The other day, a friend's band was celebrating on social media because one of their songs had been streamed on Spotify over 1 million times. Based on the mysteriously inconsistent and downright insulting rate-per-stream that Spotify has come up with all on their own (approximately $0.006 per stream), the band made a cool $6,000.
That might seem like a lot of money until management takes their 15%, leaving the band to split $5,100 four ways, resulting in a modest bank deposit in the amount of $1,275 for each member.
Not bad for a year's work, right?
Keep in mind that $1,275 barely covers one month's rent in Chitown these days unless you're one of those people who hoards roommates.
Come to think of it, $5,100 just about covers the cost of an average rehearsal space for a year.
Now, if each of those streams had been a purchase of the song in digital format instead, the band would be splitting roughly $800,000 (after the manager takes their 15% off the top, of course) four ways,
But, let's be realistic: Asking folks to pay a whole dollar to own one song in the year 2018 is asking a bit much, am I right?
Keep in mind that, as a musician/professional alcoholic who has frequented boozy establishments on an almost nightly basis for the past 30+ years, I see how easily folks part with their money when the one asking for it is a jukebox.
"$2 for three plays?!"
And yet even the brokest drunkard in the joint finds the money every time.
Hell, some of us (and by "us" I mean a collective "you" of which I am not part) have gone so far as to set up an account online with a company such as TouchTunes so that "we" (and by "we" I mean...don't look at me) can select songs from our (and by "our", of course, I mean "not my") smartphone and pay via a credit card on-file, thereby saving us the trouble of getting up from our bar stool.
Perhaps there's a "Hey, look at me" aspect to playing a song on a jukebox in a bar that makes the expense worthwhile.
After all, for those three songs, the entire room is subjected to one person's musical taste. From Monday through Friday, a lowly janitor or secretary can bear the brunt of an entire company's abuse, but, come Saturday night, with only two dollars in their pocket, they can hold en entire room hostage to their shitty taste in music
"'Turn Down For What?' three times in a row, Marjory?"
Imagine the pile of cash that must be taken in by all of the city's jukeboxes in a single weekend.
We're talking thousands of jukeboxes just within Chicago city limits all raking in $12 an hour in quarters for, say five hours a night. Of the tens of thousands of jukeboxes, let's say 1,200 jukeboxes bring in $100 per weekend. $120,000 per weekend over a given year would come to over $6,000,000!
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| This might be the coolest photo ever taken. Nash Kato second from left. |
Add New York City, L.A., Boston, Philly, Dallas, Austin, and Miami to the equation and suddenly we're talking ten of millions of dollars.
But let's not kid ourselves about any of that money finding its way back to the artist.
Oh shit, you hadn't thought about that, had you?
Considering that more than a few of us are prone to choosing an establishment based solely upon the quality of its jukebox, it is a shame that we can imagine allllllllllllll the fookin' loot that flows into jukeboxes across this great land of ours in a given weekend - either via the carefully-curated ma-and-pa jukes or those digital monstrosities I referred to earlier - and how none of it flows into the pockets of the artists.
Sure, your average corner bar also pays ASCAP and/or BMI a monthly licensing fee, but if the songs that were played in every out-of-the-way dive bar were actually reported to those performing rights organizations, Tommy James would have more money than Warren Buffet.
Hell, the guys in Off Broadway, whose "Stay In Time" has racked up countless jukebox spins from Chitown to Sheboygan over the years, would be flying private jets instead of puddle jumpers.
Instead, that money is distributed "evenly" across ASCAP's and BMI's upper tier of artists/songwriters whose airplay is already reported to the organization via commercial radio airplay and the like.
In other words, Taylor Swift probably sees a sizable chunk of income that should have rightfully gone to, say, Urge Overkill, whose Saturation album has emerged in recent years as a formidable jukebox favorite: "Sister Havana", "Bottle Of Fur", "Positive Bleeding"...
If only that money trickled down to, you know, its rightful owner.
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jukebox hero