This chart popped up on my Roon feed today, but there is no source given for the data quoted. Does it look reasonable? The OP said he used Bandcamp for uploading his music.
P.S. I’m a Qobuz subscriber with a life time Roon experience.
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Certainly does to me.
For Tidal, that means I can give $1,000 to an artists if I repeat play their song for 6months continually. Over 2 years for Spotify.
Presto Music Streaming which is classical and jazz focused sent these stats to their subscribers today. Apparently this album was their most heavily streamed of all in 2024. It shows the fees paid by all the streaming services, but including Presto.
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not sure why presto have done this for a specific album - maybe to do with the structure of their payments - higher for frequently streamed albums? i have stuck to qobuz partly for their better payments to artists - i would need to see independent figures to consider switching.
I have seen a similar graphic previously showing that Qobuz are one of the, if not the highest payer.
Remember though, that it’s the label that gets paid, which gets distributed to the label, management company, song writer, artiste, etc.
DG…
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Presto explain their approach at some length on their website. They do it on a time-played rather than tracks or album played basis as they think this gives the artists more, especially as few people play whole albums or even necessarily whole tracks. The reason for this album to illustrate it is just for interest. The email gave another album too, but this was the top-played album in 2024.
Presto is relatively new, but I prefer it to Qobuz, not least because the new recordings feature isn’t cluttered with pop/rock music that is of no interest to me.
i have just visited the presto website and found an article on remuneration but am not able to open it - perhaps i would have to sign up to find out if i should consider signing up?
Here you go. I’m not sure that Richard will let me provide the link, but here is the content.
If you go to the Presto home page and follow the link to “Start a free trial now”, tap that and you get all the info. You don’t have to actually start a free trial!
Fair play - How much do different streaming services pay?
by Chris O’Reilly
Since launching our streaming service in 2023, we’ve been stating that the combination of paying rightsholders per second (rather than ‘per play’) AND focussing purely on classical and jazz repertoire means that we’re often paying out up to 10x more than other major streaming services.
Eighteen months on we feel it is time to start illustrating this with data from specific albums. We’ve picked a few prominent recent releases to demonstrate this here. As payments from services to labels are not based on specific ‘per play’ rates (but instead calculated according to total streams and total revenue each month) there is limited data as to exactly ‘who pays what’ in the public domain. After extensive research through articles and statistics published online over the last few years, and with the help of some supportive UK-based classical record labels, we have calculated an average ‘per play’ rate per service and from those have created the subsequent charts found below. (All sources listed at the bottom of this article)
All of these music services offer multiple streaming plans, some include ad-funded options, most have student and family plans, and all charge different prices in different countries, so the ‘average’ here is exactly that. However, we were reassured by the remarkable consistency across the various sources we found, so whilst the only number which is 100% accurate is our own, we have very high confidence in the broad accuracy of these graphs.
The other thing to bear in mind when interpreting this data is to remember who is being paid here. This represents payments from streaming services to record labels. How much of that money then gets passed on to artists will depend on the agreements between artists and labels, and will often vary on a case by case basis, depending on factors such as who paid for the original recording. Composers are paid separately, and classical ones typically suffer from similar deeply unsatisfactory payment models - a cause which has not escaped our attention and one which we will be focussing on in the future!
We’ve created these charts to illustrate how well a single album listen on Presto Music pays compared to other services, to thank our existing streaming customers on behalf of ourselves (and the wider classical recording industry), and to encourage the ‘streaming curious’ or ‘Presto curious’ to give us a try. This data also makes plain just how unfair the ‘pay per play’ model is when it comes to a big chunk of classical repertoire - especially orchestral music (which is also typically expensive to record). To ensure the future viability of our industry it needs to pay fairly. We’re doing that and hope that in time others will start doing so as well.
Start your 30-day FREE trial today.
Sources:
Plus some friendly UK based classical record labels.
Note: We would love to continually improve this data, so if anyone reading this is aware of any other reliable sources, or is willing to share any data with us, then please do get in contact.
Chris O’Reilly - Chief Executive
Chris grew up in London and studied cello from the age of 5. He never did enough practice to get really good at it, but caught a passion for Classical music which would stick with him forever. He has wide ranging musical tastes, still plays Chamber music and particularly loves Mahler.
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Interesting thread.
I have long thought that a good way of helping less well-known artists get a fairer return would be to pay a higher rate for the first several thousand times a track or album is streamed and then reduce this figure to around what artists get now. This would mean that the biggest artists wouldn’t lose out noticeably whilst artists with a small following have a better chance of making a living from their music. I keep hoping cleverer and more knowledgeable people than I am will get around a table somewhere and make an agreement along these lines that allows musicians to put food on the table and keep themselves warm. I won’t be holding my breath though as we currently live in a period where the wealthiest few percent of the population are getting richer whilst the rest of us have to fight for our share of the rest of the pot.
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Thanks David for the post. You may find this podcast interesting. I came across it on “The Violin Channel “
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Hopefully this is the right linkhttps://stitcher2.acast.com/livestitches/a918154999acc621ba1e135df5249d17.mp3?aid=666ad32e899a1b0012d048d9&chid=65749ad7438c7c00134db16a&ci=GUdH7sTRx5gFnWhc7aeCXM3sF8gJ5-5NkKGlHqnBRaGeK7YS4FbS7Q%3D%3D&pf=rss&sv=sphinx%401.227.0&uid=869e09fad1bfbbc6c6452c8ba4cadc99&Expires=1736661467476&Key-Pair-Id=K38CTQXUSD0VVB&Signature=WoiUyr6AzMnXO7Uaza7UvAnGJuzH6kyNoBfINbYr-6Lbu~ZD9XXBCrt4jYqvTs3PXaVSwMp8IP7EbnWFb35jc5ySuABiePbKk8aitEC9kUUJkJcJaK5Xli2289l82JMLTm0FHLk57S0wsGQkjoFvDQt1XI866QVar854dvzz-RGpSRtCp2cpyHJUft5xQ~3k0gJnyZPM9Bw0r55wV5~pt7Voc2qpzlfWQokwkgAnVUL~vy~4fSaqDeRFLYbkH4-iEBPOW6ZR~FbouWvCKrzNqDgsyhRWE2W0ZzJw7ZsxwyIZihRdi7muJ7UZFWgY6B6EGm2WkD05TbLhwQMg3W1M9w__