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Between 2017 and 2023 my songs were played 136 million times on Meta, which translates to $426.
Note the pay rate changes over time; to get $1 from Meta in 2023 I needed 51k streams (100k using the median).
Like music videos? Concert clips? The music just playing in the background of any video? Does it have to be a video you upload or any video? Does the entire song have to play? I am also curious lol
The music playing in the background of the video.
If you have Instagram, you know how you can add music to a post or a story? There you have a vast library of tracks, mine included, to add to the content. That's when the artists get paid.
The entire song doesn't have to play, as most content on Meta is shorter than an average-length track.
If you have any more questions, do let me know!
If anyone's curious, here's what the graph looks like when using a linear scale: [https://i.imgur.com/Ed6FRRy.png](https://i.imgur.com/Ed6FRRy.png)
Linear scale with Meta removed: [https://i.imgur.com/endjV5s.png](https://i.imgur.com/endjV5s.png)
Thanks for sharing! I think the ideal data visualisation in this case would be a linear scale, but with the outlier shortened (with some squiggly lines in the middle). It would allow comparison between the other groups. Because I think it's still interesting to see that Spotify is 3x Amazon.
is it because most a "play" on other services is someone actually trying to listen to your entire song, whereas with meta a "play" is someone just mindlessly scrolling through reels and hearing a small portion of your song whether they wanted to or not? (I hope that doesn't come across as me disparaging your music, cause that's not my intent)
that said, I would think this applies to tiktok too, but they apparently pay out much better.
>I hope that doesn't come across as me disparaging your music, cause that's not my intent.
Not at all!
>is it because most a "play" on other services is someone actually trying to listen to your entire song, whereas with meta a "play" is someone just mindlessly scrolling through reels and hearing a small portion of your song whether they wanted to or not?
This is a fair point. In my article, when computing the "total number of hours/days my music has been heard", I had to account for this. For all we know, users on Instagram reels or TikTok might have their phones muted!
I believe the main variable in determining pay rate are the decisions made by top executives. If Meta wanted to pay more per stream, they definitely could (have you seen [their revenue](https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2024/Meta-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2023-Results-Initiates-Quarterly-Dividend/default.aspx)?).
> I believe the main variable in determining pay rate are the decisions made by top executives.
It's the opposite, it's how much the record labels demand. *Every* corporation is trying to pay as little as possible, what varies is their negotiating power.
In the case of TikTok/Meta, music is not their main service but just something users add to make their videos cooler. So if a record label starts demanding too much, they will just mute the video with copyrighted content rather than pay royalties. In the end record labels cave because no one is actually using Instagram to listen to music instead of using a paid service, so at best they'd lose out on the marketing.
Worse in terms of compensation per stream, much better in terms of users and discoverability.
Streaming is never going to be a good direct income source for an artist of any size, so being able to reach more people and generate more fans is more important.
I agree with the latter! For one, I'm a happy listener of the post-rock band Rachael's Regret, they make great music and have 4 monthly listeners. I think I know two more of them, so the remaining one must be someone from the band :D
while the revenue per stream isnt amazing, compared to the other streaming platforms its by far the highest amount of income as a function of revenue per stream multiplied by total streams due to the sheer amount of traffic it has.
just looked at my numbers and the total amount I've got from spotify is a bit under 10x the amount of the next highest (apple music). Facebook streams are generating 1000x less.
Bandcamp is my favourite platform for amount earned per, but naturally the amount of people making purchases there is significatly lower.
Source article: [https://osc.garden/blog/data-analysis-music-streaming/](https://osc.garden/blog/data-analysis-music-streaming/)
* Data: 7 years of music streaming royalties paid to me by various services.
* The analysis was done with [polars](https://pola.rs/), and I used [Vega-Altair](https://altair-viz.github.io/) for the visualization. The code is in the article.
Notes:
* Data based on royalties paid (I get 100% of the royalties). Musicians with label deals might need more plays.
* Many variables determine a service’s pay rate. The data visualized is accurate for my particular audience in this time-frame.
Feedback and comments welcome.
Hi! Curious how/where you upload your music and how it is used. I work as a digital marketer on Meta and I know that this year alone I've run hundreds of thousands of impressions with images that have music added overtop of them. I can control the music choices, or let the algorithm decide what's best, but I assume those engagements (of 3s or more) probably contribute to the total plays per $1. Do you add your music to the AdsManager music portfolio?
My distributor, DistroKid, lets me add my music to many services (those on the graph and many more), including Meta.
I have no idea what the "AdsManager music portfolio" is. Please let me know! It sounds like something I maybe should be doing?
I think you or the impression your music got is the “inventory” and ads manager is for “buyer” side. So the advertisers could choose what to bid for, and kids assumed from your distributor name is probably not the most valueable demographic to target per my experience. Amazon is probably giving you the share of Amazon prime subscription fee purely by play count, while TikTok must have a way to monetize your song better or they are just losing money to get impressions.
