sparked a debate by attacking the streaming service - but the figures give hope

few weeks ago a tweet by Mercury-nominated artist Jon Hopkins caused a stir in the music and technology sites. "You paid £ 8 for 90 000 works. Spotify shit," he said. He added: "Radio 1 pay about £ 50 for each game." Given these tweets at face value, dozens of bloggers involved in the debate - on one side those who reported Spotify could kill the music industry and others who thought that artists should accept that how to pay me now, many of them saying "less is better than piracy."

have written several articles critical of Spotify in the past, mainly because the lack of transparency regarding license agreements - due to non-disclosure agreements (NDA) artists and composers not allowed to know the details of these and how you are supposed to be paid - and the fact that record companies have shares in the company. However, although I do not think that musicians should automatically accept any case, because it is more miserable than they receive from £ 0 piracy, I do agree with Hopkins.

First, there is no point of comparison for Radio 1 with Spotify. It's a game out of Radio 1 to about 9 million listeners (100 times the current Hopkins). Other hand, Spotify is a la carte, the radio is not. I also think that paying £ 8 a surprise. Despite the statements of my royalties STIM (the Swedish version of the collection company for British composers, PRS for Music) are very confused and do not show how many strands came to pay me what I do, a glance shows that 8 pounds royalties for a song from Spotify, I know for a fact would not have been heard or even close to 90,000 times. - The song has never been in the charts, was recorded by a Swedish group is very small and niche

also that £ 8 was my 50% share of the publication of the track as he was co-written and flows only for Sweden and for a period of six months (the period J 'I paid £ 9 above for broadcast rights to this track in particular). The royalty rate for the recording, which goes to the artist / label, usually five to six times what the composer reached, which would mean that the act that made my song had reached £ 80 - £ 96 (£ 8 remember, it was 50% of the membership fees) for this time of less common than Hopkins said he. So maybe what he meant was that he received after his label, Domino Records, had taken their share (strange noises still offers recording artists today often give the 16% -20 % royalties)

course, these payments are still important, are not sufficient to replace CD sales by any means, and is not the reason I would not take my music to Spotify - is due to several discussions Recently he had with a number of sources of the music industry, while in Sweden, the country where he comes from the music service and has been active for longer.

So how is it that so many artists (and some independent labels) complain of paltry royalties? There could be several reasons for this. First, the fee for taking the time to think. As a composer can take between one and three years, depending on where and by whom the fees are collected. Second, some institutions are better in management accounting and more transparent than others (which is a matter to be treated for most of the composers for the transmission). Third, as mentioned earlier, charges artists depend on their individual contracts with their labels - and how to choose the labels. The beggars, for example, chose to pay the artists 50% of all revenues from Spotify streaming instead of royalty rates much lower. Why? "Because we believe is what to do," said its president, Martin Mills.
part of the reason why some independent labels were removed from their catalog of streaming services like Spotify is his belief that cannibalize CD sales. However, it is difficult to say if it is so early in the game. Mills does not think so, noting that the rate of pay Spotify today, 200 copyright streams for download from iTunes. Few people stand up to these numbers (a look at my digital music library shows not even my favorite songs were passed around many times), but what if there are lots of people would not flow purchased the track