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Showing posts from January, 2012

EXPLORING THE DISCONNECT BETWEEN THE MUSIC FAN'S PERCEPTION OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A WORKING MUSICIAN AND THE REALITY.

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EXPLORING THE DISCONNECT BETWEEN THE MUSIC FAN'S PERCEPTION OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A WORKING MUSICIAN AND THE REALITY. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2011 A Pointless Debate Recently David Touve, an Assistant Professor of Business at Washing & Lee University posted a blog asking  “Is a stream on Spotify (or any music service) really worth less than an iTune sale?” His attempt to show that an iTune sale or a Spotify stream are basically worth the same, in terms of payment to the artist, is arrived at by fuzzy math that assumes a listener will play a song purchased from iTunes 250 times. (Where he gets this number is anyone's guess. A quick look at your iTunes app will show that most songs get played far less.) By prorating the cost of the song by 250 plays, he would have us believe that the price per play is $0.0028, which he believes compares favorably to the urban myth of Spotify's $0.0033 per stream payments. Spotify has stated many times that it does not pay per play