iTunes v Spotify an indie artists view.
Thank you Ditto (finally) and thank you Twitter once again for demonstrating customer power works.
I finally now have a comparison between Spotify and iTunes, as a true indie DIY artists any avenue for getting royalties is a godsend. It keeps my NK bank account topped up for buying new toys for the studio and pays to release physical formats.
We added WIRED to Spotify in September 2009, for me this was a trial to see if it had any effect on increasing our profile and of course if it would would provide a revenue stream. Ditto music charge a monthly subscription of £2, this is never going to break the bank but in return I would hope to at least see some kind of stats, finally they provided these today.
Deep down I knew Spotify was never going to be a viable route for an artists such as Northern Kind to see any kind of revenue from, for me I treated it as a promotional tool and always will do.
However we all read sensational claims by artists over how little they earn from the service. I’d now like to share with you the stats for WIRED: for the 2010 on Spotify.
We received 10,447 full streams of individual tracks, not bad actually. We earned a grand total of £12.39 as the image below shows. Now if we had received this many downloads on iTunes we would have earned £4074.33 (10,447 x £0.39)
With revenues so low I fail to see how record companies will continue to use the service as a viable source of income. For NK we’ll continue to release on Spotify simply because I like the service as a user but I’m sure glad I’m not a full time musician.
Link to image here