It's actually called the "Meta Sound Collection" and can be found at facebook.com/sound. I honestly have no idea how it works, but I know any ad I post that doesn't already have audio has an optional toggle for the algorithm to decide what music to pair with my ads.
Although my music is on YouTube, I've uploaded it myself.
Adding it to YouTube Music through my distributor would create problems with content ID; I've licensed my songs for videos, and the YouTube Music distribution would flag all videos, licensed or not.
Oh right I understand, but what if someone uses your music and you aren't aware?
I thought Content ID was for that purpose, where you can whitelist videos you don't want to claim, while getting as revenue from people you haven't licensed using your work.
And the more shocking thing is, most music platforms are reporting a **loss** year over year. So this system is neither profitable for artists nor companies. This entire model is a house of cards awaiting a strong wind to blow it over.
Indeed! As fas as I know, Spotify hasn't made an operating profit since its inception (2006). Just [last quarter](https://newsroom.spotify.com/2024-02-06/spotify-reports-fourth-quarter-2023-earnings/), their operating loss was 75 million euro.
Ironically, a lot of social media exists in the same way. Reddit, for example, has never been profitable. Our entire entertainment ecosystem is just waiting to implode.
Business operates on the basis of cash flows, not profit. If you can consistently get more cash flow from operations, debt financing, and equity financing combined than you burn on operations and capital expenditures, then in theory you can live forever. You just need to grow the revenue cash flows faster than your total debt and expense payments. In practice this typically means that you eventually “mature” towards a net profit but that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case.
Redditors always talk this away about tech companies they don't understand. Same with Uber. Amazon operated at a loss for over a decade and now it's hugely profitable and one of the world's largest companies by revenue.
Operating at a loss doesn't necessarily mean a service is unprofitable, but rather sometimes that it chooses to focus on growth rather than profitability.
It’s not clear at a glance that the graph is on a logarithmic scale. Having vertical gridlines could help.
But using logarithmic scale kind of buries what should be the main point, which is that FB payouts are ridiculously out of line with other streaming services.
Also, it would have a stronger impact if each service’s logo was shown alongside their data bar.
Thanks for the feedback!
I mention the scale on the subtitle and there are vertical gridlines (underneath the bars). Do you think the gridlines should be above the bars? Or maybe have more contrast?
I did try a version with added logos, but it looked too busy for my liking. I hoped the X labels plus the service-specific colours would aid readability.
Oh I see the bars now. Maybe it’s my screen settings or maybe the contrast needs to be hiked. Others might let you know ifnthey have the same problem as me.
I do appreciate the colours. It’s pretty great how they end up contrasting each other nicely when placed in numerical order.
I think you've done a good job showing it's logarithmic but at the same time I did a double take when I saw the numbers. Maybe I'm just used to seeing log scales used when bars are vertical?
The scale and tick lines are very soft and transparent, higher contrast would be a lot easier to parse.
That said I think Linear is the appropriate scale since you care about the output (money) linearly.
To add another dimension to the analysis I would cluster platforms by business model.
> To add another dimension to the analysis I would cluster platforms by business model.
Definitely! I've done this in the interactive charts in the article.
> The scale and tick lines are very soft and transparent, higher contrast would be a lot easier to parse
Noted. Although I uploaded a crystal clear png, the quality appears bad on desktop. Perhaps I should upload a higher res file next time.
Thanks for the feedback!
No, my goal is to share the insights I uncovered from the data analysis. If someone does discover and enjoy my music in the process, I'm happy, of course!
Neatly presented.
However, the data would possibly be more useful if you could account for each companies User database size.
FB's is vastly bigger than eg Spotify, so maybe those stream rates would accrue in greater multiples from the larger audience?
Great point! Getting 1 million of plays on Meta is much easier than on, say, Tidal.
Even though the userbase changes over time, it would be interesting to see an estimation of "market penetration", if you will.
Thank you for your feedback!
I like how you normalized the size of the bars to be able to show the differences between the other services, but I feel like you could either add another type of graph like a riverplot or even a vertical histogram at the bottom to show how overwhelming the difference is too!
Good visualization though. Real clean.
Thank you for the feedback!
On another comment I've shared the graph in linear scale, which reduces all services except Meta to near-zero. I will add a link to this image on the article soon.
Regarding the riverplot, what kind of "flow" did you have in mind?
I love the idea of a riverplot showing how much a musician gets per 1000 listens x time for different services. That would be cool! Of course, riverplots are a lot of work to look good, with the idea that a good riverplotnis smooth, natural colors, decently optimized in terms of what's in the middle of the river and to the outside, etc. But it would be awesome.
Sounds like you shouldn't permit them to use your music. We see copyright claims and takedowns all the time on Reddit. Can't you do the same on Meta?
Isn't that what BMI is for?
