Jay Z recently pulled Reasonable Doubt, his debut album, off of the music streaming site Spotify. It may have something to do with the fact that he also launched his own competing streaming site, Tidal, or perhaps it's because it would take one million streams of Reasonable Doubt for Jay Z to earn the U.S. monthly minimum wage of $1,260.
This is according to a fascinating new infographic from analyst and designer David McCandless of Information is Beautiful, who has laid out in plain detail what musicians are paid for their music on streaming sites like Spotify, YouTube and Jay Z's own Tidal versus what they make from digital music retailers like iTunes and Amazon.
His findings, posted below, are alarming, especially when you compare, say, what it takes for an independent artist to make a basic living off of self-distributing albums (they would have to sell 105) versus how many times their song would have to stream on Tidal (184,859), Spotify (1,093,750) or YouTube (4.5 million).
Of course, there are some caveats, such as the fact that artists depend on a number of services to get their music out to listeners, rather than focusing solely on one, and these numbers don't take into account songwriter royalties, touring or contracts.
That said, it's still an interesting glimpse into what it takes to make a living off your music. The graphic, below, is from McCandless's book Knowledge is Beautiful, which was excerpted in the U.K. Guardian.
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