The Black Keys understand the music industry.
The advent music streaming was one the most revolutionary changes to the music industry in the last decade. As we covered yesterday, during a recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney The Black Keys broke down how album bundling is a sham, but they also broke down how artists are getting screwed over by streaming services.
When music streaming first started, Auerbach sat down with Daniel Ek, the owner Spotify. “We had lunch together and he’s a fucking cool guy, nice guy, very intelligent, and I really saw his side it for the first time. He basically, without explaining it directly, was like, he’s paying our label to get our music. What they do with the money, he can’t control. At that moment, I realized there’s some stock being floated to these companies, which there was, billions dollars stock.” He continues, “They gave us a couple hundred thousand out the billion because they pay it as an artist royalty and they take all these deductions f and it was a made-up number.”
He also adds on by mentions another issue with payouts from streams. All streams pay out the exact same; therefore, if someone spends their $10 per month fee listening to only a few songs, the streaming service keeps the majority that $10 and the artists still only get less than a penny per stream. Listen to the full explanation the issue below.