I’m a Grammy Nominated Artist. Want to See My Royalties?

[rickyarbino]

I was quite shocked by this tbh

The following comes from Armen Chakmakian, a Grammy-nominated composer, keyboardist, and recording artist.

There are tons of articles about music streaming sites like Pandora, Spotify, etc in relation to recording artists making money or not. Here’s a screen capture of my quarterly royalty statement. 14,227 performances of music (almost every track 100% owned by me) generated $4.20. Notice one performance of “Ceremonies” or “Distant Lands” streaming radio show like Hearts of Space that brings in 26 cents for the full writer’s share compared to 2,088 performances of “Gypsy Rain” on Spotify that brought in a total of 60 cents.

Someone’s making money, and in true fashion with the music industry, it’s not the artists. Business practices like this are one of the reasons I jumped ship and only write for television now.





And since I’m in full-disclosure mode, I attached my SoundExchange artist’s statement from the same period showing payment to me of $11.50. I received a total of $30.89 from them – $11.50 for the artist; $19.39 for the label (I’m the label, TruArt Records).

Please note that the SoundExchange statement includes additional entities not listed on my BMI streaming section. Please see the “Earnings by Entity” section of the SoundExchange statements and you’ll see Cable Radio, SiriusXM, Music Choice, etc. Those companies are not part of that $4.20 payment from my BMI statement.
BMI and SoundExchange are my only known sources to collect money for my music that’s used on these streaming services.

[therapist]

Superstar economy etc. etc.

Yeah it's shit.

[m8son666]

420 blase it

[Genevieve]

Dunno, if you're getting into the industry, at this point, expecting to live off of your craft, I think you are naive. The value of music has just changed to people, it's a different world with a different type of economy, there is nothing really intinsically bad about it. We don't have coalminers blogging these types of articles, or busdrivers, or fashion designers. Maybe it's time for musicians to start adapting their expectations. I get it, "the fat labelboss crony makes all the money, yadda yadda". Well, it's 2014, by this time, you should know what type of gamble you're taking by doing this type of work.

[rickyarbino]

I don't think it's changed tbh. Just that people who couldn't have gotten it free/for peanuts in the past can now.

[therapist]

420 blase it

That's like a whole joint that has paid for itself.

[rockonin]

That is pathetic. This guy is getting trolled. $30?

[kaili]

thats really sad lol

[dickman69]

this shit been on youtube for 3 years & only got 5k plays

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SCxqqMbcY8&feature=kp

maybe he doesnt get any money b/c no one listens to his shit

[rickyarbino]

Dunno how much you read, but he's talking about websites like spotify which exist by paying artists for the right to charge fans to listen to said artists' music.
His tracks got played over 1 thousand times in four months and he got 4 dollars from it.

[dickman69]

one thousand plays in 4 months is hardly anything though

i wouldnt assume you would get much money from that

[rickyarbino]

1 million plays in the same time period earns you less than $300.

[SignalRecon]

If that was a popular song, or lets say it somehow went viral and he got a million plays in a quarter, that would still be like $4000, so it could be his music. That one song rayman linked is on a buddha bar compilation he must get paid from that at least, those albums are on loop b2b thievery corporation in all concept restaurants/high end lounges in any city with at least 300k people in North America.

[SignalRecon]

wait i misread some numbers, i was under the impression that 1000 plays was yielding about 4$ on spotify which would have been "ok" i guess.

[rickyarbino]

1000 plays is 22 cents.

[Reese_Liar]

Those numbers seems ridiculously low compared to what I hear from friends and acquaintances who make music for a living here in DK, are royalties pretty much non-existent in the US or is the "algorithm" dividing up the funds just completely skewed? Or wait, are those numbers only for internet plays? What about FM radio and live play? (and I don't mean what he's paid to play live, I mean what kind of royalties does he get when his tracks are played out live).

[topmo3]

not surprised tbh.. it's a given the US laws don't respect IPR rights of an artist / performer etc the way european laws do.. in finland for example u can practically live off royalties. i mean it's possible

[SignalRecon]

wow... I feel weird now that i submitted the entire Novacane Collective back catalog (20+ releases) to Spotify and other streamers last week. I knew it was going to be shit money at best but this is pretty shitty.

I suppose gaining one legitimate follower to any of the artists on the label after he randomly found the tune on a app is better in the long run. My initial reasoning behind doing it was that the exposure was more important then the mediocre sales we could expect because in reality none of the artists are "edm famouse" and wont generate sales until people discover them.

[skimpi]

yeha man i dont expect to make any money from selling music, i just wanna be able to charge 50k per pre recorded set

[rickyarbino]

That's a fair point Sig, and if those were your reasons for getting involved I wouldn't back out of it, may want to discuss with your artists though.
Skimpi, the issue is more of you making tracks and other people getting rich as fuck off them through less than ethical measures.