Rockonomic: $0.00238 — the estimated royalty payout for a VEVO play, per stream per viewer

I found a napkin next to my coffee cup this morning and decided to estimate the royalty value of a video stream, per viewer, for VEVO.

$0.0000955: The value of a Spin, per Listener, to Songwriters on US Radio in 2014

Now that ASCAP and BMI have revealed their revenues for 2014, and we have some data on SESAC (thanks to Moody’s), we can estimate the value of a Spin, per listener, to Songwriters from…

Popularity versus Demand: Looking further into the fair distribution of streaming wealth

This post will be the last in a series of three conversations on the ways in which artist popularity, listener demand, and time spent listening impact any redistribution of wealth…

Could half of music royalties pay for music we would rather skip over than listen to?

In this post I am going to highlight what may be one of the great ironies of how we pay for music in the “music as a service” era:

Upwards of half the money…

0.02%: the possible Sales-to-Spins conversion rate of US Radio

It has often been said, I don’t know by whom, that the power of Radio is it’s ability to sell music. The purpose of this post is to surface any possible evidence of, if not simply a measure of, this claim.

Do Freemium music services offer greater revenue per user than the freemium combo of Radio and Sales?

The purpose of this story is rather simple:

First, let’s treat the music industry like a “freemium” music service with both paid…

Redistributing the streaming wealth: Understanding the links between popularity, demand, and time

The purpose of this post (which will be released as a Grey Paper) is to further inform the ongoing discussion over how best to distribute the royalties from…

Redistributing the streaming wealth: Why listening hours not artist popularity may drive the divvying up of the royalty pot

The question of just how to distribute the royalty dollars from music services has moved from a back-office thought…

Flood Stage Economics: The subtle and often unspoken dangers in the displacement debate

Recent work by Dr. Aguiar and Dr. Waldfogel has made its way from a working paper to a technical report released by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, one of the…