While artists in the West battle to be fairly paid for streaming their work, several of China's platforms are collecting micropayments from fans to help them when royalties fall short. Could this work here, ask William Ralston and Niko Seizov.
Back in July, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek caught flak for saying it’s no longer enough for artists to record “once every three to four years”- that they need to pump out more product if they want to make a living streaming their music on his platform. As the man cutting their modest checks, Ek would know.
Streaming on platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and Pandora accounted for 79.5 percent of the $8.8 billion total global revenue for recorded music last year. But this latest stage of technology’s reordering of the music business has left large chunks of the artist community struggling to make meaningful money from their work. While these platforms generate mammoth revenues through advertising and subscriptions, they pay out negligible amounts per steam, and only a portion of this ends up in creators’ pockets... Keep reading on Slate
Back in July, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek caught flak for saying it’s no longer enough for artists to record “once every three to four years”- that they need to pump out more product if they want to make a living streaming their music on his platform. As the man cutting their modest checks, Ek would know.
Streaming on platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and Pandora accounted for 79.5 percent of the $8.8 billion total global revenue for recorded music last year. But this latest stage of technology’s reordering of the music business has left large chunks of the artist community struggling to make meaningful money from their work. While these platforms generate mammoth revenues through advertising and subscriptions, they pay out negligible amounts per steam, and only a portion of this ends up in creators’ pockets... Keep reading on Slate