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Over the past 3 days, I’ve been completely overrun with comments, questions and concerns about Spotify. It has dominated my inbox, Twitter feed, in-person conversations, text chains… everything. It’s obvious that Neil Young and Joni Mitchell have touched a nerve!
Ironically, none of the questions I’ve received have been about misinformation. To be clear, we encourage you to get vaccinated against COVID-19 because the evidence is clear that it saves lives. But that’s common sense— and it’s not the misinformation I’d like to talk about today. Personally, I’ve been astounded at the misinformation that’s out there regarding streaming and independent music/musicians.
The only side I am going to take here is this: Single Lock Records has always been and forever will be committed to doing whatever possible to support independent musicians and their art. Period. It is why we exist. It’s why we do the work. We love music.
However, I do think it’s important for our community of supporters to hear the facts— directly from us— on the financial impact of your listening choices.
Here is the truth: when you stream one of our releases on Spotify, it earns the artist an average of $0.004443692 per song. That’s our average payout for the month of December 2021. I’m looking at it right now. To simplify that: 10 listens earns four cents ($0.04).
100 listens earns forty-four cents ($0.44).
1000 listens earns $4.44.
10,000 listens earns $44.43.
100,000 listens earns $444.36. Again, and I want to stress this: I am not taking a shot at Spotify. These are just the facts, presented to you, the listener. Other streaming services vary in payouts, but you can think of this as a rough estimate of what a stream generates. Many people have asked why we don’t pull our music from streaming services altogether. It’s a fair question, but the answer is that removing our releases from streaming platforms would deem us virtually invisible to the general public. The impact would be felt across every level of an artist’s business, from touring to merchandising to general notoriety. What we HAVE done, however, is try to provide YOU, the listener, with as many solid options as we can to give you the opportunity to make balanced listening choices. These are:
The Single Lock Preferred Record Shop program, where we’ve spotlighted shops around the world that carry our music. The Single Lock Online Store, which typically has the cheapest prices for our releases, shipped directly to your doorstep worldwide from Florence, Alabama. We have suspended shipping charges since the onset of the pandemic, which provides an even greater value to YOU.
Single Lock Records on Bandcamp, which also ships directly from Florence, Alabama to you— worldwide. It also gives you the ability to pay for downloads of our releases at a name-your-own-price level, so you can put a little more in the tip jar, should you feel inclined.
In the future, look for more initiatives from us, including deep dives into the communities that surround the music we release and the artists we support. The pandemic has forced us all to retreat into our devices, sure, but perhaps there is a future ahead where we go back into our communities, dig into our local music scenes and lift up the creators out there that are making the world a better place. I think we’ll get there.
We invite you to stream our music on any platform you choose, whether it’s Spotify, Apple Music, TIDAL, Qobuz, Amazon, Deezer, Napster or YouTube Music. But if the music moves you, we also urge you to support the artist directly by purchasing and owning that music.
Discovering music on a streaming service is awesome.
Buying and owning that music is even better.
It just feels good, and it helps sustain musicians that have taken a serious beating over the past couple of years. So now you have the facts, directly from us. We hope it’s helpful, and we invite you to become a more balanced listener!
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