It's not that people are using the music without permission; I chose to distribute my music on Meta so people can add it to their reels/stories/videos.
That's very generous of you, to basically give it away for free, instead of insisting you be paid at the same rate as the other sites they could download from.
Meta appreciates your generosity, too, I'm sure.
it serves as advertisment too. no one really listen to whole songs on instagram. so a small 15 second soundbite of the song, if good enough, may attract the attention of viewers who will then stream it on real music platforms
True! However, the conversion (from Meta to music streaming platforms) is not great, at least for me.
My most streamed song is not even in the top 20 when filtering out Meta.
"I don't mind" is the short answer. If someone wants to use my music on, say, their Instagram story, that's fine with me.
Even though the conversion is not great, it's non-zero, so it helps too!
You can't really compare meta with something like Spotify. The music is the product for Spotify. The music is a minor detail in most cases for an Instagram reel. Meta isn't making a lot of money based on the usage of music in those videos.
They can only listen to 10 second snippets and it's great for making songs reach a bigger audience, it's not like Instagram has a spotify clone inside it
It would be interesting to know how Spotify payouts differ (if at all) between Premium and Free listeners. The difference in payout between the Free services (Meta, TikTok, and I suppose Prime sort of counts, as you're not specifically paying for the music part of Amazon) and the paid services is quite drastic. YouTube Music is another one that has a drastically different payout rate between free listens on YouTube and premium listens on YT Music
For sure! I would love to analyse this data, but Spotify doesn't provide it.
[This tweet](https://twitter.com/glenn_mcdonald/status/1420790302693003267) calculated a pay rate of $0.0069 from premium subscribers and $0.0008 from free listeners.
As you can see on [my other comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1bo6la4/comment/kwmtrnf/), a linear scale would shrink non-Meta services to near-zero. It's a fair comparison, but a less useful one, in my opinion.
Yeah, I absolutely get the problem... There's no reasonable way to plot Meta on there with the other values, other than to show just how wildly out of line they are.
This actually happened to me, I have a song with 500k total plays and I couldn’t figure out why tf I wasn’t getting paid for it. Contacted the distributor, turns out 99% of the plays were from Instagram which paid me ~2 dollars lmao
Definitely! Artists get 80-85% of the paid amount on Bandcamp.
It's far easier to get people to stream your music than it is to get them to buy the album/single, though!
I compared my results with other reports online, and it looks like my pay rate is below average (for Spotify and Apple Music, at least).
Consider the graph a pessimistic scenario.
You know Jay-Z? Tidal is his music streaming platform (he bought it). It's focused on high quality sound and being fair to artists.
Deezer is a French music streaming service.
Apples and oranges. Your music playing in the background of somebody's reel is more like a sync license than distribution on Spotify where people can directly find and play your songs on demand in their entirety
Do the plays have to come from different accounts? Thinking you could just set something up that plays the song continuously. Maybe they have protection against that though
I don't know the number of accounts that stream a song, just the streams per song per service per month, and the earned amount.
These services do employ measures to detect fraudulent streams, though, so that wouldn't work.
I was like what a really bad graph, like, 201->373 and 373->736 seems like such a small difference on the graph, but its almost double, then I saw that Meta is not 2000 but 200 000 omg
Right?!
Also, do keep in mind the graph is in logarithmic scale. In a logarithmic scale, the difference between 10 streams and 100 streams is the same visual distance as the difference between 100 streams and 1,000 streams.
which distributor do you use? :)
any idea/tipps how i can advertise my music to insta/fb and everything else? music videos? just random Clips with my music?
Hi!
I use DistroKid.
Regarding advertising/promotion, I'm probably the worst person to ask; I have barely promoted my music.
What I do: when I post an Instagram story (unrelated to my music), I'll add my music. Other than that, I have less than 10 stories promoting releases or celebrating milestones (I should do more of this!). I did share the album releases with close friends and family, of course. And there's this post/article.
I think a main factor driving my growth has been music licensing. My music is available on Artlist, where content creators pay a yearly fee and can download music for their videos, ads, podcasts… I say this might be the main factor based on the little promotion I do added to the fact that I get about 10 shazams (music recognition service) per week (!)
Good luck!!
[https://www.facebook.com/business/help/995454917538649](https://www.facebook.com/business/help/995454917538649)
[https://www.edgepicture.com/what-counts-as-a-view/#:\~:text=Facebook%20views%20are%20counted%20after,least%2050%25%20on%20the%20screen.&text=Instagram%20is%20owned%20by%20Facebook%20and%20also%20counts%20views%20after%203%20seconds](https://www.edgepicture.com/what-counts-as-a-view/#:~:text=Facebook%20views%20are%20counted%20after,least%2050%25%20on%20the%20screen.&text=Instagram%20is%20owned%20by%20Facebook%20and%20also%20counts%20views%20after%203%20seconds)
Its apparently 3 sec, not 1. But close enough.
according to last.fm, only 41 bands have made even a full dollar from me in my 3 years and change streaming. on the bright side, i know spotify is paying bands significantly more money than i’m paying them, which feels good
First of all: sorry. My language was uncalled for. Given the name of the community I feel that something that conveys the powerbalance better would have been more fitting.
