Yvette Landry has grown used to the disappointed look from fans. They frown when they learn the country singer’s next record won’t be out soon.
As The Advertiser reports, Landry’s finances are recovering from thousands spent on her last recording, which achieved a respectable 19,000 spins on Amazon.com. In return, the streaming company mailed a royalty check—for 19 cents.
“You just have to kind of kind of chuckle at something like that,” Landry says. “I haven’t cashed it, and I don’t think I will. I’m just going to hang on to that.”
Landry’s keepsake is symbolic of a major challenge for local and mainstream musicians in the digital age. The internet instantly exposes their music to a global audience.
But while streaming services such as Amazon, Spotify and YouTube have become listeners’ top choice for consuming music, they return little to musicians. Streams are often free for listeners willing to put up with occasional ads.
Yet the services, which make money off the ads and subscriptions, pay musicians a fraction of a penny for each stream of a song. According to The Trichordist, an artist rights advocacy blog, that payout rate is dropping as streaming numbers grow.
Eric Adcock, of Roddie Romero and the Hub City All Stars, calls the payout “embarrassingly shameful.” The band’s 2016 CD “Gulfstream” was nominated for two Grammys and received more than 100,000 spins on Spotify. Based on Spotify’s pay rate of $.00058 per stream, the band received $58.
“It would take over 288 million plays of ‘Gulfstream’ for me as a writer to earn that in a royalty,” says Adcock. “When is the last time you paid .00058 cents for anything?
