Get Lucky – Daft Punk Did

With over 100m plays only Spotify alone (correct 21 Aug. 2013), Daft Punk really have got lucky (pardon the pun!) with their song. You’ve probably heard Daft Punk Get Lucky a thousand times by now.

Not only does this make “Get Lucky” the biggest and fastest selling song of 2013 but it means that they should be making millions?!

Not so fast!

Just like I talked about before in “Does streaming services help the music industry?“, the royalty rate is currently around $5,000 [£3,210] per million plays (source: NY Times). So for 100 million plays, they will have grossed Daft Punk $500,000 [£321,000].

Now we have to deduct 10% for publishing (it’s actually 20% but they’ll get 50% of that back as they are the songwriters! so we’ll count it as 10%).

If we now deduct 50% that the record labels get and the 10% that management will take.

We are left with 30%. If we add back in the 10% that they will recoup from the publisher we have 40%. There are 4 people involved, so they each get 10% or $50,000 [£32,100] – which is not bad for a few days’ work – but its terrible for 100 million plays – I’ll write that number out for you it’s 100,000,000.

[These numbers are a rough idea based on the published Spotify royalty rate plus my own knowledge of publishing]

Shocked?

Well that’s what the “big boys” are making from ONE track. Now, how do you feel about your chances as an indy artist now? Not so great are they?

What about you

With Spotify and Pandora threatening to slash these royalty rates to virtually nothing, it’s time to get back to building your tribe, seeing online streaming as a loss leader in order to get people to your gig and buying CD’s which you can make a sizable profit on.

I’d encourage you to go see some local artists, buy their CDs, T-shirts and other wearable items and then tell a friend. If you do that, you’re be helping an indy artist carry on doing what they love doing.