Music and Technology

Music is something that is all around us. While some choose to listen to music through ways such as vinyl records or tapes, electronic distribution and recording has allowed music to become more integrated into our lives. Technology’s relationship with music can be viewed in a variety of ways. While the move to digital has decreased the overall quality of the music due to compression, technology has allowed for more platforms and methods on which to distribute, share, and enjoy music.

Streaming

Technology has allowed individuals to be exposed to more and more genres of music as your music is a click away. An individual can utilize technology to explore a fresh new genre or artist in a single evening with the convenience of being able to stream from home. Streaming services have also benefited music artists, who can upload their songs without needing a record label or distributor. This puts music more in the hands of the musicians and listeners if the musician can promote themselves. Although streaming services have allowed artists to reach a broader audience, the way money is made has changed.

Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)

The Recording Industry Association of America gives out awards based on the number of albums and singles and artist has sold. Since we are talking about streaming in this tech briefing, I will be addressing singles. The certifications for singles are as follows:

Singles
Gold- 500,000 units
Platinum- 1,000,000 units
Multi-Platinum- 2,000,000 units

A unit is identified as one purchase of a song or 150 streams of the song. The RIAA keeps track of these sales statistics to honor success of a music artist. For example, the two artists D.R.A.M. and Lil Yachty’s song Broccoli reached 5x platinum last week, putting it at 5,000,000 units sold. One unit is considered 150 streams of a song. This would mean Broccoli has potentially been streamed 750,000,000 times. If you are interested to see how much your favorite artist is making, click the RIAA website here.

https://www.riaa.com/gold-platinum/?tab_active=top_tallies&ttt=T1A#search_section

How much money are artists making?

Copies of contracts between record labels and the streaming service Spotify have been leaked. In article by The Verge, it was found that a right holder for a song earns anywhere between $0.006 and $0.0084 per stream. A right holder can be considered an artist, label, or publisher. This number depends on what streaming service or platform is used to listen to a song. With the Spotify average in mind, if D.R.A.M.’s song received all its sales units from Spotify, he has the maximum potential to make $6,300,000. This does not take into consideration the money paid to his label and the featured artist. Of course artists do not get all of their sales from one platform, but it is interesting to see the surprisingly low amount of money that streaming generates.

Streaming has continued to be a difficult subject for artists and record labels. Although a streaming service does not provide an artist with the most amount of money, streaming numbers do add up over time and allow for an artist to be more easily discovered. Smart artists will utilize the benefits of streaming platforms and other revenue sources such as CD and digital sales, merchandise and live shows to be financial successful.

MP3: The Exploration of Music Distribution and the Exchange to Digital (1/15/17)


Sources
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/music/ [great resource on the way music died]

http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/7/9861372/spotify-year-in-review-artist-payment-royalties

http://www.tunecore.com/guides/promote-introduction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_certification