For many members searching for jobs in the music industry, each little bit of income helps, and streaming seemed to offer hope of another revenue source to help make a living from music. However, Spotify, the streaming application that is immensely popular in Europe (and due to launch in the US soon, has come under fire along with the performing rights societies about the minuscule amount that artists actually receive.

Hypebot recently reported that Spotify paid Lady Gaga just $167 For 1M Plays:
Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” was one of the most popular tracks for 5 months on Spotify; being played more than 1 million times. But according to reports this weekend, the Swedish Performing Rights Society only paid her $167. If true, it confirms other complaints from other artists like those of Swedish musican Magnus Uggla who pulled his music off Spotify declaring, “I’d prefer to be raped by Pirate Bay than played on Spotify”.

When an artist starts out with earning no income from their music, they are quite happy to give it away for the exposure it may create. Obviously it is easier for a small band to offer a free mp3 and say “we may have lost a potential $1000 in order to gain some new fans”, than it would be for Universal to do it with a Lady Gaga single and consider losing (potentially) a lot more.

However, the idea of exposure still remains. Streaming can be a way for people to try out new artists without committing to a $15 album (of which, Universal made many, many terrible ones). There are already reports saying that streaming is drawing consumers away from P2P sites, and with the Pirate Bay trial and Joel Tenebaum ruling gaining so much press this year, some users will be scared off using such sites in the future. The Pandoras, Spotifys and LastFMs of the new music industry are an essential part of artist promotion in my opinion, and so I would consider pulling your music away from them is a foolish move.

As there is no way to measure the direct income derived from a person who streams two tracks, then goes to buy them from iTunes, and then pays $40 to see the artist in concert, it can be hard to judge.

I would stick my neck out and say that it helps though.

We’d love to hear your response on this – comments around the Music Jobs office range from outrage at the royalty rates for artists to “that’s about $166 too much”! Feel free to comment below.

Lee Jarvis

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ArtistData is an innovative tool for the independent musician and can certainly help music job members seeking to make the most of their time and efforts. They build solutions to help an artist save time with the “monotonous updating” of their online music profiles, Myspace calendars, Facebook and Twitter updates, and the endless stream of concert calendars and gig websites. Being able to enter the data once, to the ArtistData website, then allows more time for being creative – something that is at the core of every musician.

Named a “Top 10 Indie Marketing Tool” by Hypebot, the Chicago-based ArtistData has created a lot of buzz recently. Rian Rochford of Universal Motown / Universal Republic says “ArtistData has provided a priceless tool enabling us to provide accurate and up to date artist info in the most efficient way possible”, and the site has also been awarded a Chicago Innovations People’s Choice Award.

Founder Brenden Mulligan was interviewed by Tim Jahn for part iof his Beyond the Pedway creative businesses series. Here he speaks about the about starting of the company, and also how artists and startups are alike.

Having only recently discovered ArtistData, I am still learning how to best use it for my music career, but can already see the possibilities of being far more efficient, and also being able to reach new markets and create new opportunities with the tools offered. It is always exciting to see new companies emerge in this ever-changing new music industry, and I feel that ArtistData is sure to be a part of that.

If anyone has any use of the website, please contribute! Post your comments here in the music jobs blog.

Lee Jarvis.

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Looking for something to help you find Music Jobs in LA? Want to learn new skills to help get more out of your music?

Top artists and producers share their secrets at The Producers Conference, a broad set of creative clinics and interactive classes for computer musicians. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to get the inside track on advanced production techniques, song writing, mixing methods and more.

The Producers Conference, Los Angeles, USA
November 14th, 2009. 1 PM to 6 PM. Doors open at 12:30 PM.
King King
6555 Hollywood Blvd.
Hollywood, CA 90028 (map)

Get Your Ticket Now!
Tickets are $30.00.

Conference Schedule

1:00-1:10pm – Gerry Bassermann
Record: Design Concept and Interface – Creating with ‘flow’
Gerry Bassermann lays out the why, what and how behind the development of Propellerhead’s recently released Record software. Discover what makes Record so powerful yet transparent.

1:15-2:00pm – Matt Piper
Unleashing Creativity with Record
Line 6’s Propellerhead Product Specialist Matt Piper will demonstrate how he stream-lines his creative workflow while offering arrangement tips-n-tricks; covering Record’s arrange window contextual tools and navigation, comping editor, groundbreaking tempo control, multiple racks, new devices, Line 6 technology, Reason integration and enhancements, file and audio formats, new authorization paradigm, and more.

2:00-2:50 – Artist Discussion
The presenters discuss topics like: maintaining creativity during production, careers and roles in the music biz, and answer questions from the audience.

3:00-3:50 pm – Kurt Kurasaki (aka Peff)
Signal Flow and Effects in Record
Peff discusses his development work on Record, especially the creation of many of the insert effect combinators and the design concepts behind this part of the Record Sound Bank. He’ll demonstrate the processing power of the mixer channel strip in combination with these insert effects and show how to clarify and enhance music tracks.

4:00-6:00 pm – Artist Presentations

About The Presenters

Gerry Bassermann
Gerry Bassermann is Propellerheads Director of North American Markets and an accomplished musician. He holds several degrees in music composition and performance and currently owns and operates OpusNine ( a project studio in the Los Angeles Bay area). For over twenty years, he has worked for many prominent music companies, as a product designer, demonstrator and musical consultant.

Matt Piper
Matt Piper, author of Reason 4 Ignite, is Line 6’s Propellerhead Product Specialist. Piper is an accomplished musician who makes innovative use of Propellerhead software for music production as well as for live performances with improvisational groups and DJ’s in the thriving underground electronic music scene in Los Angeles.

Peff (aka Kurt Kurasaki)
Kurt Kurasaki, author of Power Tools for Reason 3.0, is a noted Reason user with credits in Keyboard and Computer Music Magazines. He also works with Propellerhead Software as a sound designer and tutorial developer. Known as Peff throughout the Online ReBirth and Reason Communities, Kurt is one of the originators of ReBirth Mods.

Joe Solo
Joe Solo is a composer, producer, and songwriter for his own company Solo Productions, Inc. Previously he served as a composer for BMG’s Killer Tracks, Fox Sports, and worked as a songwriter/composer for Paramount’s Famous Music Publishing. Solo also co-wrote two hit songs, Sweet baby and Glad You’re Here, with Grammy Award winning artist Macy Gray and is currently working on a song for her new album, to be released in 2010.

Michael Elsner
Michael Elsner’s professional career began in 1998 when he moved to Nashville,TN. He began working on projects with such artists as Michael McDonald, Sixpence None The Richer, and Jon Anderson from YES to name just a few. During the four and a half years spent in Nashville, Elsner toured with various artists and in the studio producing and/or playing on countless sessions.

Since June of 2003, Michael Elsner has been living in Los Angeles, CA, where he have played on sessions for Miramax Films, Chrysalis Music Publishing, and various television, album and film projects. Select examples of these include the Ella Enchanted soundtrack, The Ex List, The Young & The Restless, and The Bold & the Beautiful. He have signed publishing deals with a number production music libraries and Elsner’s songs have been placed in various television shows and commercials, including High School Musical 2, Hannah Montana, CBS’s Cold Case, Beyond the Break, ABC’s ‘TV’s All-Time Funniest,’ History Channel’s ‘Modern Marvels,’ Baywatch, ESPN, as well as commercials for Audi, Mazda and Rent Way.

I hope that some Music Jobs Blog readers will be interested in this event. Please report back here if you attend!

Lee Jarvis.

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