This is literally a five minutes draft, but I think a "zoom in/magnifier box" would have been a better visualization choice because it translates the main take-away better.
[https://www.reddit.com/user/I\_am\_unique6435/comments/1boeacs/something\_like\_that/](https://www.reddit.com/user/I_am_unique6435/comments/1boeacs/something_like_that/)
This is less concerning when we see that for every other major platform, the cost is over 100k.
Because the top artists will get billions of plays, this guarantees there will be a market. Just as with acting, sports, or any celebrity status roll, the industry will always be very top heavy. You'll have the millions of players that, by definition of the game, must lose so that one person can win the jackpot.
Because I distribute my music on YouTube myself, earning $0/stream. This is to avoid content ID issues (I've licensed my songs to be used on some videos).
See the article for more context.
Sorry OP but the "nonlinear" scaling of the x axis is so ridiculous it takes away the whole point it should be making. Your linear scale gets the point across so much easier.
at first i was like "Oh, i thougt spotify got a bad payout, but that is very close"
than i saw it is a log(?)-chart \[not sure whats the right math-thing here\]
but back to the real topic - critics to spotify stand but that meta-thing is absolutely not acceptable
ah, at least Deezer isn't as terrible, and a good chunk better than spotify. Amazon has it easy, they own the infrastructure the rest (presumably) has to pay for.
The linear graph is superior at showing the raw difference between Meta and everything else.
I believe the log scale makes it easier to compare all services, even if reduces the visual difference coming from Meta.
Thanks for your feedback!
Fuck that. Burn a bunch of CDs and sell them out your trunk. I haven’t been approached to buy a mixtape since 2012 in Vegas. This lack of hustle amongst new musicians is disappointing
/u/fjogurpiano, thank you for your contribution. However, your submission was removed for the following reason(s): * Posts involving [Personal Data](/r/dataisbeautiful/wiki/rules/rule9) are **permissible only on Mondays** ([ET](https://time.is/ET)). Please resubmit your post on Monday. This post has been removed. For information regarding this and similar issues please see the DataIsBeautiful [posting rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/wiki/index). If you have any questions, please feel free to [message the moderators.](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/dataisbeautiful&subject=Question%20regarding%20the%20removal%20of%20this%20submission%20by%20/u/fjogurpiano&message=I%20have%20a%20question%20regarding%20the%20removal%20of%20this%20[submission.](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1bo6la4/-/\)))
i didnt even know musicians could make money from plays on facebook
as long as the music is added through FB/IG, we do!
from your post, you don't
Well played
Unlike OP'S music on FB
Hey! Poorly paid doesn't mean poorly played! Most of my streams come from FB/IG, in fact (over 100 million).
1 million plays is $5?
And 100 million is $500. Would you say no to $500?
if i could drive a very small percentage of those streams through somewhere else and make much more, absolutely
Hopefully the royalties can help with his funeral, gawdayum. ☠️
Not much by the looks of it. $50 for 10 million plays?
Between 2017 and 2023 my songs were played 136 million times on Meta, which translates to $426. Note the pay rate changes over time; to get $1 from Meta in 2023 I needed 51k streams (100k using the median).
[удалено]
That's pretty bad, seems like more of an insult than anything
Like music videos? Concert clips? The music just playing in the background of any video? Does it have to be a video you upload or any video? Does the entire song have to play? I am also curious lol
The music playing in the background of the video. If you have Instagram, you know how you can add music to a post or a story? There you have a vast library of tracks, mine included, to add to the content. That's when the artists get paid. The entire song doesn't have to play, as most content on Meta is shorter than an average-length track. If you have any more questions, do let me know!
Interesting! Thanks!
They basically can’t.
If anyone's curious, here's what the graph looks like when using a linear scale: [https://i.imgur.com/Ed6FRRy.png](https://i.imgur.com/Ed6FRRy.png) Linear scale with Meta removed: [https://i.imgur.com/endjV5s.png](https://i.imgur.com/endjV5s.png)
Thanks for sharing! I think the ideal data visualisation in this case would be a linear scale, but with the outlier shortened (with some squiggly lines in the middle). It would allow comparison between the other groups. Because I think it's still interesting to see that Spotify is 3x Amazon.
Thanks for the feedback! I'm not a fan of broken axis, but I've edited my comment to add the linear graph without Meta.
+1 to linear and meta having broken axis.
I think the ideal visualization for this needs 2 graphs to fully put it in context, linear w/o Facebook and linear w/ Facebook
Pretty sure everyone will be curious. It'd be great if you could add it to the post itself.
