Gary Numan has claimed he only got paid £37 for a million streams of his song.
The 62-year-old musician has spoken out at his frustration at streaming services paying an abysmal amount to artists, despite their music being listened to extensively.
Numan said, “The solution’s simple. The streaming companies should pay more money. They’re getting it for nothing.
“I had a statement a while back and one of my songs had had over a million plays, million streams, and it was £37. I got £37 from a million streams.”
Numan insisted it’s impossible to live off streaming, as he recalled once spending half an hour printing a statement that totalled just £112.
He continued: “I printed out, I think it was about a year ago, a statement – my streaming statement came in and I didn’t look at it, I just put it to print, and I looked over about half an hour later, it was still printing.
“It was hundreds and hundreds of pages. And the end of it was, like, £112. It was barely worth the [paper] it was printed on, and it took nearly half an hour to print. You know, it’s so much stuff, so much streaming, and there’s absolutely nothing in it.”
It’s been claimed that artists on average receive 16 per cent of the money earned from streaming, while record labels take 41 per cent and the streaming platforms pocket 29 per cent.
The electronic music legend admitted it’s not worth the hassle for those bands and musicians who aren’t “at the top”.
He added: “If you’re really at the top, then you can earn pretty well from streaming. If you’re not, you might as well forget it, it isn’t even worth printing it out, printing out the statement.”
Gary’s comments came as major record labels, Universal, Sony Music and Warner Music Group, gave evidence at the UK’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee inquiry into whether streaming is fair to musicians on Tuesday (19.01.21).
Meanwhile, Gary is set to release his 19th solo album in May.
‘Intruder’ explores the potential of an apocalypse and how humans are intruding the earth.
He explained: “‘Intruder’ looks at climate change from the planet’s point of view. If Earth could speak, and feel things the way we do, what would it say? How would it feel? The songs, for the most part, attempt to be that voice, or at least try to express what I believe the earth must feel at the moment.
“The planet sees us as its children now grown into callous selfishness, with a total disregard for it’s well being. It feels betrayed, hurt and ravaged. Disillusioned and heartbroken it is now fighting back.
“Essentially, it considers human kind to be a virus attacking the planet. Climate change is the undeniable sign of the Earth saying enough is enough, and finally doing what it needs to do to get rid of us, and explaining why it feels it has to do it.”
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