# Do you make ANY money from streaming?



## ScarletJerry (Oct 27, 2018)

Let me being by saying that I am a hobbyist, not someone who is arranging/playing music for a living.

I published a Christmas album last year. Due to my inexperience with the process and underestimating the time it would take me to arrange/perform/mix my music, the album wasn't released until December 24th, so I didn't have any time to promote it. I only made the album available on CDBaby and iTunes, but I didn't allow it to be distributed on streaming services.

With the holiday season approaching, I'm thinking about making it available on streaming services, but I've heard the typical stories of people making pennies a month. 

Can anyone share their success with streaming? Does it pay to do it?

-Scarlet Jerry


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## Polkasound (Oct 27, 2018)

At the rate streaming pays -- a few cents here, a few cents there -- the money spent to digitally distribute an album can take years to recover, if ever. But I don't do it for the money. I do it to maximize exposure. It's important to me to make my music as accessible as possible, so I choose to bite the bullet with each album, and I never regret it. It's always cool to see that my music is being enjoyed by people young and old, from Amsterdam to New Zealand.


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## gregh (Oct 28, 2018)

nope - I'm lucky to get 100 plays a year. My composing and sound work is very much the triumph of hope over experience


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## Saxer (Oct 28, 2018)

1,70 $ per year


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## lux (Oct 28, 2018)

Even established artists sometimes do not earn a living from streaming. It's fair simple, streaming doesn't pay a dime to artists.

Before streaming, things were different. Niche artists had their fan base, perhaps small and limited. But a large majority of fan contributed to the cause with a proper investment, aka an album purchase. That's how a fan usually showed some love to artists. It was like a one-to-one emotional agreement.

So if you were an artist devoted to "Jazz Metal with Hawaian influences" you had at least a few hundreds people spending each a dozen dollars. If you are an artist like that today, you still have a few hundred fans, a few hundreds streaming and you don't top neither one single dollar a year.

I think not enough fantasy and creativity has been used to sort out this corner so far.


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## merlinhimself (Oct 28, 2018)

I think I've almost made enough off of streaming to treat myself to a cup of coffee


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## Akarin (Oct 28, 2018)

About 3000 streams on one of my tracks, made $7.80. It cost me about $14 to publish it, I think.


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## ka00 (Oct 28, 2018)

Billy Corgan was on the Joe Rogan podcast, talking about how when the tech firms and the music labels negotiated streaming rates, the music labels agreed to these crappy rates for artists, and in exchange received better equity positions in the tech firms themselves (stock ownership I'm guessing).

I don't know if that's the whole story, but in my experience directing music videos and making promos for artists, music label people are some of sketchiest I've ever met.


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## artomatic (Oct 28, 2018)

Having 3 (older) albums on CD Baby and all its download/streaming services, I have received about $75/year. 
A very expensive hobby. 
But fortunately, my music production gigs have helped pay for my GAS!


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## gregh (Oct 28, 2018)

ka00 said:


> I don't know if that's the whole story, but in my experience directing music videos and making promos for artists, music label people are some of sketchiest I've ever met.



then they have found a perfect match with IT


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## dciurlizza (Oct 29, 2018)

Hey Scarlet! This is something I've been researching and playing with a lot...

As most have mentioned, streaming is tough when our music isn't consistently relevant, so the goal is to find ways to give it attention. The more attention something has, the more momentum it'll have on various platforms (due to algorithms, sharing, song/brand recognition, etc.).

I think where streaming starts to be profitable for smaller artists is when our music gets out to influencers that have tens of thousands of viewers consuming content. That's when people (fans of those influencers) start to take our tracks and re-publish them on their channels. Often, those channels are small and have even smaller results in terms of buzz/money, but sometimes a larger influencer will pick it up and help it continue with its momentum.

On Youtube, we can benefit from people re-publishing our stuff by using a service like AdRev, which scans all of YT for our music, collects ad money, and gets us paid. On top of that, more people are listening to our stuff, and if it's interesting enough, they may put it on their Spotify playlists (and other equivalents).

That said, I have significantly more money coming in from AdRev than I do from all streaming services combined. It almost feels better to get people to steal my music and repost it, than it does to ask them to listen on streaming platforms.

Not sure how that could work with holiday music, particularly if each song was specifically mentioning "Christmas" rather than something like "I wish you were home this time of year." One idea is, if your music has lyrics (or is particularly quirky), you could contact influencers on an app like Tik Tok and have them make videos with your music. That's something I've been wanting to do with a songwriter friend of mine - I'm feeling like there's a lot of potential.

Another way to go is to reach out to YouTube channels that post Christmas Music playlists and ask if they're interested in including your stuff. You may be able to do the same for Spotify - playlists are _the_ thing.

In any case, it's a constant challenge to distribute our content and keep the attention on it fresh. Takes a lot of experimenting and thinking outside of just streaming and sales. Hope you find some great opportunities to get your music out there!


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## germancomponist (Oct 29, 2018)

It is a shame that this model exists! These streaming services tread the performance of musicians and producers with their feet. I hate it!


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## gregh (Oct 29, 2018)

dciurlizza said:


> Hey Scarlet! This is something I've been researching and playing with a lot...
> 
> As most have mentioned, streaming is tough when our music isn't consistently relevant, so the goal is to find ways to give it attention. The more attention something has, the more momentum it'll have on various platforms (due to algorithms, sharing, song/brand recognition, etc.).
> 
> ...



I would rather cut off a finger than be involved in a world where I change what I do so that it becomes "relevant" "content" to appeal to some utterly vapid "influencer" on the equally inane social media channels for the primary purpose of generating traffic and revenues for a huge tax avoiding multinational. 

YMMV /s


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## Desire Inspires (Oct 29, 2018)

gregh said:


> I would rather cut off a finger than be involved in a world where I change what I do so that it becomes "relevant" "content" to appeal to some utterly vapid "influencer" on the equally inane social media channels for the primary purpose of generating traffic and revenues for a huge tax avoiding multinational.
> 
> YMMV /s



Not me.

The business has changed, so I am going to follow the crowd to get ahead. Staying stuck in old ways doesn't bring growth. I ride the wave and move up the chain!


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## ScarletJerry (Oct 31, 2018)

Thanks for your responses everyone. Based on what people said, I *am* going to allow my album to be played on streaming services. I hope to make a little bit of money so that I can buy a cheap instrument or two.

-Scarlet Jerry


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## InLight-Tone (Nov 6, 2018)

I'm making about $50/year from 5 or so tracks through Radiosparx for the last 5 years, same tracks. If only I could sit down and write about 200 tracks in a similar vein quickly it would be worth it. The music is new agey, down tempo, some dance...


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## Wunderhorn (Nov 8, 2018)

Food for thought:

https://www.theguardian.com/technol...cRR16LM9GDYxHM6y2tXrT0Z005Y5mCRawxs-o2zSvzaJE


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