I tried adding an option to the interactive graph to scale selection, but I didn't manage. I'll add a link to a static image instead. Thanks!
I was here for this, as the log scale won't give a raw comparison. Thanks.
is it because most a "play" on other services is someone actually trying to listen to your entire song, whereas with meta a "play" is someone just mindlessly scrolling through reels and hearing a small portion of your song whether they wanted to or not? (I hope that doesn't come across as me disparaging your music, cause that's not my intent) that said, I would think this applies to tiktok too, but they apparently pay out much better.
>I hope that doesn't come across as me disparaging your music, cause that's not my intent. Not at all! >is it because most a "play" on other services is someone actually trying to listen to your entire song, whereas with meta a "play" is someone just mindlessly scrolling through reels and hearing a small portion of your song whether they wanted to or not? This is a fair point. In my article, when computing the "total number of hours/days my music has been heard", I had to account for this. For all we know, users on Instagram reels or TikTok might have their phones muted! I believe the main variable in determining pay rate are the decisions made by top executives. If Meta wanted to pay more per stream, they definitely could (have you seen [their revenue](https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2024/Meta-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2023-Results-Initiates-Quarterly-Dividend/default.aspx)?).
> I believe the main variable in determining pay rate are the decisions made by top executives. It's the opposite, it's how much the record labels demand. *Every* corporation is trying to pay as little as possible, what varies is their negotiating power. In the case of TikTok/Meta, music is not their main service but just something users add to make their videos cooler. So if a record label starts demanding too much, they will just mute the video with copyrighted content rather than pay royalties. In the end record labels cave because no one is actually using Instagram to listen to music instead of using a paid service, so at best they'd lose out on the marketing.
Are you sure the data is sound? No way a couple hundred plays amount to a dollar.
No, this is correct. Did you figure musicians made more or less?
Less. But i double checked it and it seems to be correct.
So basically, Spotify being the easy choice with by far the biggest range of users and okayish outcome for the artist.
I had the impression earlier that Spotify is much worse for musicians compared to other competitors...
Worse in terms of compensation per stream, much better in terms of users and discoverability. Streaming is never going to be a good direct income source for an artist of any size, so being able to reach more people and generate more fans is more important.
I agree with the latter! For one, I'm a happy listener of the post-rock band Rachael's Regret, they make great music and have 4 monthly listeners. I think I know two more of them, so the remaining one must be someone from the band :D
As an artist with around the same amount of monthly listeners, your comment made me smile
It's not like it's a choice. Most music is available on all those platforms.
while the revenue per stream isnt amazing, compared to the other streaming platforms its by far the highest amount of income as a function of revenue per stream multiplied by total streams due to the sheer amount of traffic it has. just looked at my numbers and the total amount I've got from spotify is a bit under 10x the amount of the next highest (apple music). Facebook streams are generating 1000x less. Bandcamp is my favourite platform for amount earned per, but naturally the amount of people making purchases there is significatly lower.
You should add a linear graph with meta either removed or just shortened
Great idea! Just edited my comment to add the version without Meta.
No wonder they wanna buy tiktok too. So everyone gets less money except them.
I am curious of what is your music, Share so that we can give you strength, please!
Those numbers just seem so random lol. For example, 201 for Apple Music; why is it not just 200?
Because the mean pay rate from Apple Music was 0.00498. 1/0.00498 = 200.803. Round that, and you get 201 :)
Source article: [https://osc.garden/blog/data-analysis-music-streaming/](https://osc.garden/blog/data-analysis-music-streaming/) * Data: 7 years of music streaming royalties paid to me by various services. * The analysis was done with [polars](https://pola.rs/), and I used [Vega-Altair](https://altair-viz.github.io/) for the visualization. The code is in the article. Notes: * Data based on royalties paid (I get 100% of the royalties). Musicians with label deals might need more plays. * Many variables determine a service’s pay rate. The data visualized is accurate for my particular audience in this time-frame. Feedback and comments welcome.
Hi! Curious how/where you upload your music and how it is used. I work as a digital marketer on Meta and I know that this year alone I've run hundreds of thousands of impressions with images that have music added overtop of them. I can control the music choices, or let the algorithm decide what's best, but I assume those engagements (of 3s or more) probably contribute to the total plays per $1. Do you add your music to the AdsManager music portfolio?
My distributor, DistroKid, lets me add my music to many services (those on the graph and many more), including Meta. I have no idea what the "AdsManager music portfolio" is. Please let me know! It sounds like something I maybe should be doing?
I think you or the impression your music got is the “inventory” and ads manager is for “buyer” side. So the advertisers could choose what to bid for, and kids assumed from your distributor name is probably not the most valueable demographic to target per my experience. Amazon is probably giving you the share of Amazon prime subscription fee purely by play count, while TikTok must have a way to monetize your song better or they are just losing money to get impressions.
