We’ve already heard from a chorus of high-profile musicians talking down the benefits of ever-popular music streaming service Spotify, with David Byrne calling the streaming model broken while the likes of Grizzly Bear, Thom Yorke and Amanda Palmer have all criticised the Swedish music company’s comparatively low royalty payouts.
In June, indie musician Ron Pope let us take a detailed look inside the tangible effects he has seen from his success on Spotify.
Now, the number are in on how much a major label musician can generate through the service, and the results are promising, albeit with a fairly major caveat.
Steve Savoca, Spotify’s VP Content and Distribution, has revealed that electronic master Calvin Harris has just reached one billion streams on the popular music streaming service.
Stats revealed by Savoca showed that Harris’ single Summer is the most-streamed Calvin Harris track on Spotify, with over 160m streams worldwide,
Calvin Harris’ music has officially now been streamed on Spotify for the equivalent of over 5000 continuous years, or the equivalent of three streams for every man, woman and child in the USA.
“We would like to congratulate Calvin Harris on reaching the huge milestone of a billion streams on Spotify,” said Savoca. “Conclusive proof if any were needed that he is one of the most popular artists on Spotify.”
“This is a landmark achievement for Calvin and deserved recognition that he is in the elite tier of global artists,” added Mark Terry, Co-President of Columbia Records in the UK who represent Harris. “His recent level of success has been extraordinary and something that all of us here at Columbia are very proud to be part of.”
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Of course, the real question we’re all asking is how much money all those streams actually generated. For that, the guys at MusicWeek have used the data previously released by Spotify to come up with a pretty good guess.
Using the digital service’s previously announced per-stream royalty of around $0.007, Harris should have generated around $7 million on Spotify in total so far.
Not a bad pay day.
Although unlike Ron Pope who remains in complete control of his music catalogue, and who earned $334,636 from a little over 57 million plays, Harris’ catalogue of music is wrapped up in deals with his label Columbia Records.
Records deals such as that are notoriously private and hard to come by, so it’s anybody’s guess how much of that money actually flowed by into Harris’ bank account.
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Still, a billion streams is a fair way off for most bands. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t ample opportunities to make money off the streaming behemoth.
In July this year, LA indie funk band Vulfpeck scammed Spotify by uploading an album of complete silence to the streaming service earning them a cool $20K in the process.
