More Math

Subject: Re: Re-Van Dyke Parks - am I out of date?

Hi Bob,

Van Dyke Parks says that Apple takes 50 cents out of every 99 cents on iTunes.

I thought it was 30 cents. Am I out of date?

And, I thought most of the 'hit' songs are $1.29. Not 99 cents.

When was the last time he checked?

John Parikhal

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Subject: Re: Van Dyke Parks math

Mr. Parks also flubbed the iTunes model. Apple takes 30 cents out of 99 not 50 cents as he mentioned.

Ricky Schultz

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"Forty years ago, co-writing a song with Ringo Starr would have provided me a house and a pool. Now, estimating 100,000 plays on Spotify,"

Parks is not even remotely close to estimating what a "hit" is in terms of Spotify streaming play numbers. Just like his incorrect citation of the Spotify royalty rate, his use of the number 100,000 streams constituting a hit is likely also off by a factor of 100.

In the early 70s, Ringo had a few songs that made the Billboard Top 10 (Ringo's Top 10 Billboard Hits: http://www.billboard.com/articles/list/5893949/ringo-starr-top-10-billboard-hits-hot-100-chart). Assuming that Ringo could still make a hit record - not to mention just one hit single - today (and there are myriad odds against that as it is), let's take a look at numbers for a contemporary album that has had roughly similar popular success - say, Lorde's Pure Heroine. While Royals has over 160,000,000 plays, even the least popular song on that album that has a play count - Bravado - has over 11,000,000 plays. So even if Parks managed to write a B-side track on a hit record from Ringo, 11,000,000 plays would net them between $66,000 and $92,400. If their song had numbers equivalent to Royals, he'd be netting $960,000 - $1,344,000.

So, the former isn't quite enough for a house and pool (maybe just a really nice pool), but with a hit, you can certainly buy a relatively swanky piece of real estate.

and PS - we're talking income solely from Spotify alone! Not to mention iTunes, Amazon, YouTube, Pandora, and everything else you can think of...

-Sasha Brown

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From: Dave at EAR/Rational Music
Subject: Re: Re-Van Dyke Parks

Hi Bob,

VDP also claims that $0.02 in 1909 amounts to $2 now. Not even close. $0.02 is about $0.53 in today's money. If you're going to make an argument based on math, get the math right, or leave it out!

(Source: http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm, which goes as far back as 1913, and http://www.westegg.com/inflation/)

Dave

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Subject: Re: Re-Van Dyke Parks

On average we have seen Spotify payouts almost double in the last year on a per stream basis.

Going from about a sixth of a cent per stream to almost a third of a cent per stream.

The record business is now like the publishing business always was, a business of pennies.
You need to collect as many pennies from as many sources as possible.

Beat's having your property stolen.

Peter Barker
Producer A&R
Spin Move Records

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Bob, Dale is quoting the gross rates for the recording & composition, the majority of which goes to record companies/aggregators, and Park is talking about the publishers or probably his PRO share. Almost everyone working in the digital world is tied to NDA's, and there is a huge difference in rates and splits between services, content providers, countries etc. The problem is a lack of transparency from almost all the players, at every level.

Name withheld
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From: Jason Finn

Hi Bob,

Let's see….

Item the first: while I'm no phoenix in the math dept, Dale Cooper's version of the streaming math jibes way more than VDP's in my experience. I'm the drummer/management surrogate for the Presidents of the United States of America (our ex-guitarist/current co-rights holder Dave Dederer has written you before). We are a part-time concern now, our biggest (passive) asset being "the popular one", our first album; which sold gazillions of copies and had big hits back when that was a thing. Back when you'd lean back with a glass of Barolo and lecture younger musicians about how "publishing is so much more important than touring".

anyhoo….

our bread and butter was iTunes for years. Mostly Lump and Peaches money, to your point about singles. Thousands of people every month dl the hits, precious few get the record. It's going down, slower than I thought it would, but it's going down. Hindenburg down. BUT our streaming revenue rises ever so gently….

without mentioning actuals…..if "X" is monthly iTunes income (this used to be so large as piece of the pie that we'd look solely at it in quarterlies)

and "Y" is streaming income (again, back in the wild west days ('05?) this was teensy tiny…some company called the "orchard" or something was only a gleam, and not to be acknowledged, since we had a SWEET DEAL with IODA.

anyhoo….