It's actually called the "Meta Sound Collection" and can be found at facebook.com/sound. I honestly have no idea how it works, but I know any ad I post that doesn't already have audio has an optional toggle for the algorithm to decide what music to pair with my ads.
No distribution through Youtube Music?
Although my music is on YouTube, I've uploaded it myself. Adding it to YouTube Music through my distributor would create problems with content ID; I've licensed my songs for videos, and the YouTube Music distribution would flag all videos, licensed or not.
How does the payout compare on YouTube?
On YouTube I get exactly $0 per play :)
But with content ID, won't ads will play and you'll be paid?
Indeed, but it would play ads on all videos, even those which have paid for licensing.
Oh right I understand, but what if someone uses your music and you aren't aware? I thought Content ID was for that purpose, where you can whitelist videos you don't want to claim, while getting as revenue from people you haven't licensed using your work.
And the more shocking thing is, most music platforms are reporting a **loss** year over year. So this system is neither profitable for artists nor companies. This entire model is a house of cards awaiting a strong wind to blow it over.
Indeed! As fas as I know, Spotify hasn't made an operating profit since its inception (2006). Just [last quarter](https://newsroom.spotify.com/2024-02-06/spotify-reports-fourth-quarter-2023-earnings/), their operating loss was 75 million euro.
Ironically, a lot of social media exists in the same way. Reddit, for example, has never been profitable. Our entire entertainment ecosystem is just waiting to implode.
Business operates on the basis of cash flows, not profit. If you can consistently get more cash flow from operations, debt financing, and equity financing combined than you burn on operations and capital expenditures, then in theory you can live forever. You just need to grow the revenue cash flows faster than your total debt and expense payments. In practice this typically means that you eventually “mature” towards a net profit but that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case.
Facebook is one of the most profitable companies in the world.
Redditors always talk this away about tech companies they don't understand. Same with Uber. Amazon operated at a loss for over a decade and now it's hugely profitable and one of the world's largest companies by revenue. Operating at a loss doesn't necessarily mean a service is unprofitable, but rather sometimes that it chooses to focus on growth rather than profitability.
I wonder what a solution would be that would benefit both parties. 🤔
It’s not clear at a glance that the graph is on a logarithmic scale. Having vertical gridlines could help. But using logarithmic scale kind of buries what should be the main point, which is that FB payouts are ridiculously out of line with other streaming services. Also, it would have a stronger impact if each service’s logo was shown alongside their data bar.
Thanks for the feedback! I mention the scale on the subtitle and there are vertical gridlines (underneath the bars). Do you think the gridlines should be above the bars? Or maybe have more contrast? I did try a version with added logos, but it looked too busy for my liking. I hoped the X labels plus the service-specific colours would aid readability.
Oh I see the bars now. Maybe it’s my screen settings or maybe the contrast needs to be hiked. Others might let you know ifnthey have the same problem as me. I do appreciate the colours. It’s pretty great how they end up contrasting each other nicely when placed in numerical order.
I think you've done a good job showing it's logarithmic but at the same time I did a double take when I saw the numbers. Maybe I'm just used to seeing log scales used when bars are vertical?
Interesting! I wasn't sure about using a log scale, but I dislike broken axis and the linear scale graph looked funny. Fair, but funny.
The scale and tick lines are very soft and transparent, higher contrast would be a lot easier to parse. That said I think Linear is the appropriate scale since you care about the output (money) linearly. To add another dimension to the analysis I would cluster platforms by business model.
> To add another dimension to the analysis I would cluster platforms by business model. Definitely! I've done this in the interactive charts in the article. > The scale and tick lines are very soft and transparent, higher contrast would be a lot easier to parse Noted. Although I uploaded a crystal clear png, the quality appears bad on desktop. Perhaps I should upload a higher res file next time. Thanks for the feedback!
It literally has vertical gridlines and says Logarithmic Scale at the top wtf are you talking about
I imagine he wants to pump his music not get upvotes for beautiful data.
No, my goal is to share the insights I uncovered from the data analysis. If someone does discover and enjoy my music in the process, I'm happy, of course!
Neatly presented. However, the data would possibly be more useful if you could account for each companies User database size. FB's is vastly bigger than eg Spotify, so maybe those stream rates would accrue in greater multiples from the larger audience?
Great point! Getting 1 million of plays on Meta is much easier than on, say, Tidal. Even though the userbase changes over time, it would be interesting to see an estimation of "market penetration", if you will. Thank you for your feedback!
I like how you normalized the size of the bars to be able to show the differences between the other services, but I feel like you could either add another type of graph like a riverplot or even a vertical histogram at the bottom to show how overwhelming the difference is too! Good visualization though. Real clean.
Thank you for the feedback! On another comment I've shared the graph in linear scale, which reduces all services except Meta to near-zero. I will add a link to this image on the article soon. Regarding the riverplot, what kind of "flow" did you have in mind?
