“What to Play while Taylor’s away” is a playlist curated by Spotify after Taylor Swift pulled all of her music off of Spotify with the exception of one or two songs. She and other artists like Jason Aldean have commented on the fact that they think that Spotify’s royalties are unfair and that being on Spotify and other streaming sites is more detrimental than beneficial to their music careers.
“Swift’s most recent album, '1989,' wasn’t on the service, and she initially held off on allowing Spotify to stream her 2012 album, 'Red,'” Jack Linshi said in a New York Times article. The article also quotes Swift explaining how she thinks streaming services are one of the reasons an album’s value has decreased and the fact that paid album sales have decrease dramatically.
In reality though, are streaming services really the ones to blame for this problem? The number of people who pirate music contributes heavily to this issue and can be seen as more of a problem than streaming services. Through Spotify, artists still do get royalties. For artists like Taylor Swift, whose newest album “1989” has sold 1.2 million copies in its debut week, Spotify doesn't make much of a difference.
Royalties aren’t important for big super stars like Swift, and for the most part, many songs are still pulling in six figures on royalties for record songs. For example, “The Monster” by Eminem pulled in $210,000 to $294,000 in royalties while Avicii’s “Wake Me Up” pulled in somewhere between $913,000 and $1.3 million.
Now the big part that many people don’t really remember, when reading about Taylor Swift and other artists like the Black Keys expressing their discontent with Spotify and other streaming services, is that these royalties cannot just go straight to the artists. There are other parties involved that have to get a cut of whatever royalties are generated — there are the record labels, music publishers and song writers who also get a bit of whatever is paid.
Spotify doesn’t actually pay per stream but instead use a special formula that accounts for the number of times a song has been played, where it’s being played, the fact that royalties are split among several parties and the actual royalty rate for which an artist is contracted. The company hasn’t hid their calculation process and learning about how they work as far as royalties and their effect on the music industry is actually detailed on their website.
So while yes, the net royalties are not always that high for artists, we have to remember that Spotify only keeps 30 percent of their revenue and the other 70 percent goes to “rights holders.” The truth is that artists should see added value in Spotify like Ed Sheeran does.
“I’m in the music industry to play live. That’s why I make records, that’s why I do radio interviews, that’s why I do Amazon events, that’s why I put things on Spotify. Having recorded music is fantastic, but playing live is where I buzz the most,” Ed Sheeran said in an article from The Guardian. Artists should see Spotify as a form of publicity in addition to a way of making money. Music on Spotify is accessible to more than 40 million active Spotify users who, if they like the music enough will spend money on an actual album or to go to a concert.
There’s no way that users will be so upset and in agreement with the terms of Spotify’s royalty terms that they will stop using Spotify altogether. Similarly, most artists recognize that Spotify’s streaming services have become too prominent to refuse to release music on Spotify.
If anything, artists should follow in Coldplay’s steps as is said in Linshi’s article and “stagger their album’s streaming release in order to encourage listeners to buy or download the album before it’s available for streaming.” This way, it’ll give ample opportunity for the album to be purchased, as well as allowing the music to be available to users who may not be able to afford to purchase albums, ending in a win-win situation for everybody.
Reach the columnist at kayla.chan@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @kaylarc214.
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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