How Can Musicians Make Money During The Coronavirus Pandemic?

“It’s been roughly six months since the coronavirus outbreak sent shockwaves through the U.S. economy…. many Americans continue to face deep financial hardship.”(https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/09/24/economic-fallout-from-covid-19-continues-to-hit-lower-income-americans-the-hardest/). Now more than ever the nation has been made aware of the fact that having different sources of income is extremely important to maintain a living. For musicians, the only feasible form of payment during times like these comes from the streaming of their music. With that being said, many are now becoming ‘broke’, Digital Service Providers (DSPs) and Record Labels can partially be held accountable for that. While there are many ways artists can gain and maintain an income, for the artists that solely rely on their fanbases hearing their work it can be hard to live. Musicians should be given more analytics concerning their work and be paid more for the number of streams their art gets on Service Platforms.

Specifically speaking there can be 5 types of musicians involved in the song-making process. These are Songwriters, Performers/Singers, Producers, Engineers, and Composers).

The payout for all these different roles is not always equal, payment in the industry depends on relevance and work contributed. “The final percentage splits are negotiated and agreed upon by all parties involved. The total of all the split percentages must equal 100%”(https://iconcollective.edu/songwriter-split-sheet/). Therefore depending on the amount of art used by each artist, it is quite easy to not be paid enough to sustain a living in today's society. Musicians can also either be independent artists—which means they don’t work with a record label—or they can be label dependent. Record companies work by giving artists upfront money to create a body of work, and if that body of work doesn’t succeed the artist then owes the label the amount of money loaned plus interest of it. Being independent would mean not owing large companies, however, most Independent artists now have no idea how to work in the music industry which could damage their career as well.

Upon knowing the many areas of revenue sources available, artists could then be able to discern what payouts should look like. For Independents, analytics are given with most DSP’s that show how many people stream a song and from there artists could calculate themselves how much they should be making. However, DSP’s and labels have to keep track of multiple sources of income for every artist managed which make it easy for information to be neglected, “There are many questions about the deals done between the DSPs and the record companies and music publishers – and about the way digital revenues are processed – which remain unanswered.”(https://themmf.net/site/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/MMF_DDD-Part-Two_Full-Report_Web.pdf.pdf) It is understandable that it would be hard to relay all of the information such as publishing costs, and the many different copyright areas, however, it leads to the underpayment of workers. The line of communication between so many different areas can get blurry and leave creators high and dry. Currently, artists simply can’t tour—this is the largest paying revenue—which means a high amount of one's salary is lost, “Musicians in rock, pop, country, folk, and all other genres earn 8 percent of their revenue from compositions and 10 percent from recordings. They rely heavily on live performance revenue, which comprises 40 percent of their total.”(https://www.giarts.org/sites/default/files/Money-from-Music_Survey-Evidence-on-Musicians-Revenue.pdf). During Covid-19 artists have to rely on doing at home concerts which barely cover what in-person concerts would.

With background information attained the streaming pay rates on Spotify—one of the highest platforms—can now be evaluated, “‘Here’s the math: Spotify pays about $0.006 to $0.0084 per stream to the holder of music rights. And the ‘holder’ can be split among the record label, producers, artists, and songwriters.’”(https://www.marketplace.org/2020/02/07/streaming-rescued-record-labels-but-has-it-abandoned-artists/). Artists are being paid less than a cent for a single stream, which is incredibly hard to comprehend considering Spotify charges $9.99/month for users to listen to music on the database. This payment has been scrutinized by a majority of creators in the industry, even well-known artists have made a public dispute about it. Taylor Swift can be quoted saying, “I’m not willing to contribute my life’s work to an experiment that I don’t feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists, and creators of this music” (Nusca, 2019). Spotify has tried to make this rate lower in the past but has not fully come forward in an attempt to solve the problem.

Moreover, In today's society, there are platforms such as CDBaby, Tunecore, and Distrokid that allow anyone to upload music to countless streaming services. All that’s necessary to do this is either 14.95 per single (CDBaby), 9.99 per year for every single (Tunecore), and 19.99/yr with unlimited uploads (Distrokid). Being that it’s so easy to upload music now there are thousands of people doing so every day. Which makes it hard for DSPS to ensure quality payment. The way artists get paid is from streaming rates depends on the type of account the streamer has. If a person with a premium subscription to a service listens to a song, the artist/s that made the song would get paid more than they would if the person had free access to the service. This makes the platform be able to capitalize on musicians art, “Spotify is now worth an estimated $54 billion.…”(https://www.npr.org/2020/08/19/903547253/a-tale-of-two-ecosystems-on-bandcamp-spotify-and-the-wide-open-future ). Considering the fact that this platform has thousand of people upload music every single day it can be negotiated why the rates are that low, however, it still doesn’t change the fact that the platform makes more than the Artists they claim to be supporting.

In conclusion, if efforts are taken on the record labels and DSPs part then artists will be able to maintain a living. The labels could view increasing streaming payments as losing revenue, however, the biggest DSPs and unions make millions every year from the streaming of artist's music who are struggling to get by. It can be understood that CEO’s of these companies would not want to lose money however, It could save the lives of many. Artists deserve to know where their money comes from and the exact amount of revenue they should be receiving, without that information it is unfair to the creators.