Donegal‘s Rory and the Island has reached 3 million streams on Spotify – a mark that has given him mixed feelings.
Rory Gallagher has had a career in music spanning over two decades, and the achievement had him reflecting on the changes in the music industry in recent years – good and bad.
While Spotify has helped the man most famous for the iconic Jimmy’s Winning Matches find a new audience and help his fans listen to music on-demand, the much lower payout streaming gives to artists compared to physical media has had its effect.
“I passed 3 million plays on Spotify! However, i have mixed feelings about it,” Rory posted on social media.
“Firstly a big THANK YOU to everyone who has been listening to my music on Spotify for years it really means a lot to me. I listen to Spotify myself in the car, it’s there now!”
“I suppose us musicians need to accept the glory days of CD sales are gone, it used to be fantastic, you could get a CD printed for €1 and sell them for €10 , if you sold a few after a gig it really was such a bonus.”
“If you did this 5 times a week and saved the money (even though you were nowhere near the charts) you could maintain a career as a self sustained recording artist. But Spotify have really cornered the market in the last few years, yet the payback for a smaller artist like myself is just peanuts a month.”
The cost of producing high-quality music is also far higher than many would expect, even for smaller artists.
“To record one proper single in a half decent studio with other musicians and get it mastered and released can cost about €1000.”
“People harp on about the revival of vinyl, but it’s not a real thing, it costs a fortune to print a vinyl, they travel badly, and the sales are realistically a tiny percentage of what they were in the 1970s when people would go out and buy 5 or 6 a week.
So it feels like a massive gamble, which I no longer take.”
“The modern way around this is you buy a few decent mics, you buy a high quality laptop, an interface, buy pro-tools, stands, qaulity headphones etc. Before you know it you have spent about €5,000.”
“You could spend years trying to recoup this money on Spotify… and the quality of your work will suffer as you are not interacting with technically trained professionals or hiring other top musicians.”
On top of this initial expense, this now means that for most smaller musicians they can’t make a living from doing what they love.
“If Spotify were to pay a tiny bit more it would all make sense, when added to gig money, radio royalties and physical sales etc. I hope someday they do, or music is going to keep getting cheaper, more AI driven, and worse in general.”
“It’s a shame because I still hear so many great young acts out there.”
However he does acknowledge just how handy streaming services like Spotify can end up being…
“A comical side-note is I now have Spotify premium on my phone… So I’m giving them €144 back every year” You have to laugh or else you will cry.”
