor hits, regional hits and tracks that otherwise garnered significant popularity from other sources.

Yesterday I subtracted spins for just the Top 5 tracks.

Low, Teen Angst, Get Off This, Take The Skinheads Bowling, Eurotrash Girl.

We will now subtract the spins for an additional 10 tracks.

All these tracks garnered significant radio promotion and sales through the years.

Eye of Fatima pt 1*  (Minor National  Rock/Modern Rock success)

Happy Birthday to Me*  (Minor national alternative paly, Minor recurrent play).

Turn On Tune In Drop Out With Me.  (#13 AAA radio.  Minor format.  Featured in Californication.)

Sweet Thistle Pie* (Mid-Atlantic, Chicago,  South Florida, Texas regional)

Good Guys And Bad Guys* (MTV Specialty and College Radio)

Big Dipper ( Coastal Carolinas regional).

Cracker Soul (Virginia, Carolinas and Chicago regional).

Turquoise Jewelry* (KROQ Los Angeles only)

I See The Light  ( Indie 103.1 Los Angeles Only. Daily airplay for nearly 3 years because DJ Steve Jones of Sex Pistols just decided to play the shit out of it on his popular afternoon show!)

Yalla Yalla  (Armed Forces Radio, mildly viral YouTube remix.)

* Promotional CD or Vinyl serviced to radio. 

This is not subjective.  These tracks were selected after looking at various royalty statements and airplay reports.  These are the top 15 tracks that still generate significant spins and individual sales.  There are certain tracks that were worked as singles like “I Hate My Generation” that generated a brief period of airplay but have never sustained spins.   Nor have they sustained individual sales over the long term.  These tracks are not included.  As further evidence please note that the aggregator of web simulcasts Live 365 pretty much agrees that these are the top 15 tracks.  See last screenshot.

Now the question is “Who plays the largest percentage of my catalogue outside the Top 15 tracks”

Airlines	39.27%	broadcast
Sirius XM	28.57%	broadcast
College Radio	25.02%	broadcast
Pandora Radio	17.28%	webcast
Live 365	16.91%	webcast/broadcast
Rhapsody Radio (not on demand)	10.19%	webcast
Terrestrial UK	8.81%	broadcast/webcast?
Terrestrial US	1.07%	broadcast

So for music discovery your best bet is a little air travel!  Followed by Sirius and then College Radio.  To be fair Pandora moves up a notch and it’s relative percentage of songs in the “tail” of my catalogue hardly changes.  This seems to argue that at least 17% of the time Pandora seems to be true music discovery.  It’s not just playing what the crowd says is already popular.  Again that 17% is nothing to sneeze at.  This suggests  that at least some significant portion of the time Pandora is playing you some artists or songs you would have likely never encountered.   That is encouraging.

Tomorrow let’s look at the On-Demand streaming stats.

Live 365 shows 13 of the 15 tracks in it’s top 25.

Readers of this blog know that there is a raging debate over the rates that artists are paid by Streaming and Webcasting services.    But underpinning that debate is the notion that certain webcasting services and streaming services help people discover new music and are thus giving something of value back to the artist.  It occurred to me that I have a big enough song catalogue that we could actually look at the question try to measure if these services lead people to new music or just sort of spin what is most popular and familiar.

So in my own catalogue there are 5 songs that were genuine radio hits on multiple radio formats.  At least here in the US.   As individual tracks they also tend to be in my top ten sellers. They were also released commercially as singles.    They are:

Low

Teen Angst

Get Off This

Take The Skinheads Bowling

Eurotrash Girl

(Pictures of Matchstick Men is a Status Quo cover and I don’t get granular statements for that track).

There are also another dozen tracks that were minor hits, regional hits,  or garnered significant but fleeting radio play.  I deal with these and “On-Demand” services in a subsequent posts.

So the question I attempted to answer is  “What percentage of spins on these service are NOT the top 5 hits?”   This is not necessarily the only way to look at the question.  This is perhaps the bluntest of measurements.  However it is interesting to actually look at the data rather than just make unverified claims.   (For balance I’ve also asked a friendly yet sometimes adversarial fellow blogger to look at my raw data and ask the question differently.)

Here are the somewhat surprising results.

Percentage of spins that are NOT my top 5 hits.  Webcasters and Broadcasters only.   On Demand Streaming services like Spotify or Rdio are not considered.  

Sirius XM	46.13%	broadcast
Airline Radio	46.02%	broadcast
College Radio	32.15%	broadcast
Live 365	31.36%	webcast/broadcast
Pandora	18.18%	webcast
Rhapsody radio	16.02%	webcast
Terrestrial UK	8.90%	broadcast/webcast?
Terrestrial Radio US	3.47%	broadcast

Here are the big surprises.   Sirius XM although relatively few spins, tends to play more stuff out in the “long tail” of my catalogue than every other source.  And Airlines?  how did that happen?

Pandora which loudly boasts of it’s music genome project ends up in the middle of the pack.  Further 4 out of 5 spins on Pandora are for “Low” my biggest hit.  The only other service that spins Low as much is US terrestrial (85% of all spins).   However there is one caveat with Pandora.  The other 20% of the time the spins are more evenly distributed throughout my catalogue.  At least relatively speaking.   I mean the number two played track is an obscure outtake  from Kerosene Hat “Sunday Train.”  I assume that is the music genome at work.  So 20% of the time Pandora acts as claimed as a music discovery service.  At least with my catalogue.  Second caveat.  This is just within my catalogue.  It’s entirely possible that in aggregate Pandora as claims plays more indie music and artists out in “the tail” of popularity.

Percentage of Spins that are the track  “Low.”  Webcaster and Broadcasters. 

Terrestrial Radio US	85.26%	broadcast
Pandora	79.82%	webcast
Rhapsody Radio	63.75%	webcast
Terrestrial Radio UK	39.56%	broadcast/webcast?
Live 365	28.97%	webcast/broadcast
Airline Radio	25.09%	broadcast
College Radio	24.99%	broadcast
Sirius XM	24.96%	broadcast

About 20% of the time Pandora seems to really play some obscure tracks. Kudos!

We were very pleased to see this statement by Spotify’s in house economist Will Page (and sorry if we missed it before) :

“Copyright infringing websites are big businesses … 2/3 of piracy sites have advertising, and 1/3 also include credit card logons. This competition is real: consider how ad pricing is distorted by those unlicensed sites who offer more scale and no content costs.”

This is exactly what we’ve been saying and are glad that we can find some common ground between artists and streaming/webcasting services.  Ad supported  piracy reduces revenues for both artists and legitimate licensed services.

We’d also like to note that one Spotify executive pointed out to us the inconsistently in artists pulling their music from Spotify but keeping their music on YouTube.

They are both on-demand streaming services but YouTube is a much less artist friendly service.  Artists don’t seem to realize these facts:

*Spotify appears to pay more than YouTube.  A lot more (see my songwriting statement below).

*Spotify relies on licenses from rightsholders.  Whereas YouTube often relies on  the legally questionable premise that it’s “users”  make the songs available on YouTube and thus aren’t responsible for getting a license.

* If artists control enough of their rights  they can remove their music from Spotify.  Try that with YouTube.

*YouTube is essentially the  largest on-demand music streaming service.  If Artists are being underpaid by these services  the logical place to start is with YouTube not Spotify.

*YouTube sounds terrible compared to Spotify.  It sounds like every song has a flanger on it. ( Sorry this is just my pet peeve.)

(Ed note:  And then there is the matter that YouTube’s policies on comments and free speech.  These allow YouTube to be a platform for every conceivable form of hatemongering. Do you really want your kids going to this site?)