We caught up with a handful of Cleveland artists to hear more about how they confront the divisive world of music streaming. Hear from Cleveland musician Ray Flanagan below, and a few other musicians here.
Streaming Earnings: From January through September of 2023, local singer-songwriter Ray Flanagan made $224 from Spotify alone. One caveat: Flanagan hired a PR team to place a song on playlists. “I paid, like, $500 for them to go out and find places to put the song,” Flanagan explains. “When you look at it, it looks like I made $224 total, just from Spotify or whatever. Was it worth it? Maybe, because my numbers are better. A lot of people did listen to that song, and then some other songs, organically.”
Pros and Cons: Flanagan is ambivalent about the business side of music. He says he usually directs fans to his Bandcamp, which is more artist-friendly, but also puts his songs on Spotify and other streaming sites to give access to listeners. “That's where everybody listens to music, for the most part, in this day and age. So that's really the only reason that it's up there,” Flanagan says. “Everything's streamed, you know? Nobody pays to own a copy of anything anymore.”
The musician, who released monthly singles during the coronavirus pandemic, says that streaming has devalued original art and that he’s conscious of artificial intelligence involvement. He's also aware of musical quality levels on streaming sites. “On my Spotify page, I have things that I've uploaded that are just voice memos from my phone, like me making random noises and stuff, because it's, like, I can just go [fart noise] into my phone, put it on my voice memo, upload it to DistroKid, and in the next couple of days, it'll be on Spotify,” Flanagan says. “Me making a poop noise is the same exact value as ‘Thriller’ or whatever else that is on the platform — of course it’s worth less than pennies.”
Making Money: “Trying to make money off of art: I mean, those two things don't really have anything to do with each other, in my opinion,” Flanagan says.
His work as a gigging musician is more service industry-adjacent. “Most of the way I make a living is just from playing in whatever corner they’ll stick me in. Bars and restaurants, farmers markets, whatever,” he says. “I’m just a gigging, working musician, basically.”
The Outlook: The musician doesn’t think the future of the industry will benefit artists like him and will instead profit shareholders and streaming executives. “These people don’t care about artists or arts. They just care about making money,” Flanagan says. “There's just always a conflict between the business people and the artists.”
The Bottom Line: Flanagan urges fans to support artists beyond streaming their music. “I honestly feel like we're in a time where, if there's an artist that you like, and you appreciate them, and you’re listening to their music, especially if you're listening to their music on Spotify, like, Venmo them. You could buy a T-shirt,” he says. “If some people want to support artists that they love, you just gotta figure out how to support them in whatever way you can, whether it's buying merch or just straight up giving people money for the fact that you're just streaming their music.”
Read more Cleveland musicians' experiences with streaming sites here.
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