Few things in music right now are as divisive as the debate over on-demand music. Whether it’s Taylor Swift v. Spotify, Indie Musicians v. Apple Music, or SoundCloud v. The World, the debate over royalties, subscription fees, advertising, and the treatment of artists seems as if it will never die down.
Adding fuel to the fire this week is Paul Resnikoff, founder and publisher of Digital Music News, who has put together this handy infographic explaining “Why the Music Industry Is Starting to Hate YouTube”. After combing through and aggregating statistics from Nielsen and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Reskinoff shows pretty convincingly that, while Google video-destination YouTube accounts for more than half of all on-demand music plays, it contributes less than 15% of royalty payments to record labels.
In pulling the numbers together, Reskinoff looked at 2014 stats from Spotify, TIDAL, Deezer, Rdio, Beats, Rhapsody, Google Play, XBox Music, and “etc.,” which we can only assume accounts for less popular players like Amazon Music and Slacker.
Check out the full chart below and head on over to Digital Music News for more of Reskinoff’s analysis.
