Australian singer Abby Dobson rages about small payments from streaming giants – while jokingly asking her fans to send her a sandwich
- Australian singer complains about small income from streaming
- She can make more money by selling ‘tea towels’
A top Australian singer has marveled at the dismal income she gets from streaming her music online and has jokingly asked her fans to send them a sandwich.
Abby Dobson, best known for a 1998 hit and a failed audition on The Voice, shared a “sobering” list of streaming payment rates that currently earn her $3 a month on Spotify.
According to the widely shared list, an artist needs to play a song 314 times to earn $1 on Spotify, the world’s largest streaming platform.
‘Sobering. Not that I didn’t already know that I now make more money selling a tea towel than spending years creating and recording an album to sell,” she posted on social media.
“So all you music lovers out there, if you buy a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich, with butter, salt and pepper, consider buying one for your favorite artist and sending it to them too?”
Abby Dobson, best known for her 1998 hit and failed audition on The Voice, shared on Spotify a “sobering” list of streaming payment rates that currently pay her $3 a month.
Ms Dobson described it as “sobering” that she could make more money selling tea towels than streaming music.
Ms Dobson was lead singer of pop group Leonardo’s Bride, whose song Even When I’m Sleeping was named APRA song of the year in 1998 and reached number 4 in the charts.
Even John Farnham covered it.
The song has been streamed nearly seven million times on Spotify, but it was written by the band’s guitarist-keyboardist, Dean Manning.
Spotify is worth $31 billion and earned an estimated $19.7 billion last year, but its shareholders could argue they also want sandwiches delivered.
Because Spotify has to pay royalties, it has never made a profit. That is expected to change when the goal of one billion users by 2030 is reached.
The earning power of artists like Ms. Dobson is better on Amazon Music, where she would make money from 249 plays.
But it’s not as good as Apple Music, where 125 streams earn $1.
The best of all the major streaming services is Tidal, which only requires 78 plays. Still not great, but better.
YouTube is among the worst, where 500 streams equal $1.
In Pandora’s Box the number is 752 and in Deezer it is a disastrous 909.
It’s no wonder that many artists prefer the more underground Bandcamp platform, which allows artists to control how they sell, set their own prices, and give users the option to pay more.
When a fan buys something on Bandcamp, on average 82 percent of the money goes to the artist or their label, usually within two days.
Amyl and the Sniffers, Courtney Barnett, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and Ms Dobson are among the Australian artists on Bandcamp.
John Farnham’s catalog is not there, but there are several lively remixes of his music.