Artist Meager Royalty Statements

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/04/03/streamingstatements

Thursday, April 3, 2014
by Armen Chakmakian

The following comes from Armen Chakmakian, a Grammy-nominated composer, keyboardist, and recording artist.

There are tons of articles about music streaming sites like Pandora, Spotify, etc in relation to recording artists making money or not. Here’s a screen capture of my quarterly royalty statement. 14,227 performances of music (almost every track 100% owned by me) generated $4.20. Notice one performance of “Ceremonies” or “Distant Lands” streaming radio show like Hearts of Space that brings in 26 cents for the full writer’s share compared to 2,088 performances of “Gypsy Rain” on Spotify that brought in a total of 60 cents.

Someone’s making money, and in true fashion with the music industry, it’s not the artists. Business practices like this are one of the reasons I jumped ship and only write for television now.

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