Plays for Pay: The Ethics of Music Streaming Payouts
- Rylee Pohancsek
- Mar 23, 2022
- 3 min read
Updated: Feb 28, 2023
Although monetization has become an integral part of working as a content producer online, musical artists are still struggling to make ends meet because of music streaming services. While musicians are trying to fight this issue behind the scenes, these ethical concerns are largely hidden from the public who consume this media. What are the ethics behind paying artists per stream and how can you help artists that you listen to?
Though musical artists would make their money selling physical copies of their work via records or CDs in the past, the advent of the internet has completely changed how listeners consume music. Nowadays, musicians still sell physical copies of their work, however, most consumers turn to streaming services to enjoy their favorite artists' work at convenience.
Even though artists are selling the same product, streaming services rely on the number of streams per song to pay them, which often is much less than what they would get than selling them in a traditional format.
In the early 2000s, Apple launched the iTunes Music Store which was the first digital store of its kind for digital MP3 files. Each song cost .99 cents, however, at the time, CDs cost around $20. Because of this, listeners opted for the digital version of the song but artists paid the price for their fans' convenience.
As there are labels, managers, artists and others involved with producing music, dropping the price paid per song meant that each person received less money than selling physical copies of their songs.
However, an ongoing problem with the iTunes Music Store and with MP3 files, in general, is piracy. In 2006, Spotify was founded to combat this problem and what followed were other streaming platforms such as Amazon Music, YouTube Music and Tidal.
These streaming services have a subscription fee so instead of paying per song, the listener pays per month. Because of this, artists make money off of streams, not off of a purchased song. This caused streaming platforms to make their own decisions of what to pay artists per stream.
In a chart created by Headphonesty, the payout per stream, as well as the number of streams needed to get to $1,000 of revenue is calculated. Apple Music has the highest payout per stream at .01 cents while the streaming platform Deezer has the lowest payout per stream at .0011cents. This means that on Deezer, one song must be played 909,091 times in order for the artist to make $1,000.
Ethical concerns regarding this have gone largely unnoticed by the public, however, musicians have started to push for change on music streaming platforms. The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers have started the “Justice at Spotify” movement which offers improvements for musicians on these streaming platforms such as instituting a universal one-cent payout per stream.
Though Spotify lands somewhere in the middle with their payout per stream, I do think that they do a good job of promoting smaller artists so that they can get more streams. One feature that makes Spotify unique is its curated playlists which often have both big and small artists.
One example of this is with Spotify's “Discover Weekly” playlist that gets updated every week and includes artists that you have not yet listened to. Artists who would normally go under the radar on a platform like the iTunes Music Store are introduced to more fans through these curated playlists.
Musicians, as with other artists, have been negatively impacted by the move to digital life. No longer are physical copies of music as valued when you can easily purchase them online for a fraction of the price. As a user of Spotify, I realize that my convenience is at the expense of my favorite artists, however, there are some ways to help alleviate the effects of music going digital.
One way of doing so is by purchasing physical copies of music, alongside streaming them. Personally, I enjoy collecting vinyl records, although you can also enjoy CDs or even cassettes. Another way of helping out your favorite musicians is by supporting them in concert or through purchasing merchandise, especially if they are smaller, up-and-coming artists. Lastly, you can advocate for change through petitions such as with the “Justice at Spotify” movement.
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