STREAMING WARS PT.2
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STREAMING WARS PT.2
Let’s face it’s 2021 and the way we consume entertainment is not the same as it was fifty years ago. Technology has changed everything about the way we see and hear our favorite movies and music. Streaming, whether film or song, has been the biggest change in the past 15 years. The majority of people stream their movies and music. It’s faster to watch a movie on demand than to actually go to the movie theatre. I imagine in the future that we will have not only smartphones but also smart cities and smart stores.
Some artists have taken advantage of technology and used it for their benefit I think of Nipsey Hussle. Before he passed he was already creating a smart store that would sell clothing that you could get exclusive content on it. Imagine buying a shirt and with a shirt came a QR code that linked you to an exclusive never before saw Nipsey video. That’s the vision he had.
One reason artists need to look to Nipsey Hussle and those that think like him is the way that artists get paid for their music. I’ve always heard a narrative that artists do not get paid well from streams, so I decided to do some research. Most artists get paid $.0007 a stream. Well, no artist gets paid that much unless your Drake. According to the article I read in 2017 Drake recorded a billion streams but he didn’t make a billion dollars here’s an excerpt from the article.
“Streaming has also become a big thing in today’s music technology. Drake makes money from streaming royalties from Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube. Spotify pays an average of $0.005 per stream while Apple Music pays around $0.007 per stream. Drake has over 10 billion streams as of early 2017 on Spotify and growing fast making over $50 million from the platform since he joined. His album More Life was streamed over 300 million times on Apple Music during its first week generating around $2.1 million in royalties. In 2018 he set the record of being the first artist to hit 1 billion streams in a week.”
For an artist to make a million dollars off of just streams alone they need to have recorded 150 million streams. My question is who takes home the rest of the money.
“For artists to survive in the future of music, they’re going to need the streaming platforms to do more deals like the one Jay-Z did with Tidal.”
Back when Spotify was just starting out they made some deals with some record labels in 2008. Spotify would end up giving equity to various record labels. The record labels in turn become part owners of Spotify. This would give record labels a chance to increase the money they were making from streams. It would also allow them to pay artists more from streams. The latter didn’t come to fruition. The only record company to give some of their Spotify shares to their artist was universal and even that isn’t a hundred percent.
I’d like to think this is why rappers always say you have to make money outside of music. I mean look at the deals these artists are getting. You can’t even get a full penny on your stream, even if your Drake!
Naturally, I began to think about what Jay-Z did with the streaming service Tidal. He bought a percentage of the company and split the shares with artists that would have their music streamed on that platform something only Universal was doing, kinda. He did a lot for the music industry as a whole with that move. For artists to survive in the future of music, they’re going to need the streaming platforms to do more deals like the one Jay-Z did with Tidal.
