As someone who has been making music for about a decade now, I never thought I’d be getting paid to do it. No matter how small the gig is or how few streams on Spotify, I get money for my music. In today’s era — streaming is king. Gone are the days of regularly purchasing $12 albums from Wal-Mart when we can have more music than we could ever ask for $5 a month. This model has led to us being able to listen to anything we want on demand.
However, it has also lead to pirating. Pirating has always been a thing (R.I.P. Napster and Limewire) but, there are many people who will download leaked albums or listen to a slightly faster version of the song on YouTube just to save a dollar. Now you may be thinking, “Well music artists make a lot of money anyway and me not paying for this won’t hurt their pockets at all!” but honestly, it does. Believe it or not, streaming services only pay on average $0.0113 per stream. For a small artist like myself, that means I would have to get played 100 times to make a dollar. Now music isn’t my career choice, but it does hurt my wallet’s feelings knowing that I have to get 1000 streams to make my money back on what it costs to place a song up on digital distribution.
So, you can imagine what it’s like to be an aspiring artist and making so little while trying to break through the underground or the mainstream. I have a group of friends I used to make music with, two of the four work for Atlantic Records as engineers and three of the four have toured within the past two years. That may seem like success on the surface, but they also must work multiple jobs to support their living expenses. It’s easy to get music for free, but you would be doing your favorite artists a great service by actually purchasing their music directly instead of streaming. They see more of the money per person and deservingly so. Another way you could support them is going to their shows and buying their merchandise. Chance the Rapper revolutionized the music industry by making his music free, but he makes up those costs with his live events, merchandise and endorsements.
If you would really like one of your favorite low-key artists to make it to the spotlight, help them out by purchasing what they have on iTunes instead of streaming on Apple Music. Go buy their hats, T-shirts, vinyls, etc. It’s a lot of hard work making music marketing yourself and being consistent, and as powerful as music is, artists deserve to see the fruits of their labor. Think of it as tipping your waiters and waitresses for a wonderful night out. Oh and while you’re at it, you can support me! In the most shameless of plugs, just Google MoonManFlo and the rest is up to you. Support your local artists!
Derrick Florence, a Contributing Writer for the Voice, can be reached for comment at DFlorence18@wooster.edu.