Its Spotify's World, You Just Stream It

Pulling the Curtain Back on Jazz Sales and Streaming

After 20 years of releasing jazz albums and getting airplay on jazz stations across the US, having my own Pandora station (George Kahn Radio) as well as getting tens of thousands of streams on Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Music I still get little royalty checks, but I have watched the sales diminish over the years. Is it just me? Not according to the latest Nielsen/Soundscan statistics, released this week for mid-year 2019.

Back in 1999 Jazz Album sales were just under 3% of total album sales (pretty much tied with Classical music).  A recent annual report from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) states that in 2000 the total worldwide revenue from album sales was $23.3 Billion dollars. Now physical sales of jazz albums are  still 2.7% of total sales volume for albums, but the total revenue from album sales in 2018 was $4.7 Billion dollars - an 80% drop! (album sales dropped another 20% in just the last year 2018-2019).

According to the Neilsen study the combined US albums, digital sales, and streaming the total volume for jazz is now 1% of the total volume.
This is pretty dismal.

There are two issues here: 1) the drop in number of sales and 2) how much the artist is being paid for this "Consumption of Product" (which is the new definition of music on the internet.)
25% of jazz sales still take place with physical product (as opposed to Rap/Hip Hop where physical album sales are just 5% of the total). I guess this is good news, as the artist gets paid way better for physical sales and downloads. 60% of jazz "music consumption" takes place through streaming services.

I have read various articles about how little the different services pay the artist for streaming music. Note or Concord, etc.) Here are my recent numbers, as reported on CD Baby, my distributor:

ALBUM SALES: CDBABY DIRECT = $5.08 - $5.78/ALBUM

DIRECT DOWNLOAD: $.637/ SONG

And here are some recent payments from the streaming services: 

Jun 27, 2019	Jan 2019	Google Music Store	George Kahn	Straight Ahead	Can't Feel My Face	Yes	Stream	1.0	$0.00528706	$0.00528706
Jun 26, 2019	May 2019	iTunes - Apple Music – US	George Kahn	Straight Ahead	Rumour Has It	Yes	Stream	1.0	$0.00456638	$0.00456638
Jun 17, 2019	Apr 2019	Pandora Plus	George Kahn	Straight Ahead	Wonton Kelly	No	Stream	1.0	$0.00243278	$0.00243278
Jun 17, 2019	Apr 2019	Pandora Radio	George Kahn	Straight Ahead	Wonton Kelly	No	Stream	2.0	$0.00081826	$0.00163652
Jun 11, 2019	Mar 2019	Spotify	George Kahn	Straight Ahead	Red's Riff	No	Stream	1.0	$0.00447629	$0.00447629

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Here is a recent month total from Pandora:

TOTAL STREAMS/ AMOUNT EARNED ON PANDORA FOR APRIL 2019

Streams Total:

7995.0

Income total: $6.64510000

 = .000832 CENTS PER STREAM

(Yes, that is less than 1/10th of 1 cent per stream)

THE TAKE-AWAY: If you are an artist, you have to either focus on getting people to buy the product with great music AND creative packaging and marketing, or you have a figure out a viral-hit that will get millions of streams. And if you are a jazz "consumer", please buy or download the album, and go see live jazz often. Otherwise we'll just be left streaming "Kind of Blue" for the millionth time.

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