Making Cents

Musician and writer Damon Krukowski, of the bands Galaxie 500 and Damon & Naomi, breaks down the meager royalties currently being paid out to bands by streaming services and explains what the music business’ headlong quest for capital means for artists today.

Consider Pandora and Spotify, the streaming music services that are becoming ever more integrated into our daily listening habits. My BMI royalty check arrived recently, reporting songwriting earnings from the first quarter of 2012, and I was glad to see that our music is being listened to via these services. Galaxie 500’s “Tugboat”, for example, was played 7,800 times on Pandora that quarter, for which its three songwriters were paid a collective total of 21 cents, or seven cents each. Spotify pays better: For the 5,960 times “Tugboat” was played there, Galaxie 500’s songwriters went collectively into triple digits: $1.05 (35 cents each).

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 2nd, 2013 at 8:00 am. It is filed under Creative Culture and tagged with economics, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.