King Canute didn't have much luck holding back the tide, and the rise of Spotify is making King Canutes out of many musicians.

It's somewhat ironic that as television screens increasingly fill with musical wannabes chasing promises of instant fame and fortune, the chances of actually making a living from music continues to plunge.

King Canute – who conquered England not long before the Normans, back in the days when everyone was doing it – sat in front of the rising sea and commanded it to stop. It didn't.

The sea wins

Given that these days we can barely agree on what happened last week, and that the Canute story took place well before then, it's unsurprising that two directly opposite interpretations have emerged. Either it was an example of how vain and out of touch the King had become, or it was his humble demonstration that a King's power is limited.

But whatever the old fella's motivation, the outcome of the story is pretty decisive: the sea wins.

So it is with musicians holding out against Spotify. The tide of convenience that Spotify offers will win, music will be further devalued, musician's meagre incomes will be further reduced and less music will ultimately be created.

No answer

Sure there'll be some push-back. Taylor Swift and other successful artists can withhold their music from Spotify, like The Beatles have so far, because they hope that people will actually pay for it. But these are really just little diversionary whirlpools as the entire industry heads ever more quickly down the plughole.

I don't have an answer. I think any accountant, who examined the business case for releasing music, would simply say to musicians: 'You're screwed”.

That sounds a touch dramatic. But I have figures. The Information Is Beautiful website has worked out how much musicians currently earn from online sales and streams of their music. Would it seriously surprise you to know that it's not all hearts and flowers and good news?

Allow me to share some of their findings, noting that these are figures for 'unsigned” bands – if you're signed to a record label they are most likely taking a big chunk of this.
Downloads vary. For a 99 cent single track download on iTunes an artist gets 69c. A $10 album download from Bandcamp and the band gets $8.50. For CD Baby, ReverbNation and Amazon it is slightly less. But those are the ballpark numbers.

Adapting to downturn

They seem fairly reasonable. It's less than half of what you'd get from selling a CD 10 years ago but musicians have tightened their belts and adapted to that downturn. You're not going to get rich from downloads, but there could be money coming in.
If someone gets 1826 iTune downloads in a month they should make roughly the minimum wage. Of course there's also paying off the recording costs, which are likely to be several times a monthly minimum wage…

Unfortunately, downloads, like CDs, are now becoming a thing of the past. Just as CDs now sell in fewer numbers and have thus been made cheaper (great business model that!) so downloads are going the same way because of streaming services. Why pay to download something when you can get it for free?

Which, in New Zealand, brings us to Spotify. It brings us to Spotify because most of the other streaming services haven't got here yet.

No option

No Beats or Pandora or Tidal or Rhapsody or...Yes, lots of people will want to offer you music for nothing very soon. So, what do musicians get from Spotify? Each time someone listens to a song it pays...$0.007. Yep, to make as much from Spotify as you would from only one song being downloaded on iTunes you would need that song to be streamed 9857 times. You'd earn minimum wage if in a month you get 180,000 downloads.

So this is the new ‘business model'. The problem – aside from the obvious – for bands is that you have to be there.

Unless you're as big as Taylor Swift or The Beatles, opting out is not an option. Because an increasing number of people now never look for music beyond Spotify. If you're not there you don't exist.



The Beatles: not on Spotify.