Musicians: Streaming will sweep us into poverty

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/musicians-say-music-streaming-leaves-them-broke/

By ERIK SHERMAN July 23, 2014

Technology has changed few industries as thoroughly as the music business. But the ballooning increase of convenience for consumers has rapidly become a bust for musicians trying to make a living. A number of prominent names have published their actual incomes from streaming, and the money doesn't even match what they'd get from a paper route.

For example, Bette Midler has written some popular music. She recently tweeted that she made $114.11 on 4,175,149 plays of her work.

Grammy-nominated composer, keyboardist and recording artist Armen Chakmakian, once the keyboardist for the band Shadowfax, tracked his earnings from 14,227 plays. He received $4.20 from songwriting royalties, and because he was the recording artist, he also made $11.50. The record label is also his, and it took in $19.39. The total was $35.09, which works out to about a quarter of a cent per play.

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

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Another musician, Damon Krukowski, estimated that it would take "songwriting royalties for roughly 312,000 plays on Pandora to earn us the profit of one -- one -- LP sale." He went on to explain that the royalties he would see from one CD sale is the equivalent to 47,680 plays on Spotify. He'll get additional payments for his work as a performer with the two other members of the band Galaxy 500. The group registered 64 recordings with Pandora. For one fiscal quarter in 2012, that came to an additional $64.17.

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"The record labels could make a case that they don't need to share royalties with artists whose sales don't cross a certain threshold. If you're Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber, you have no problem. But otherwise, you would get no royalties. The nature of these deals are that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer."
Streaming music can be a great deal for the avid listener. The question is whether we'll continue having an emerging supply of new musicians if streaming takes over, or will everyone have to get accustomed to one oldies station after another?