and as recently as today, I have been annoyed when artists refuse to allow the company (Napster) to stream their music, and instead only allow purchase of tracks & 30 second preview clips. This happened today when I went to check out a new album by an artist I enjoy. Despite her previous albums being fully streamable, her new one, is not.

I thought to myself, "Disallowing me to stream, will not convince me to buy your tracks instead." as that is what my perception of this practice has always been: The artists make more on sales of the tracks rather than the streaming of them, so they don't allow the streaming. As a Napster customer, I always feel a little robbed when this happens.

I started considering posting on my blog, that I would NOT be this kind of artist, and I will always stream, because I think that's the way of the future, and it's so much easier to reach audiences this way, and CHA-CHING!!

Then I realized. Gosh, I don't want to make such a promise, because... what if when It comes time to publish the music, I find out, that there's really nasty terms that artists avoid by not publishing streaming rights? I started to realize, that if artists have to agree to not be paid for streaming, then I can't make that promise of always streaming my music.

After doing a little Googling, I was SHOCKED to find out, THAT, really is the case! (Almost!) Artists virtually get nothing when I'm setting at my desk listing to their #1 hits. When a Lady Gaga song is streamed 1 MILLION times, she gets barely more than $150!! FOR A MILLION LISTENS!! How FUCKED UP is that!? On Rhapsody, one of the leading streaming providers, an artist will earn $0.0022 of a cent for EVERY 850,000 TIMES THEIR SONG IS PLAYED.  Thats not even ONE HUNDREDTH (1/100th) of a penny!) 0. To look at it another way, an artist will have to have their song played 450,000,000 (That's 450 MILLION) times just to break ONE DOLLAR.

I found this really interesting chart that shockingly illustrates how many sales an artist would have to make to make MINIMUM WAGE per month. It's really quite disturbing. A study was made of 100 of the top performing artists of right now, and it found that out of the 100 analyzed, only 10 of them has ever earned more than $2000 on streaming music. This is all BEFORE income tax by the way.

Now, there are many people who say things like."Oh, it's ADVERTISING!" or "It's just like RADIO, and artists don't make money on radio play!" Well it's not. This analogy is flawed in the most basic way, in that consumers do not request advertising. They do not voluntarily (for the most part) get advertised to. They have no choice of what they hear on the radio, aside from making telephone requests, or changing the channel.

A better analogy is: WHEN A CONSUMER BUYS THE MUSIC, and the STORE takes all the money! When a consumer decides to play a song on a streaming service, they are ASKING to BUY that track for the duration of that song. They are specifically REQUESTING it, AND paying to listen to it. The problem is, the companies (stores) selling the music to them, is not paying up!

What's worse, is that when a customer *DOES* pay up a full $10 to actually DOWNLOAD the album, that if I am signed to a major label, I will not even see a full dollar per album sold.

Luckily, my first album will be released independently so I will get the "record label" share as well.

Here's the real kicker: When complaints are made about people stealing music; it's never the artist, (with a few exceptions) and always the record company who is already making more than SIX TIMES more than the artist is off the music.

All this was a real shock to me, but I will not rule out streaming. For a struggling start-up artist, it may be worth it. We'll see when the time comes. But, never again will I be annoyed when an artist refuses to let their music be streamed on a streaming service.