Think of the poor software engineers whose code is being used in Spotify. What do they get per song play? Maybe there were 100 of them working for a year at $100,000 each, maybe their software plays 100 million songs per day and the average piece of code will be around for 100 days…that’s 0.1 cent per song, 20% of the musician’s pay. And I don’t believe that writing good code is any less creative or competitive than writing/performing good music.
Sure, the engineers have a “guaranteed” salary and benefits, but most of them probably weren’t in at the start-up stage and so also are guaranteed that they aren’t going to get rich, even if Spotify becomes the next “mega-hit”.
Sorry, creative work (arts, software, graphic design), craftsmanship, and work in general (vs. being one of the overlords) doesn’t pay like maybe it should. Capitalism sucks some, and people are too cheap or poor to recognize and pay for quality. But the problem isn’t unique to musicians, and I don’t pity them any more than most.
