So, the other day I logged into my CD Baby account. The accounting of downloads of songs I wrote/performed/self-published reveals such amounts (due to me) as $0.00619983, $0.00175357, $0.00254891 (Spotify); $0.00083499, $0.00091000 (Yandex, whatever that is); and $0.63700000 (ITunes, a princely sum, by comparison).
I’m not much good at math, but even I can figure out that you would need to sell a lot of tunes at $0.00083499 apiece to even pay for a penny candy.
Anyone else out there in the same boat? What kind of scam is this, anyway? (yes, I know, probably one I willingly signed up for, in the fine print somewhere.)
You may have gotten a raw deal, and that’s typical for talent that’s not proven yet. I do the taxes for a guy who writes songs that has just become popular in the last couple of years and he gets a statement from ASCAP saying where outside the US he has royalties from and how much tax was withheld since that’s necessary information to do the tax return. A few countries there will only be a few cents of royalties, but if it was really as low per song for him as you suggest, then there would also be a bunch of countries where he’d only have a cent or two if my grasp of statistics is accurate, and that’s not true.
iTunes is presumably all sales, which you note is rather larger compared to the others, which are likely streaming media. If they’re not selling the track to the customer but only providing it for a single play, then the royalty on that play certainly will be less than a cent, and less than a tenth of a cent doesn’t sound too odd either. The reason this wouldn’t be included in the country breakdown above is that any streaming revenue he gets is probably sourced as coming from the country that the streaming service is based in, not where the listener is, while royalties from sales would be segregated by country.
Welcome to the world today. Nobody pays for the cow anymore if they can get the milk for free. Famous artists make more money on the merchandise they sell at their concerts. Also, that’s why ticket prices are so expensive.
Well, artists that sell/stream a lot still make money when it’s big volume. Even background singers can make tens of thousands in royalties on a big hit. Yes, it is rare. There’s also the plus of being able to cut out the label/middlemen and get the full royalties on digital.
I don’t go to a lot of concerts but I go to budget (like $5) shows put on by local radio stations and pay $20-40 to see national artists that I enjoy. Also, a lot of musicians are better these days at sort of running with the “1000 fan” concept and making merch and limited edition physical packages with a lot of extras and value.
I’m on CD Baby too, with a couple of albums. Yeah, you’re not going to make anything on Spotify unless you have a lot of plays. I’ve made like $35 from it, but that’s over the course of a few years. I’ve made a couple hundred bucks from iTunes, and yet one of my songs has 25,000 views on YouTube, and another one has 18,000. So obviously people are just downloading them from YT (or watching and moving on, of course).
It’s true; the only way to make money with your own music these days is performing live. Think of your album less as a commodity and more as an advertisement of what you’ll be playing in concert.
So, what would happen if one of my songs were covered by some famous, hot-shit artist (can’t think of any examples right now). Would I get a higher rate each time it played on Spotify, or would it just get played a whole lot more?
I am not really a performing artist. My vision was always to get the songs covered, then go to the mailbox each day to collect my royalty check…
Backup singers are normally just hired guns, and are just paid a flat fee. Sometimes this works out to their advantage - they still get paid even if the record loses money.
You wouldn’t get a higher rate, but yes, it would be played a lot more. But if it was that big a hit then it would sell a lot on iTunes (to the honest people), and you would get royalties from that. Not to mention the sheet music sales, as well as radio plays through ASCAP or BMI.
I, too, am not a performing artist. Our best bet is to have one of our songs covered, as you said, or to have one of our songs (sung by someone else) placed in a film or tv show. I’ve gotten close; one of my songs was going to be used in a new Ed Asner movie, but the scene got cut and they didn’t have room for it. Always a bridesmaid…
My close call was a midnight phone call from a well-known West Coast manager/producer who worked with R&B (when that term meant something) artists in the 50s and 60s. Saying, “no one writes songs like this anymore” and “the (publishing) contract is in the mail.” Still waiting for that contract to show up …