Why Artists Think the Current Situation with Streaming Services Suck
Damon Krukowski used to be in Galaxie 500 and is now part of Damon and Naomi. He recently got his songwriter’s royal cheque in the mail, notifying him that a song he co-wrote was played more than 7,800 times on Pandora. He wasn’t happy. Here’s what he writes in Pitchfork:
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).
To put this into perspective: Since we own our own recordings, by my calculation it would take songwriting royalties for roughly 312,000 plays on Pandora to earn us the profit of one–one— LP sale. (On Spotify, one LP is equivalent to 47,680 plays.)
