I doubt they notice. Most artists either get income directly from fans at concerts, via merch, or through explicit patronage (Bandcamp, Patreon, etc).
The money they get from streaming isn’t remotely enough to support a professional career. Streaming is more about promotion - to get you in the door at the next concert or promote a product with a real revenue stream - than actual income.
Do artists benefit more from ad-dense, algorithm gamed, corporate controlled media outlets kicking them a few bucks every month?
No idea, I don’t use those.
The service I use pays (for the 2023-2024 fiscal year) around US$0.01873 per stream in royalties to labels and publishers. Spotify (as of 2025) does $0.003-$0.005 per stream, so it actually improved massively - it’s only 6 times less than Qobuz (used to be 12 times less).
Or is a guerilla campaign of populist free-at-download distribution better for long term concert attendance and merch sales?
Doesn’t work for small acts that don’t do massive, world-wide tours. Nor for fully independent artists who just don’t have the budget to do larger concerts.
The actual difference is that if you are pirating or file-sharing, you’re about 30% likelier to actually buy music
Cool. Apparently I’m not “average person”, because that doesn’t apply to me.
This is why I download all the music I want. I still listen to it primarily on youtube, but it is a ‘just in case’. I also never paid for music.
I’m not sure that’s something to be proud of
Artists love you, I’m sure.
I doubt they notice. Most artists either get income directly from fans at concerts, via merch, or through explicit patronage (Bandcamp, Patreon, etc).
The money they get from streaming isn’t remotely enough to support a professional career. Streaming is more about promotion - to get you in the door at the next concert or promote a product with a real revenue stream - than actual income.
Sure. But getting more is better than getting less, no?
Do artists benefit more from ad-dense, algorithm gamed, corporate controlled media outlets kicking them a few bucks every month?
Or is a guerilla campaign of populist free-at-download distribution better for long term concert attendance and merch sales?
No idea, I don’t use those.
The service I use pays (for the 2023-2024 fiscal year) around US$0.01873 per stream in royalties to labels and publishers. Spotify (as of 2025) does $0.003-$0.005 per stream, so it actually improved massively - it’s only 6 times less than Qobuz (used to be 12 times less).
Doesn’t work for small acts that don’t do massive, world-wide tours. Nor for fully independent artists who just don’t have the budget to do larger concerts.
Cool. Apparently I’m not “average person”, because that doesn’t apply to me.