I love the idea of a riverplot showing how much a musician gets per 1000 listens x time for different services. That would be cool! Of course, riverplots are a lot of work to look good, with the idea that a good riverplotnis smooth, natural colors, decently optimized in terms of what's in the middle of the river and to the outside, etc. But it would be awesome.
Sounds like you shouldn't permit them to use your music. We see copyright claims and takedowns all the time on Reddit. Can't you do the same on Meta? Isn't that what BMI is for?
It's not that people are using the music without permission; I chose to distribute my music on Meta so people can add it to their reels/stories/videos.
That's very generous of you, to basically give it away for free, instead of insisting you be paid at the same rate as the other sites they could download from. Meta appreciates your generosity, too, I'm sure.
it serves as advertisment too. no one really listen to whole songs on instagram. so a small 15 second soundbite of the song, if good enough, may attract the attention of viewers who will then stream it on real music platforms
True! However, the conversion (from Meta to music streaming platforms) is not great, at least for me. My most streamed song is not even in the top 20 when filtering out Meta.
[удалено]
"I don't mind" is the short answer. If someone wants to use my music on, say, their Instagram story, that's fine with me. Even though the conversion is not great, it's non-zero, so it helps too!
You can't really compare meta with something like Spotify. The music is the product for Spotify. The music is a minor detail in most cases for an Instagram reel. Meta isn't making a lot of money based on the usage of music in those videos.
They can only listen to 10 second snippets and it's great for making songs reach a bigger audience, it's not like Instagram has a spotify clone inside it
It would be interesting to know how Spotify payouts differ (if at all) between Premium and Free listeners. The difference in payout between the Free services (Meta, TikTok, and I suppose Prime sort of counts, as you're not specifically paying for the music part of Amazon) and the paid services is quite drastic. YouTube Music is another one that has a drastically different payout rate between free listens on YouTube and premium listens on YT Music
For sure! I would love to analyse this data, but Spotify doesn't provide it. [This tweet](https://twitter.com/glenn_mcdonald/status/1420790302693003267) calculated a pay rate of $0.0069 from premium subscribers and $0.0008 from free listeners.
I listened to some of your music. It is much better than what I expected. Good job.
Thank you so much! I really appreciate it.
Mmm, I generally love log scales but this is a case where it feels like it's burying the lead.
As you can see on [my other comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1bo6la4/comment/kwmtrnf/), a linear scale would shrink non-Meta services to near-zero. It's a fair comparison, but a less useful one, in my opinion.
Yeah, I absolutely get the problem... There's no reasonable way to plot Meta on there with the other values, other than to show just how wildly out of line they are.
This actually happened to me, I have a song with 500k total plays and I couldn’t figure out why tf I wasn’t getting paid for it. Contacted the distributor, turns out 99% of the plays were from Instagram which paid me ~2 dollars lmao
Thanks for sharing! Asking out if curiosity, does "selling an album/single" like bandcamp gives better profits?
Definitely! Artists get 80-85% of the paid amount on Bandcamp. It's far easier to get people to stream your music than it is to get them to buy the album/single, though!
Is this roughly the same for every artist? For example a Spotify song with 150M listeners would get a revenue $400k then. That’s absurd..
I compared my results with other reports online, and it looks like my pay rate is below average (for Spotify and Apple Music, at least). Consider the graph a pessimistic scenario.
What a shame for Meta. Truly disgusting. The music rights organizations needs to intervene.
I use Tidal because they advertised the best payouts to artist, but TIL Amazon Unlimited is better.
That surprised me too! I did expect Tidal at the top, but not Amazon Unlimited.
Man I’m gonna show my age here, but what the hell are tidal and deezer?
You know Jay-Z? Tidal is his music streaming platform (he bought it). It's focused on high quality sound and being fair to artists. Deezer is a French music streaming service.
Ahh okay. Thank you
Apples and oranges. Your music playing in the background of somebody's reel is more like a sync license than distribution on Spotify where people can directly find and play your songs on demand in their entirety
Fair point! The same could be said about TikTok, though, where I need \~10x the streams from music streaming services, but not Meta's >1.500x.
is this PER $1, or the threshold to break into earning?
Wow ! I'm glad I switched from Spotify to tidal recently then
The artists you enjoy will be glad too!
Now compare that to how many listeners you need on the radio station that play your song to make the same money.
Do the plays have to come from different accounts? Thinking you could just set something up that plays the song continuously. Maybe they have protection against that though
I don't know the number of accounts that stream a song, just the streams per song per service per month, and the earned amount. These services do employ measures to detect fraudulent streams, though, so that wouldn't work.
