Streaming Pays

"She says The Orchard model is working for acts of all sizes and quotes numbers to support this. Their five biggest artists 'are making eight figures' and 127 are 'making over seven figures.' Around 2,000 acts distributed via The Orchard made over $100,000 in the past 12 months."

The "She" is Colleen Theis, President and COO of The Orchard. Who also says:

"Streaming is not, she asserts, broken ("streaming, by nature, is inherently democratic"); but she feels the narrative around streaming is."

https://t.ly/LPcot

2,000 acts distributed by the Orchard, the independent company now wholly owned by Sony, made in excess of a hundred grand on streaming alone? I haven't been able to get this statistic out of my head. Never mind the 127 making single digit millions and five making double digit millions (for those who have trouble with the math).

This is contrary to the narrative. Isn't streaming unfair? Isn't it breaking the back of independent artists everywhere? Doesn't the game need to be fixed? Don't we need legislation making sure independents can earn a living wage?

Hell, if you can't live on 100k... You're already a star, making money from verticals other than streaming, actually, if you're making a 100k from streaming the opportunities for further compensation are rampant.

This is just one company. If you ask me, if 2,000 acts are making all this money I don't think there's a problem in the streaming world. You probably can't even name 2,000 acts, and isn't that exactly the point? How many musical artists can one person support, how many can the world support?

Of course the devil is in the details, who exactly is signed to the Orchard, if it's a label how much money ends up in the hands of the artist themselves, but still...

I read this in an article from Music:)ally, I get an e-mail every day. You probably don't, it's behind a paywall. You probably get your information from friends, or frustrated musicians who aren't good with math, never mind the business.

As a live exec once told me, it's a small minority who bitch loudly about ticket prices, and they believe they're entitled to sit in the first row for fifty bucks. In other words, they're delusional. Just like so many artists who put their music up on Spotify, et al, and expect to get rich, or at least pay the rent. This doesn't happen in any other sphere, there's no guaranteed income for someone who gets a product in a grocery store. As a matter of fact you have to pay a slotting fee just to get on the shelf, and if your product doesn't sell, they remove it.

In every other walk of life, if there's no demand you make no money, or very little. Why is it in music those with little demand expect to earn a living? Yes, it's all about demand. Doesn't matter what you think about your music, it comes down to what the public thinks about your music. Do they like it enough to continue to stream it?

Music is now no different from politics. Truth no longer matters. Never mind the truth that most acts of yore never even earned royalties. Sure, they got advances, but most of the money was eaten up in recording. Why is it everybody wants to go back to a past which wasn't so good to begin with?

People don't like the truth. Facts don't matter. Emotion rules.

Believe me, my inbox will be filled with people complaining they just can't get paid, or not enough. They will completely ignore the above. Because it doesn't fit with their narrative.

Music is a hard game. No one needs your music, they can exist just fine without it. How do you make it a necessary part of people's lives, that's the question. And no one wants to listen over and over again to bad music, even mediocre music, you've got to WANT to listen to music. That's the challenge. And if you don't rise to it and succeed...

Better keep your day job.


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