Foals lead singer Yannis Philippakis is the latest artist to speak out at the amount of money returned to artists from Spotify and other streaming services, with revenues said to be “insulting”.
“I’d rather somebody stole the record on vinyl than bought it or streamed it on Spotify,” Philippakis told Channel 4. “I think you should listen to music on vinyl and I think basically anything is better than (Spotify)”.
Philippakis likened Spotify to leaving “coppers as a tip” in a restaurant and not paying the bill.
Foals albums are still available on Spotify, for the time being including Holy Fire, released this year. Nine tracks from the latest album feature in Spotify’s ‘Popular’ section as the band have accumulated 22,282,762 plays and counting.
Using reported average payouts of around $0.005 per ad-supported play, $0.0075 per play on the $5-a-month Spotify tier and $0.015 for plays on Spotify Premium, Music Ally has calculated that the gross payout for those nine tracks since their release in February could be anywhere between $111.4k and $334.3k.
When splits between label, management and other costs are taken into account you all of a sudden that 6 figure sum doesn't seem all that much.
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