While most of us think that it’s a steal to enjoy streaming music at a flat rate of $9.99 a month, unfortunately the same cannot be said for the artists and songwriters whose songs you are streaming. According to songwriter Kevin Kadine, he claims that he has only made a pitiful $5,679 from 178 million streams from Spotify.
178 million streams is a lot and the song in question is none other than Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass”. Even if you’re not a fan of pop music, chances are you have seen the video or heard the song performed at least once. It was quite a hit back in 2014 but unfortunately Kadine has clearly not been able to partake in its success.
Breaking this down further, it has been averaged out to about $90 per million streams, which is actually quite little when you think about it. After all there aren’t many songs out there which will achieve the same level of success, so we only imagine how much those artists/songwriters are getting paid.
According to Kadine, “That’s as big a song as a songwriter can have in their career, and number one in 78 countries. But you’re making $5,600. How do you feed your family?” This isn’t the first time we have heard issues about payments in music streaming. Earlier this year indie labels were reportedly resisting Apple Music due to monetary reasons. Taylor Swift herself even penned an open letter at the shock that Apple was considering not paying artists during the trial period, a move which Apple later backtracked on.