An Observation by an Independent Musician

Disclosure: This piece is not written for compensation or by any direct affiliation with the mentioned service provider(s). The data obtained through the basic account is the focus; however, some of the findings may in fact be related to the contracts established by the service provider(s), which are unknown to the writer. While a referral program exists, there are no links or solicitations herein because that’s not the point. Okay, let’s get started.

Time to Play Accountant

Maybe it’s just me, but when I have very little of something valuable, quantity wise, I try my best to keep track of it. I try to be conservative, careful. That goes for expensive items like guitars and computers, but the main one is money, unsurprisingly. In this discussion, not much money is what I can state I’ve made through digital streaming and sales. Not much. Surprised?

This observation isn’t new — Vince Staples recently told off Spotify on their sponsored stage at SXSW — and Jay-Z pulled some albums so they’re only on Tidal now. I could go on and on with examples. I can’t speak to the math that works out for David Lowery between him, his label(s), publisher(s), management firm(s), and the streaming provider(s) like Pandora. Partially because when I submitted to Pandora a while ago they turned me down, so I don’t have numbers from them. I can observe the numbers that I’ve hit through Spotify, do some math, and see if there’s anything interesting.

What streaming and digital sales have done for me though is clear in the numbers: making entry into new markets, and at different compensation rates. Compared to the David Lowery example above — a simple ratio $1 per 62,500 streams for Pandora— my ratio is $1 per 135 streams through Spotify. Let’s just take a look at a screenshot from the recent accounting available through my dashboard for context:

In red you can see the difference between domestic US and international payment rates

These streams may or may not translate to a digital sale, and the compensation is abysmal by working wage standards, well, even by busking for change by a train station standards, I’ll grant that. But my argument is that it’s hard to get exposure in new markets even with a pretty good web presence — Twitter, YouTube, SoundCloud, ReverbNation — and of course digital store presence for whenever somebody goes looking. Taking a look at these numbers, I see Spotify as actually being a music discovery tool for many users, because otherwise I can’t quite figure out a reason to explain why I have higher than average stats for Norway and Hong Kong.

What may be of note as well is that I have a pretty reasonable amount of compensation transparency in this service provider relationship. Yes, the data can lag a bit depending on the distributor, which I find just a minor inconvenience, and no, I’m not privy to the domestic and international contracts between DistroKid and the distributors — in fairness though I’m not pulling in thousands a month over here or have the kind of profile to negotiate on my own. Having this data at least lets me see how my direct digital income is obtained, which songs track well, where, and through which distributor. I feel it’s really positive and valuable training to have this kind of oversight; even if handing accounting over to a professional management team, these numbers would still be relevant to review.

Like I mentioned earlier though, it’s a lot easier to fuss over a small quantity of something than worry about having a big stack of it, practically speaking. If racking up some cash for streaming is in any way a goal, I’ve got a pretty useful roadmap now. Moral of the story: Get big internationally!