Update:  Check out what Coldplay’s Manager has to say about the Spotify Conundrum:  CLICK HERE FOR DIGITAL MUSIC NEWS ARTICLE

To stream or not to stream?  That is the .0007 cents per stream question.

Recently top name bands like Coldplay, The Black Keys and Arcade Fire have spoken out against streaming.  Citing the “gross underpayment” to artists per stream, bands are pulling their music from sites like Spotify or simply prohibiting the placement of their songs altogether.

Let’s look at some projected numbers from streaming on Spotify (courtesy of Digital Audio Insider):

Spotify Per-Stream Payouts August 2009 to March 2011

Smallest: 0.02056 cents
Largest: 1.1456 cents
Average: 0.2865 cents

These numbers are strictly estimates and we have heard that some of the deals that major labels have entered into with Spotify have the per stream at a MUCH lower number then those above.  Regardless, to make some actual money through Spotify, an artist will need millions of streams.  No problem for Justin Beiber and Lady Gaga, but what about the little guy?  Apparently, it’s not just the little guy that is worried/pissed.  As mentioned above, Coldplay and The Black Keys have been very vocal about their overall disdain of streaming providers.  In a recent VH1 interview, The Keys drummer said the following:

“We decided for this album, to not allow streaming services to stream the entire album,” Keys drummer Patrick Carney said.  “It’s becoming more popular, but it still isn’t at a point where you can replace royalties from record sales with royalties from streams.  So it felt unfair to those that purchased the album to allow people to go on a website and stream the album for free whenever they want it.”

Independent labels and artists are outraged with the seemingly enormous underpayment to artists and there are consistent stories of indies pulling their music and catalog from the site.  The question remains however, will their protest pay off or are they really missing out on a new untapped method of reaching millions of fans?

The founders of Spotify continuously hammer home the message that their’s is a music discovery tool.  By having all the published music in one spot, fans will be able to discover deeper cuts or new artists or even new genres of music that they didn’t already appreciate.  Following their logic, once you discover these things your are more apt to actually go out and purchase your new discoveries or better yet, go to a show the next time the “new” band is in town.

From personal experience, I actually tend to side with Spotify (probably not the most popular opinion on this site).  You can stream virtually every song known to man somewhere on the Internet.  Whether it is on YouTube (the new radio for kids), Pandora, blogs, hacker/torrent sites or on artists’ websites, you can typically find a song if you really work Google over for a while.  Spotify puts it all in one handy dandy place for you.  Then it takes it a step further.  In its recently updated version the artists’ radio stations suggest similar music to that of the artist, album or track you originally searched.   I have found this to be a great way (much better than Pandora) to discover new music that I like and then support.

This is not the first time that the music industry has had to deal with a game changer (not even close to the first time).  As we have mentioned ad nauseum on this site, the Internet fundamentally changed the music industry.  Moving at a painfully slow pace, the label infrastructure was not ready for the shift.  Look what happened to them.  Now that the Internet is out of its infancy and new and creative ways to bring music to fans are being created on a daily basis, will the existing labels and, more significantly, the independent artists be ready to play ball?  Or will they stamp their feet and and cry “UNFAIR, DO OVER!”?

Rather than complaining about the system in place and the uber small price per stream (which we agree is way to small and should be changed a bit), we suggest that bands get creative with streaming networks.  Give fans extras and incentives to stream.  Be discovered and it should lead to better results for your music.