Streams compared to album purchase cost
I recently purchased Miley's new album, Bass Persuades, as a physical CD. It was pretty much on repeat in the car for the last number of weeks. The album was played every day, in full for the first two weeks and then went into my rotation of CD's, being played say, once to twice a week in full.
I stopped using Spotify a few years ago and so I thought, how many streams would the album have to be played by one user, for the artist to get the same income from a physical album that had been purchased outright?
After a quick internet search I found a few different answers, but the predominant one being 1,500 streams. Which means Mileys 10 track album needs to be streamed by the same paid tier user 150 times for her to get the same income as a listener buying a physical CD.
Even though I have played it already close to 25 times, I imagine I would play it over 150 times in possibly a decade. It just blows my mind that artists get so little from Spotify. And even then, many people listen to one song from the album, not the album in full. Playlists are what are pushed not full albums. So it would be years before any artist got the same income from a bought CD than plays on Spotify.
Why was Spotify supposed to be the saving grace of the music industry in the 00's again??
Sigh.
-GG.