I kind of get it and agree. And TBH, streaming services are not really supporting the artist similar to buying the actual CD. In most cases, ripping an illegal copy and streaming an entire album once are effectively putting the same amount of money in an artist's pocket. (And that's why Adele and Taylor Swift keep their new albums off streaming services for at least a month after release.)
Streaming services don't have to pay a per-play standard fee. They actually allocate a proportion of revenue to royalties then divide the total cumulative plays for all tracks by that amount and then pay royalties based on the per play estimate. So it kind of looks like this:
$255,000,000 Revenue -> 70% to Royalties
$178,500,000 Royalty Bucket.
~31,000,000,000 streams for January 2018
Per stream royalty: $.005758
Utada gets 1,000,000 streams in a month: $5,758 royalty sent to her label. Her label will take at least 80% of that, and Utada will get: $1,151.
Utada's manager then takes their 20%, and her agent gets their 15%, which leaves Utada with: $748.
Effectively, you stream her entire discography this month and she makes maybe 7 cents. You buy her entire discography and she maybe gets $1 per single and maybe $2-3 per album, so she takes home $60-100.
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Originally Posted by thinkingoutloud89
^the illegal downloading thing is debatable. i download almost everything that is not on apple music illegal, but they way you put it is also wrong. Depending on how you see it, do you really need each and everything you download? I have trillions of songs I never listen to - if I would buy music physically I would have much less but prioritize my listening habits. Maybe that is why everyone (including me) is out of touch with what they own and demand new music every week after a new release.
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I agree on the "needing everything" thing. It's a lot better for you personally to spend money on the albums you really like and plan to hold on to for a long time. I wish more artists did special packaging for collector's editions. Like, Bjork's new Utopia album: If it came in a metal case with a photobook, I would easily drop $100 on it. The best edition I could find cost me $18 and it's still a very minimal looking package that will fall apart over the years. But I have it sitting on my desk because it's such a big record to me. I also plan on buying aMEI's last three albums off eBay as soon as I save the money for them.
So, my attitude with this is that streaming services should be like a trial of the music. You either get a maximum number of streams every month, or you get a maximum number of streams per song or per album. If you truly love the song, you need to buy the CD. Spotify is just Napster with a paywall.
For me, I wish things like the mixes on YouTube from Fluidified and Ambient could be bought. I would totally spend the money to hold onto all of the Ambient channel's Ambient mixes. But I think I should also clean out my media drive and delete things like Ayu's old tours and TV shows that I don't have on actual disks. And then just buy the discs if I really really want to hang onto it. The more crap you own, the less you value any one piece of it.
But in my defense in wanting more new music, it depends on the artist. With aMEI, I am still listening to Story Thief as much as I did when it first came out back on December 12. I am still listening to Bjork's Utopia as often as I did when it came out back in November. I think music itself is just oversaturated and the people who are releasing music aren't doing anything attention-grabbing with it. I love Taylor Swift's Reputation, but I just can't bring myself to buy it.
I have scattered thoughts on this stuff. But I do hope Utada's next album is available for purchase outside of Japan without a bunch of obstacles. I've always wanted to buy her records directly, but I am not going to spend another $40 for shipping after already spending $40 on the CD... unless it's packaged in a way that will keep it intact for a long time, or unless I find myself listening to it a lot for months.