Do you value music? (and Spotify is worse than commercial radio ever was)

Spotify (all projects since 2008) - 1462 plays, $4.56 = .003
Napster (all projects since 2008) - 990 plays, $23.20 = .02

Those are the raw numbers. Neither is great, but the once-villain Napster pays out almost ten times more than Spotify. Music streaming is still the likely way most people will listen to music in the near future, and Spotify is the biggest in the game. But it's a terrible deal for musicians. Maybe this will change if Spotify ever turns a profit. The game itself really hasn't changed. To make any real money from getting played on the radio, you have to get played thousands of times on hundreds of stations. To make money on Spotify, you need millions of plays. What is different is that on radio, you might get one or two singles played, but on Spotify, every song I've ever released is available. If you hear a song you like on the radio and you want more you have to buy the album. If you hear a song you like on Spotify, you can then just stream that band's entire catalog. I won't say Spotify shouldn't exist, this model is easy for consumers and that is a key to success. But it's horrible for bands. Maybe I'd never get a song on the radio at all, but in a greater sense I find the idea of making fractions of a cent for "exposure" on Spotify to be an insult.

So what is music worth? Let me try to break down the complete process. Using my group The Stone Soup Soldiers as an example, let's say we've written a short acoustic pop song (that's one of the things  S3 is trying to do these days). In an average setting, it takes 4 people about 3-4 hours to write and record parts for this song. Then it takes our producer Mike probably 6 or more hours to mix and polish the song. So lets round that off to 18 hours (3 hours x 4 people, plus 6 hours to finalize). And let's say this was a job that paid $8 per hour, just a hair more than minimum wage. Total cost then is $144. To make that off Spotify, we'd need 48,000 plays on Spotify. Expanded to a 10 track album of similar songs, 480,000 plays. To make minimum wage for 180 hours of work. To actually turn Spotify plays into a year's wages comes out to more than 5.5 million plays. To make minimum wage in a band of 4. Of course, Spotify isn't the only revenue stream, but if streaming becomes the primary source of music listening, it will be a big part of the pie.

I hope to make this something other than a whiny rant. What I'd like to ask you, the listener, the consumer of music, is to alter your thinking about how you consume music. If there are a few independent bands you really like, support them. Think of yourself as a patron of the arts, not just a consumer of audio potato chips. Paying $10 or $15 for a CD isn't paying a lot of money for a little plastic thing, it's helping that artist continue doing what they do. And if that music has truly entertained you and enriched your life, you owe them at least that.

Show stuff

Got a last minute show Saturday at Stage C Stage C Denver featuring Trinity Demask, Dee Galloway, Sean Gill, and Brian Hyde

And here's a shot from the Lakewood state of the city lunch a few weeks ago.