Zoë Keating Shares Digital Music Revenue Report, YouTube Results Reveal Unrealized Potential
Zoë Keating recently released her full 2013 digital music revenue report that has become a trademark educational device and marketing tool. She breaks down sales and streaming revenue giving both numbers of downloads/streams and revenue per channel. YouTube is listed with almost 2 million streams and around $1248 in revenue. That detail stuck out for some and it's actually an indicator of one place where Keating may be missing out on revenue.
Zoë Keating announced her annual report with a tweet:
The spreadsheet in question is simple and straightforward including iTunes, Bandcamp, Amazon (physical and mp3), MediaNet, Rhapsody, SoundCloud, Spotify, YouTube and SoundExchange.
One respondent to her tweet asked why "only old music on Amazon?" and she replied, "because I don't have a digital distributor and amazon mp3 doesn't work with artists directly."
In an overview Stuart Dredge noted the discrepancy between Keating's Spotify per-stream payout of $0.0044 and Spotify's recent statement that its "average per-stream payout to music rightsholders is between $0.006 and $0.0084."
However it's unclear whether or not Keating's direct revenue accounts for all rightsholder accounting even though she does release her own music. Beyond that it's hard to make too much of these numbers given that we have so little data for comparison.
What Else Can Be Learned From This Report?
Jeff Klima highlighted Keating's seemingly tiny YouTube revenue of $1247.92 for 1,943,263 streams.
The YouTube figures are a good example of how interwoven revenue streams are which is not captured clearly in this simple spreadsheet. For example one would typically expect some level of music and merch sales to be driven by YouTube engagement which would be recorded under iTunes, Amazon, Bandcamp or wherever else fans were directed.
But a note on the spreadsheet likely clarifies most of the seeming discrepancy:
"nearly all views are 3rd party videos and not all are monetized"
However taking a closer look at Keating's YouTube account reveals lost opportunities for monetization.
Checking out a recent song upload on YouTube one sees an opening ad and a readable but not clickable link in the graphic for the audio track. There's no link out to anything from the About section and at the end of the video there's no link.
Looking across the account one finds many videos without ads and, while it's refreshing not to be bombarded with promo graphics and links at every turn, here's a video that could have handled an ad. And certainly all could use live links to Keating's official site as well as to places to buy music.
While there's a limit to what we can figure out from one musician's digital music revenue report, it does remind us that part of why things are so confusing is that most such numbers remain private. But, in this year's example, we find that a simple spreadsheet led us to solid ways Zoë Keating could potentially increase revenue via YouTube.
More:
- Finding The One Key Metric That Matters For Your Career As A Musician
- A Look Inside Zoe Keating's Earnings As An Indie Musician
- Zoe Keating On Spotify, Fairness To Indie Artists & Music's Niche Economy
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (Twitter/Facebook) is currently relaunching All World Dance. To suggest topics about music tech, DIY music biz or music marketing for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
“In an overview Stuart Dredge noted the discrepancy between Keating’s Spotify per-stream payout of $0.0044 and Spotify’s recent statement that its “average per-stream payout to music rightsholders is between $0.006 and $0.0084.””
The 0.0044 figure will be after her distributor takes their cut, which is probably around 20%. This puts her right at the bottom of Spotify’s average range.
Spotify payouts are based on popularity on the service. Solo Cellist music isn’t very popular (or anything in that domain really) on Spotify, hence the low payout.
As you point out, it’s refreshing to see financial transparency in an industry that seems to have a bias against sharing information. It would be even nicer to see more financial information shared by labels and publishers, who I think (but I can’t be sure) still make the lion’s share of money in the music industry. If and when the entire supply chain revenue becomes more transparent, I think it will become even clearer that artists have never been the ones who made most of the money. It’s the middlemen (and women). Keating is that rare musician who has succeeded, after many years, in making a reasonable living from her music, and she does it by going as directly to her fans as she can. On the subject of YouTube monetization, perhaps Keating is deliberately choosing not to monetize there. Someday musicians may be complaining as loudly about Google not compensating artists fairly as we do today about labels and PROs. At least with labels and PROs, there’s more than one. Google is effectively a monopoly.
it’s CDBaby. They keep 9%