One of our songs reached 1.500.000 streams on spotify.

  • Congrats man. This is impressive. You must be very proud (you should!). If you ever feel like playing live at Beta or High Voltage we'd be honored to play before you :). We have some contacts to make it happen at least.

    Yet a dane :) We have nothing to promote right now, the new album has run into covid bottlenecks, so we’ve started writing the next one. But once it’s out, it could be nice to gig a bit.

    And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

  • That's fantastic man, congrats, I hope they paid you more than the usual $5 for that many streams, lol, rock on I hope you hit another 10mil streams \m/

    "Music makes the world a better place. Music doesn't lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music."

    Jimi Hendrix.

  • That's fantastic man, congrats, I hope they paid you more than the usual $5 for that many streams, lol, rock on I hope you hit another 10mil streams \m/

    It is amazing how little this amount of streams will amount to.


    How many times do people who buy a cd/vinyl listen to a particular song an average? 100 times during their lifetime? iTunes sell a song for about 1$ (ballpark figure). So in my world, 1$ per 100 streams would be a reasonable scenario. But instead the industry completely killed the studiobands (bands who does not do many live shows).

    And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

  • iTunes sell a song for about 1$ (ballpark figure). So in my world, 1$ per 100 streams would be a reasonable scenario.

    I'm afraid that you won't end up with 1$ in your pocket per sold song, maybe more along the lines of 0.50$ as a rough estimate.


    But let's have a look at Spotify, again very rough estimates:

    A Spotify user might listen to 500 "streams" per month, on average, across the world.

    With Spotify Premium the users might pay 5-6$ per month on average, across the world.

    I'm sure Spotify tries to generate similar revenue from ads ... for non-premium users.

    So in my very rough estimate, Spotify will generate a total revenue of 0.01$ per stream.

    I think a realistic pay for artists (and labels, song writers, etc.) would be 0.005$ per stream.


    So I think there's not much difference between e.g. iTunes sales and Spotify streams in terms of pay for the artist.

    Things were different when artists produced and sold albums. Even if the album had only one, two or three successful tracks, still the artist sold e.g. 10 tracks in one "transaction" ... basically generating the same "split" revenue for each of the 10 songs.


    Just imagine, each of your album's tracks would generate the same 1.5 million streams on Spotify ... and consequently the same payout. I think life would be much easier for the artists.


    Bottomline:

    The extreme and exclusive focus on "hit singles" makes it so hard. Nobody gives a bloody damn sh*t about your other songs anymore, nobody "buys" them.


    Real life example:

    Marillion's album Misplaced Childhood (with 10 tracks) sold close to 1 million times to date, not counting single sales. Some serious revenue even though people will only remember Kayleigh and maybe Lavender or Heart of Lothian.

  • There is a huge difference between in revenue between iTunes sales and spotify streams. ITunes sales is the outlet that puts the most money in the artists pockets.
    It’s almost 20 years ago that we put out our first album, and we were lucky to catch the tail end on the “purchase your music” era. Without that we’d never have established an economic foundation for what we do.

    And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

  • There is a huge difference between in revenue between iTunes sales and spotify streams. ITunes sales is the outlet that puts the most money in the artists pockets.

    I totally believe you. But just out of interest, can you tell whether "album sales" made a huge portion of the difference? Or was it pretty much "single sales" only?

    Personally, I still buy albums (no singles) because I'm interested in the full package of an artist/band. Often it even turns out that I like other songs of an album better than the most popular song. Maybe you're lucky and have loyal true fans who also want to "own" an entire album over a single?

  • I totally believe you. But just out of interest, can you tell whether "album sales" made a huge portion of the difference? Or was it pretty much "single sales" only?

    Personally, I still buy albums (no singles) because I'm interested in the full package of an artist/band. Often it even turns out that I like other songs of an album better than the most popular song. Maybe you're lucky and have loyal true fans who also want to "own" an entire album over a single?

    I think we are lucky in that regard. Obviously not the 1,5 million streams on that particular song, but, as you say, the loyal fans who wants the full album experience. It’s prog after all, so many of those who enjoy that genre, will want to hear an album from one end to the other.

    And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.