X was our whole pie in '05, and Y was maybe 5% of X. In '14, Our X pie is down, but Y is about 60% of X and noticeably on the rise Q to Q. In other words, we are holding more or less steady, and are pretty handsome for a bunch of late 40's guys!

CROWD FUNDING

I could talk for hours too about how we crowd-funded our '14 album…..raised 100k in 60 days, and to date have sold 4k or so on the open market (not including the 2k who pre-bought of course), which for OLD GUYS who are interested only in OUR FANS and have NOT ENOUGH TIME to circle the globe GROWING THE BRAND is pretty good…..

BTW after all costs, including vinyl and some pub and whatnot, we cut checks to ourselves for about 5k apiece from the Pledge campaign. Small Business. Ringo Starr would be SO JEALOUS if he heard this, so don't tell him.

ps: cut any of this if it's insane, or defames BEATLES_INC_DOTCOM

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I co-wrote a song on Ringo's 1978 'Bad Boy' album and want to know where my house and pool are.

Best
John Pidgeon

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Below is a link to a screenshot of what I make per stream on Spotify. As you can see, it varies. But sometimes it's WELL under the .006-.008 that is stated. For these 14 streams, I made 3.3 cents. Obviously not a living, but it's still something.

My 3.3 cents,

Brian Martin, bmartinsounds

http://bit.ly/1l4QpyP

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Bob:

Dale Cooper's comment about Van Dyke Parks' math is unfortunately off-the-mark. Dale was referencing the "artist royalty" that Van Dyke Parks would have received; while Van Dyke Parks was complaining about how low his songwriter royalties were, a totally different revenue stream with a very different calculation. Spotify pays publishing royalties in a very different way than they pay on the artist/label side. While the artist/label side is by contract between the rights owner (typically the label) and the service, the publishing is covered by a statutory license under section 115. Publishers (and songwriters) are entitled to 10.5% of Spotify's revenue (less any amounts paid to ASCAP, BMI and SESAC for public performance fees). When you sprinkle 10.5% of revenue over billions of tracks played, the per stream rate is going to be very, very low. Spotify's comments about scale are true: as they grow more premium users they will increase revenue which will generate higher "per-stream"
rates. Until that happens, musicians are in for a tough time with extremely low payouts for listens.

Best regards,

John

John L. Simson
Executive-in-Residence
Business and Entertainment Program Director
Kogod School of Business
American University
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20016

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As you probably know, the major labels contribute to the perception that Spotify is bad for artists.

If you own lots of good masters and have built a solid following, you don't need to be Beyonce to earn impressive money. I work with artists that already benefit enormously and so far Spotify has barely scratched the surface of the marketplace. It is almost inevitable that Spotify (or some service doing a similar function) will supplant iTunes as the Indie artists' best friend.

But if your masters are controlled by major label you get paid a fraction of the streaming revenue that your music generates.

I'm afraid I need to remain anonymous in writing this. I could be much more specific but I like my job too much. But I think you have it completely right when you say Spotify is a good thing. My one small issue with your comments is that the long tail will play out differently with streaming. Unlike downloads where you had to pay to dig deep, Spotify encourages you to explore and discover new (and old) music.

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Dear fellow Bean Counters,
I have solicited a sharpened candor from Spotify, to redress my fuzzy math. I did so via Twitter, and hope they will respond. We all want clarification on the fractional royalties being paid.
It'd also be swell to get insight into their executive wages, and a general idea about their motives.
As for Pandora? In '13, Tim Westergren self-paid a bonus of $15,658,093.00.
That same year, Pandora paid all US (ASCAP) composers an aggregate $11,801,150.
Those are exact, irrefutable figures, and speak to the endemic executive greed driving these income trends for song-writers.

I look forward to what good may come from the hearings (on copyright reform) in D.C. today, and view them as more significant in long-term impact than a mere Supreme Court decision.

Do the math, that I may be corrected on these fractions---mindful of any theory of value!
Respects,
Van Dyke

P.S.: A poet can survive anything---but a misprink.


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