BMI ROYALTIES, The times are a changin'

[guscave]

Just received my BMI statement and had probably the worst payout I've had in the last 4 years. 1st Qtr distributions tend to be low, but this year it was lower than last year.

Ironically though, the amount of songs I have on streaming services has tripled. But the same song that can make you about $3 for cable airtime will only make you about $.17 on Hulu and about $.12 on Spotify.

[andygabrys]

This one was continuing the rising trend I've had over the past couple years. It will probably come around for you. TV is still paying. Commercials are still paying. Movies that have made it to TV are still paying.

re: the streaming stuff - this statement I had 1,059,910 streams and I earned a total of $10.24. Mostly stuff in the 0:20 to 0:40 range. This was on Amazon VOD, HULU, Netflix, and SONY VID UNLTD

that is $0.00000966119765 per stream.

It is what it is when it comes to streaming.

re: relative amounts -

The average amount if laughable especially contrasted against only 52 performances of a 0:07 piece of music that tied up a Taco Bell commercial playing on major networks (including during the Grammy broadcast) which earned me $660.19 (there was stuff on cable as well which really added up).

That's an average of $12.69 per performance - but in this case especially under the Grammys, how many households were tuned in? The Super Bowl is apparently +/- 100,000,000 viewers. The Grammys I would imagine is a fraction of that - lets guess its 25,000,000 households just for easy calculations - and lets assume it played 52 times during the Grammy's which is impossible anyways. So that seemingly large payment per performance goes to a lot of households - which is they were all tuned in on Amazon VOD would represent 52 x 25,000,000 for a total payout of $660.19.

52 x 25 million = 1,300,000,000 which is the equivalent of more than a billion individual streams. for $660.19

$660.19 / 1.3 billion = 0.00000050783795


$0.00000966119765 streaming

$0.00000050783795 network TV commercial

so in this really rough run of numbers, streaming pays an order of magnitude greater than Network TV commercials.

??

WOW

EDIT: if someone read this in the last minute, you will see that I cut and pasted my calcs from streaming and TV improperly at first. I have fixed it now.

[kclements]

My math has worked out just about the same as Andy's. With network, it isn't as easy to see number of viewers as it is with streaming.

This is why I have moved on from comparing network to streaming.

[jdstamper]

Interesting perspective on the streaming issue.

Thanks, Jim

[Telefunkin]

Sorry to hear the dip in income Gus, and Andy's figures are pretty worrying too.

I can tell how serious you guys are about music (as we all are). When this is not just a passion but a vital part of your income how do you balance those two things? Being passionate about something that is becoming less attractive as a source of income pushes it toward being a hobby, albeit a demanding and maybe full-time one.

You gig too don't you? So do I, and although we grumble about gig pay it doesn't look so bad at the side of some of those returns. Run the numbers again - Say, 100 people in a bar, 60 songs played in 3 hours. OK, just joking - but maybe not entirely.

My very modest achievements with recorded music will never, ever catch up with Andy's, so it does make me wonder why I should even try. I won't give in easily because I enjoy it so much, but the prospect of it being a serious source of retirement income (I'm close to 60 yrs old already) look like an unattainable myth without some incredible luck.

Sorry if this comes across as being really negative. I don't wish to be, but its hard to take too much good news from this when people as talented and successful as yourselves (that many of us aspire to emulate) are getting diminishing returns.

Then again - despite the minuscule odds I keep buying a lottery ticket
Keep plugging,
Graham.

[guscave]

Hi Graham,
I actually stopped gigging regularly about 2 years ago. I was one of those who was performing 4 /40 minute sets and only making about $250.00 a night. My weekends were shot and it wasn’t as enjoyable as writing and recording. Today I play only at my church about 3 times a month to help keep my chops up.

I’m not making a living from production music yet, but I’m optimistic (or hopeful) enough to believe that someday I’ll be able to retire on my royalties and sync . I love doing this and would do it even if I didn’t get paid, so I don’t see it as a waste of time, but I have slowed down a bit lately in order o concentrate more on quality over quantity.

[Telefunkin]

$250?? That's worth more than a few trillion streams!!

4 /40 minute sets? Done that a few times, but not so much these days. Then again, not many of my regular gigs pay as well as $250/man now. They did in the past but gig pay has also shrunk for frequent work without traveling crazy miles. Funny how my amp gets smaller every few years, but feels twice as heavy, and 39 years of it has taken its toll on my back. So, music submissions through Taxi was my idea of a low-impact alternative, and I've been successful in achieving that so far - a low impact

I'm not deterred though, and I'm glad that neither are you. Gotta hang on to that optimism!

[mojobone]

I just got a $USD.04 payout on 12 streams of my Spotify single, "Orange Juice Blues". As streaming payouts go, that's not too bad. 12 million streams would be $480kUSD, and if that sustained from month to month, say on a catalog item by a classic rock band, it would amount to 5.7M per year. This is independent of radio and television income; this is from a single streaming service. Does anybody still wanna bitch about streaming?

[guscave]

No bitchin' here. If it weren't for the streaming royalties, my payout this qtr would've been worse. Now all I need is to get to that magic number of 10 million streams...