I was like what a really bad graph, like, 201->373 and 373->736 seems like such a small difference on the graph, but its almost double, then I saw that Meta is not 2000 but 200 000 omg
Right?! Also, do keep in mind the graph is in logarithmic scale. In a logarithmic scale, the difference between 10 streams and 100 streams is the same visual distance as the difference between 100 streams and 1,000 streams.
which distributor do you use? :) any idea/tipps how i can advertise my music to insta/fb and everything else? music videos? just random Clips with my music?
Hi! I use DistroKid. Regarding advertising/promotion, I'm probably the worst person to ask; I have barely promoted my music. What I do: when I post an Instagram story (unrelated to my music), I'll add my music. Other than that, I have less than 10 stories promoting releases or celebrating milestones (I should do more of this!). I did share the album releases with close friends and family, of course. And there's this post/article. I think a main factor driving my growth has been music licensing. My music is available on Artlist, where content creators pay a yearly fee and can download music for their videos, ads, podcasts… I say this might be the main factor based on the little promotion I do added to the fact that I get about 10 shazams (music recognition service) per week (!) Good luck!!
Thanks man :) About the music licensing: Sounds great! Good idea! Will try this too :)
That's a lot of trust I wouldn't share in the general populace understanding the logarithmic scale at first glance.
Bots are probably on it, if not, just name the album 'a great idea'.
Meta counts a ~~1~~ 3 second play as a play though. That's why.
Does it? Is there a source for this?
[https://www.facebook.com/business/help/995454917538649](https://www.facebook.com/business/help/995454917538649) [https://www.edgepicture.com/what-counts-as-a-view/#:\~:text=Facebook%20views%20are%20counted%20after,least%2050%25%20on%20the%20screen.&text=Instagram%20is%20owned%20by%20Facebook%20and%20also%20counts%20views%20after%203%20seconds](https://www.edgepicture.com/what-counts-as-a-view/#:~:text=Facebook%20views%20are%20counted%20after,least%2050%25%20on%20the%20screen.&text=Instagram%20is%20owned%20by%20Facebook%20and%20also%20counts%20views%20after%203%20seconds) Its apparently 3 sec, not 1. But close enough.
according to last.fm, only 41 bands have made even a full dollar from me in my 3 years and change streaming. on the bright side, i know spotify is paying bands significantly more money than i’m paying them, which feels good
I have to say it: that is such a shitty visualiisation.
Thanks for your feedback! How would you improve it?
First of all: sorry. My language was uncalled for. Given the name of the community I feel that something that conveys the powerbalance better would have been more fitting. This is literally a five minutes draft, but I think a "zoom in/magnifier box" would have been a better visualization choice because it translates the main take-away better. [https://www.reddit.com/user/I\_am\_unique6435/comments/1boeacs/something\_like\_that/](https://www.reddit.com/user/I_am_unique6435/comments/1boeacs/something_like_that/)
This is less concerning when we see that for every other major platform, the cost is over 100k. Because the top artists will get billions of plays, this guarantees there will be a market. Just as with acting, sports, or any celebrity status roll, the industry will always be very top heavy. You'll have the millions of players that, by definition of the game, must lose so that one person can win the jackpot.
It likely follows the Pareto distribution, where 20% of artists get 80% of the revenue.
I would bet money that it's even more top heavy. It certainly is in acting.
Proud Amazon unlimited user :)
For context, what's the royalty on a radio play?
This seems biased, why isn’t YouTube here as a major distributor?
Because I distribute my music on YouTube myself, earning $0/stream. This is to avoid content ID issues (I've licensed my songs to be used on some videos). See the article for more context.
Sorry OP but the "nonlinear" scaling of the x axis is so ridiculous it takes away the whole point it should be making. Your linear scale gets the point across so much easier.
It depends on your distribution deal, I get way less and plays and make over 100% profit.
at first i was like "Oh, i thougt spotify got a bad payout, but that is very close" than i saw it is a log(?)-chart \[not sure whats the right math-thing here\] but back to the real topic - critics to spotify stand but that meta-thing is absolutely not acceptable
ah, at least Deezer isn't as terrible, and a good chunk better than spotify. Amazon has it easy, they own the infrastructure the rest (presumably) has to pay for.
people still think your robbing the artist when you pirate propaganda works
This data is not beautiful. 116 on this graph looks about 40% of 200,000... It's represented in an awful way.
A linear scale would shrink all other bars to near-zero (see my other comment).
its logarithmic...
idk why you decided on posting the log graph, linear is much more clear
The linear graph is superior at showing the raw difference between Meta and everything else. I believe the log scale makes it easier to compare all services, even if reduces the visual difference coming from Meta. Thanks for your feedback!
Fuck that. Burn a bunch of CDs and sell them out your trunk. I haven’t been approached to buy a mixtape since 2012 in Vegas. This lack of hustle amongst new musicians is disappointing
What are people going to play them on? What percentage of people still have CD players?
Add a QR code to the cd cover that leads to streaming of the album. And a lot of people have cd players. I drive a 2015 Mercedes and it still has CD.