iwatcheditbegin:

taylorsgirlathome:

hashbrownswift:

why Taylor’s stance on music streaming is important

Sorry for hijacking this post but I’ve done a lot of looking into this and this girl is NOT kidding.

This is a DIRECT quote from an article on The Guardian: xxx

“For example, Spotify says that its average payout for a stream to labels and publishers is between $0.006 and $0.0084 but Information Is Beautiful suggests that the average payment to an artist from the label portion of that is $0.001128 – this being what a signed artist receives after the label’s share.”

The artist doesn’t get all of the money from the streaming, obviously everyone who works on the song or album gets a cut, so after the label and producers get THEIR cut, there is very little left for the artist.

With a payout of $0.00128 per stream, a song has to be streamed ONE THOUSAND times for the artist to get ONE DOLLAR. For big artists like Taylor or Ed Sheeran or Nicki Minaj or Drake, this isn’t hardly a problem. But for smaller, struggling artists who don’t get hundreds of thousands and millions of streams, it’s a costly rip off. 

For a company that is worth as much as Spotify is, you would think they could afford to give higher payouts but they don’t. Instead, they have become the largest music streaming website through exploitation of struggling artists.

I know it’s nice to be able to listen to music for free but try other sites. I use Apple Music, you don’t even need a credit card, all you need is a gift card balance on your account. AND if you’re a college student or are taking classes through a college, you can verify your college email and get up to 4 years of Apple Music at $4.99/month instead of $9.99. I can help anyone with this if you are struggling. 

PLEASE blow this up. 

Almost all music streaming services pay very little ( with the exception of Apple Music) , most pay virtually nothing.

They are exploiting artists.
The little money streaming services do pay, doesn’t go to the artist ; it’s divided among the record label and everyone who worked on the song.Songwriters and producers are often not given fair royalties either. The money goes directly to the artist’s record label, where it’s not distributed fairly.

These are not startups , These are extremely wealthy companies - They have NO excuse to be ripping of musicians like this!
have more than enough money to be giving artist fair compensation

So many people have dreams of being in the music industry , but if they want to be able to eat and have a roof over their head, they often can’t continue to pursue those dreams.

It’s easy for the artist who’ve made it to turn a blind eye, this doesn’t effect them. However,it does effect the lives of 90% of the music industry , including the people who are literally the backbone of every album ( writers, producers, composers).

This was Taylor’s entire point too.
It’s smaller musicians who are hurt the most.
People put so much time and money into making music, only for their work to be exploited and devalued.
From a creative standpoint , this really hurts the industry.

P.S. Apple in general is amazing when it comes to student / teacher discounts.