Music, Spotify and Artists

The music business started to change a long time ago and with streaming media it has been completely revolutionized. People listen to music in the easiest way, it is a business that moves billions, but it is not clear who wins apart from those who listen to music on their mobile devices.

I make this reflection after having seen some of the data that Spotify has released.

It is estimated that the streaming business accounts for 50% of the total generated by music, and Spotify, which is the largest download company, controls 20% of that business.

When a music download is made, the payments go to those who have the right holder (which is sometimes the record companies instead of the musicians), and from the complaints that are heard it seems that in the streaming world almost no one is happy with what they charge, and that the majority “are there” to be visible in their market.

In 2020 Spotify has had revenues of 7.8 billion euros, has paid 5 billion in copyright, and has declared losses of 581 million. The more they take in, the more they lose, at least for now.

In their 15 years of life (it started in 2006) they have never had benefits.

The issue of payments per download is very complex and from what I understand Spotify pays around $ 0.00203 per stream. So someone who has a million downloads a month would earn $ 2,030.

Spotify has also published a list (without names) of the income achieved in 2020 by the copyright owners:

870 have raised more than $ 1 million

1820 ” $ 500,000

7800 ” $ 100,000

13,400 ” $ 50,000″

42,000 ” $ 10,000″

67,200 ” $ 5,000″

Making a simple sum of those who enter more than 50,000 a year, we can see that there are only 23,890 authors.

If, on the other hand, Spotify says that it has millions of authors in its catalog, it means that of all the authors, almost no one earns hardly anything.

Therefore we see that this is a peculiar business, not to say rare.

Those who make their music available do not earn money to live.

The one that provides music to users (Spotify) each year loses more money, and I do not know how long the patience of its investors will last.

The question is: who wins?

Users who can listen to music at will at low prices; but it is not known for how long they will be able to do it, because if a business is not profitable sooner or later it will end up disappearing.

And meanwhile the musicians make a living by performing, which is what they have done up to now.

Many things are changing around us, and some of it is not at all clear how they will end.