Let’s face it. \u00a0A huge number of us, myself included, are not going to make it to the big time with our songs. \u00a0I’m not trying to be negative here, just realistic. \u00a0I have made some money over the years from my work in television, and when I first started recording my songs in the early 90’s, I sold a few CDs when I was out there performing all the time. \u00a0I even made a little money from mp3.com when I first signed up for it because a few of my songs were chosen for their playlists. \u00a0Do you remember mp3.com? \u00a0Then you’ve been on the web as long as I have!\u00a0\u00a0It was actually kind of exciting back then.<\/p>\n
I thought the web was going to be a great way to get that exposure that I couldn’t physically do myself; \u00a0it would get my music out there to the big, wide world that I didn’t have the time or money to travel around myself. \u00a0And slowly, everyone else had the same thought. \u00a0A few clever people took notice of this and they created websites where music could be uploaded and distributed to anyone who was interested. \u00a0What could be better?<\/p>\n
The other day I read a statistic that more or less floored me.<\/p>\n
It was on Hypebot, whose Twitter account I follow. \u00a0It stated simply that 4 million songs on Spotify (20%) have never been played. \u00a0Never. \u00a0And that’s just Spotify. \u00a0I checked the stats for my own albums, which I had uploaded and paid distribution fees to Reverbnation for. \u00a0Half of the songs I had up there had never been played. \u00a0The rest had maybe a couple of plays, the odd one more than that. One song had a fair amount of plays, perhaps because of its name “Shades of Grey”. \u00a0Yep, that was a happy accident because I didn’t name it that way as a ploy! \u00a0I wrote the song well before the book became popular.<\/span><\/p>\n I wonder how many songs on Spotify have had one play, or maybe half a dozen? \u00a0That makes the picture a lot more gloomy when you think of it. \u00a0How much are we paying to have our music distributed to iTunes and the rest of them, only to have no plays, or maybe one or two? \u00a0We get maybe a third of a cent per play, if that, and the distributors get a hundred thousand times that because we paid them.<\/p>\n Now don’t get me wrong. \u00a0I understand that most<\/em> of the work is up to us. \u00a0We have to be promoting ourselves and our songs, we have to be out there performing or trying to draw some attention to our music, in order to get those plays. \u00a0I haven’t been performing for a number of years now. \u00a0But I allowed vanity to get in the way of logic. \u00a0I\u00a0paid money to have my CDs distributed online, and even when there were hardly any streams or sales, I kept them up there for another year, and then another. \u00a0I wonder how much money these distribution services like Reverbnation make from vain people like me?<\/p>\n I have finally smartened up, and recently began the long process of taking them down and removing my Reverbnation account. \u00a0I say “long process” because it isn’t easy. \u00a0There’s no such thing as a simple “delete” button that gets rid of everything in one fell swoop. \u00a0No, you have to remove your music, you have to make sure that any money coming to you gets paid out (which is very little, but I withdrew it anyway), and then you have to try and remove your profile. \u00a0Even weeks after I removed my music, they tell me that I can’t remove my profile because I still have my CDs for sale, which I don’t. \u00a0I’m emailing them to try to straighten it out, but I anticipate more mess trying to take down my profile in the coming days.<\/p>\n