This is a rough estimate because Spotify doesn't pay artists per stream. LIMBONG: Right now if you wanted to make, say, a thousand bucks a month on Spotify, analyst Tim Ingham says you'd need about 200,000 streams per month. RAY: It's an old tactic to point at workers within a particular industry and say that you have to work harder because the people that will achieve more will have their rightful outcome of a living wage. Daniel Ek's comments spurred them to meet, virtually of course, to talk about how the streaming economy puts artists, especially smaller indie ones like Ray, at a disadvantage. Ray is a member of the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers, which is not a union in the strict sense of the term but a relatively new group that started at the beginning of the pandemic to help organize out-of-work musicians during a time when clubs are closed and nobody can tour. LIMBONG: Ray says the band made $4.18 for around 2,000 streams in June. KARNA RAY: As a form of payment, I don't think anybody sees it as legitimate. LIMBONG: Drummer Karna Ray likes having their music on Spotify because of its global reach. LIMBONG: Let's take a band like The Kominas. INGHAM: Any pretense that they are operating in the interests of anyone that is not Spotify and/or a Spotify investor is a lie. LIMBONG: In part because Spotify can't serve two masters - the musicians it streams and its investors. TIM INGHAM: They're never going to get to a million artists. So how's it going? I asked Tim Ingham, founder of Music Business Worldwide, a global music industry analysis site. At a time when the company's business is doing relatively well, NPR's Andrew Limbong takes a look at how the cash is flowing.ĪNDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: When Spotify first became a publicly traded company in 2018, it set a bold goal for itself - to give a million artists the opportunity to live off their work. His comment made a lot of musicians angry and reignited frustrations over how much Spotify pays artists. Musicians in the age of streaming cannot, quote, "record music once every three to four years and think that's going to be enough." That pronouncement came from Spotify CEO Daniel Ek in a recent interview with the website Music Ally.
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