Spotify – ersättning eller complement or substitute

(In english below, since my posts about Spotify are read internationally)

Swe: Vi fick just senaste kvartalsrapporten från vår viktigaste distributör, Phonofile i Norge. Trevliga killar, bra kommunikation och eftersom de har alla roliga webbutiker som Itunes, Spotify m.m. så är det alltid spännande att få deras rapporter. Som små presenter varje kvartal.

Som förra rapporten, så fick vårt mest framgångsrika band, The Modesty, en del spelningar. 4430 spelningar på dessa tre månader, vilket är helt okej tycker jag. Det skapade en intäkt på 5,53 kronor.

Jag börjar fundera på vad Spotify egentligen är. Själva säger de sig vara en ekvivalent till reklamradio – och tycker musikerna får bättre betalt än i det mediet. Vilket är sant. Men i praktiken tror jag de blir en ersättning för musikköp, för folk köper väl varken CD eller MP3-or när de kan lyssna gratis på Spotify? Så risken blir att Spotify gör musiker fattigare i slutänden. 4430 spelningar… Det kunde motsvara flera hundra CD-köp, eller kanske 1000 MP3-köp. Vilket naturligtvis skulle rendera en avsevärt högre intäkt för musikerna. Så frågan är hur man ska tänka. Vad tycker publiken?

En viktig aspekt är om folk råkar stöta på vår musik i någon form av radiofunktion, där jag kunde avgöra marknadsföringsvärdet, eller om folk specifikt söker upp bandet för att lyssna igenom deras musik gratis. Marknadsföringen är särdeles värdefull. Men vi saknar tillgång till statistik över sånt från Spotify. Vilket Last FM faktiskt erbjuder enkelt.

Eng: We just got the latest quarter-report from our most important distributor, Phonofile in Norway. Nice guys, good communication and since they have all the fun webshops like Itunes and Spotify, its always exciting to get their reports. Like a small present each quarter.

Like in the last report, our most successful band, The Modesty, got quite a few plays. 4430 plays in these three months. Which is quite alright, I think. It gave them 5,53 swedish crowns (which is about 0,5 Euros).

I’m starting to think about what Spotify really is. Themselves, they say that they are an equivalent to commercial radio – and gives the musicians more money than in that medium. Which is true. But in practice I think they become a substitute for buying music. Because people wont buy either CD:s or MP3:s when they can listen for free on Spotify? So the risk is that Spotify makes musicians poorer in the end. 4430 plays… That could equal several hundred CD-buys, or maybe 1000 MP3-buys. Which of course would render a significantly higher income för the musicians. So the question is what to think. What do the audience think?

One important aspect is if people come by our music in some form of radiofunction, where I could conclude the marketing value. Or if people specifically search for the bands, to listen to their music for free. The marketing is particularly valuable. But we lack the access to statistics about that from Spotify. Which Last FM does offer easily.

By the way, here are our bands on Spotify:
The Modesty
Tree full of people
P.A.N

Spotify money report

This will be in English, to follow up an earlier post. Since I notice the search terms on “Spotify revenue” from visitors to my blog, I suppose the subject is interesting for you. Yesterday I got the first report from our distributor Phonofile, which has added Spotify to their flora of webshops.

As we are a small record company and not too famous bands, the numbers might seem small, but compared to other services like Last FM, we have a much better channel at Spotify, with more listeners. It seems like a great streaming service and I hope they will develop even more. It is also a wonderful alternative to illegal file sharing, since it really disarms all their arguments: Easy, free and with a great range of products.

Our band The Modesty gets the largest audience and we hope for even more, since they will tour England in the autumn. 8000 listeners from april – june is quite nice I think, and the detailed statistics tells about nationalities, popular songs and the type of Spotify account. The money then? Well, Gramtone gets a total of 6,87 Norwegian Kronor for this listening. Mainly the amount comes from the large numbers of free advert-based account. Tree full of people got 250 listeners and earned Gramtone 0,30 Norwegian Kronor and P.A.N got 300 listener and 0,27 Norwegian kronor.

The monetary infrastructure goes like this: Spotify shares the income 50/50, then our distributor gets 20% and after Gramtone gets the amounts I just mentioned, we share it 90/10 in the artists favour.

 So there you have it. Nothing to make a living from, but maybe a complement to other channels for our bands.

Music in webshops

Yesterday was a stressful one: I was supposed to do lots of other things, but the day started with a happy occation: Tree full of people are now in the first web shops. I found it on the top of the front page in a norwegian store, which are in the distributor phonophile’s network. So people can now start to buy it. Which rendered an intensive work for me: I sent pressreleases, updated the web site and made a newsletter post to all our buddies, telling about the start of the music publishing and release party.

I also put the album on Last FM, and a radio play with Tree full of people as the station will mix lots of beautiful bands I love. Now we are just waiting for the CD:s to arrive, all the other web shops to put it up. itunes are slowest – it takes up to five weeks.

Also we are rehersing for the release party. And it sounds better than I dared to think.