.@Spotify and @Pandora have made it impossible for songwriters to earn a living: three months streaming on Pandora, 4,175,149 plays=$114.11.
From Bette Midler on Twitter. Twitter / BetteMidler: .@Spotify and @Pandora have ….
This tweet from Bette Midler on Twitter has, once again, spurred my interest in the idea of creating art and how that works in our consumerist, capitalist world.
The modern world comes with costs. You need somewhere to live, you need clothes, you need food and you need utilities in your home to keep you warm, light your home and cook your food. You can, should you choose, try to survive with a minimum of the above; but we’ll assume that many artists live in houses with heat and power etc.
To obtain all the above you have to hand over money to someone. That money has to come from somewhere. In most cases the money comes from work you have performed for someone and been rewarded with payment, or it comes from the government in some way.
For an artist there’s the break between CREATING something and finally releasing for sale in someway. Whilst the creative process is on-going, the artist needs to be able to pay for all the above ‘essentials’ in order to keep creating. In an ideal world (oh how I hate that phrase but it’s so useful) the artist would be able to concentrate on their art exclusively; in reality the artist needs other employment to pay the bills to cover them whilst they create.
Another thing needed to create art in some form is an incentive. Now for many, this is the process of being creative itself. Creating something can be its own reward, and very fulfilling. It can also be a liberating way to pay the bills.
But for that to work, creativity has to pay the bills.
If Bette Midler, an extremely well established figure in the music world, is earning $114.11 for over 4.1 million song plays from the industry ‘leaders’, how on EARTH is an up and coming musician supposed to make it? Many will indeed slog their guts out, living in crappy, ‘studenty’ conditions whilst they strive to create their art. But if the people ‘buying’ their art are paying them pittance, why should they bother?
It wouldn’t be so important an issue apart from the fact that Spotify and Pandora are 2 of the biggest services around at the moment. Spotify claims that they have:
”
- Paying subscribers: Over 6 million
- Active users: Over 24 million
”
SOURCE
If a service with 20 million + active users is only paying Bette Midler $114 for 4 million + listens, that’s not profitable for artists.Some of the responses to Bette’s tweet have been “well, if it’s not paying, you can leave can’t you?” But that doesn’t work either as an artist needs their work to be out there for people to hear.
The latest argument for music artists is “Well, it’s GIGS where the money is at, isn’t it?” The flaw there is that, to get the gigs large enough where it becomes comfortably profitable, an artist has to become well known first.
The cost of creating art and the reward for doing it seem to be drifting further and further apart in the modern world. Yes, people will always create art, but fewer people will do so if they have to balance 2 jobs to pay the bills so they have somewhere to live WHILST they create art.
TL;DR – Art should be financially rewarding for more people to encourage more people to create art.
Thoughts of a late-thirties-male 