Spotify's new "Loud & Clear" Transparency Initiative

Of course they lie John.   What business doesn't?

Hey Mark - thanks. I'm going to check this out. Anything positive moving in the RIGHT direction is a Godsend!! It can only get better right?

Yeah - they said they "generated" - not took home. Here's my understanding...and how the math works out for me.
Here's the supposed breakdown: 30% to Spotify, 60% to owner of masters and then 10% leftover for publishers and creators.

So - I just looked at my last BMI statement. I have a song that Billy Ray Cyrus cut called "We Fought Hard." Last quarter, it was played (supposedly - how would I ever question this?) 6,020 times on Spotify Free. I got $.33 cents. Here's how I figure they arrived at that. And this is complicated, so listen closely lol.

6020 plays - made 33 cents

So I just plugged in a guess of them paying what they say they pay out - $.005 per impression. To save time, I'll just tell you I figured out it was actually .0033 cents.

Here's how I got there: 6020 x $.0033 = $19.86
Spotify gets 30% of that - $19.866 / .30 = $5.9598
Owner of the Master (label) gets 60% - $19.866 / .60 = $11.9196

So - that leaves 10% over for the writers and publishers - $1.9866 cents
There were three writers with different publishing, so $1.98 / 3 = $.6622 cents
Then, my publisher owned the publishing share of the royalty per my contract, so $.6622 / 2 = $.3311 cents
Round to the nearest penny - $.33 cents

Now I also see it was played 9214 times with Spotify Premium...I got the big bucks there - around $.0064 per impression for a total of $.98 cents.

So - lets say BRC gets a sex change and his career blows up...he release my song and it get 100 million streams on Spotify. Life changing, right? Nope. Under the above deal, I get $10,666.67
Spotify would have made $192,000
Label would have made $384,000

Johnkenn

John - from my understanding, you are not looking at the entire royalty structure. There are three additional pots that hold money for every dollar earned.

First, Spotify takes its share.  Roughly 30%.

THEN - the balance gets split up.  It's unclear to me if the $0.003-0.005 per stream is after Spotify takes their cut or before.  At any rate, it is most decidedly NOT the writers cut.  The writers cut is at best (if you own publishing and only write by yourself) roughly 6% of the $0.003-0.005.

Second, the record company (rights holder) takes it's lions share (the biggest part - roughly 60%.) - that's the reason that record companies were making over a million dollars an hour from Spotify alone in 2020.

Third and Fourth - the MLC and your PRO splits the left overs - roughly 6%/6%. (See my MLC thread from last week.). The reason your shares are so low is that at best you're splitting roughly 6% of the total with your publisher and other co-writers (if any). So at best you're getting only 3% of the total if you're the only writer.  If you have 2 co-writers and equally split, then you're getting 1%.  And with 6k streams, that ain't much.

And yeah, I've only been collecting on the writers half of the publishing share to this point. Hoping to change that up in the future.....  As musicians, we have to learn to game ALL the different royalty streams in the future.  Or die trying....  The day of Performance Royalties collected by PRO's - being the king / saviors of writers / musicians is long over.  (IMO)

It's interesting to note that Apple Music and Spotify are almost identical in how they split royalties up.  If the finger is to be pointed at the ugly elephant in the room - it's at the record companies IMO.

Here's a pretty simple graphic.

That’s the only way I can arrive at the numbers that I get, and it makes perfect sense.

yes.  with the small portion being split between mechanicals  -  which go to the publisher, and the publisher is responsible for paying writer(s). -  and PRO's which pay 50% to the writer.

Simple, right?  

Sad to say, no money is going to be made on 6000 spins. If this was terrestrial radio, you'd have 50k spins worth of airplay publishing payment for one play on a major market radio station. One play x the listeners the station has.

BOC gets almost 3 million streams per week on Spotify, and we're non hall of fame classic rockers, and pikers compared to the chart toppers. We're one of the artists Spotify is lying about.  

One reason the numbers keep going up is more and more people are using streaming services worldwide. And lots people listen to music they already know. 

At this point 2021, streaming is beating the daylights out of all physical product historically, excepting the very year the original recordings were released. BOC's earners are now 40+ years old, and we're streaming our way into cars, living rooms and Alexas everywhere. This is why investors are paying artists big bucks for their songwriting.