How is listening to an artist's music on Spotify or Amazon Music or Apple Music stealing from performers?
Because no one buys the music. The current rate for writing royalties is 9.1 cents/cut.
If an album has ten cuts and sells 500,000 copies, it would create about $450,000 in royalties.
This chart shows just the last ten years of dwindling sales:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/273308/music-album-sales-in-the-us/
In just the past 11 years, due to streaming, sales are down 70%.
A songwriter get a royalty of 9.1 cents per cut. Producers and artists get paid as well.
Today, Spotify pays $.006 - .0084 per stream. This amounts to about $6000-8400/1 million streams. Let's say one song is a hit and is streamed 20 million times. It would create $120,000-170,000 to pay everyone. Remember, before the artist gets paid, the cost of production and many other things are taken out. It's likely the talent won't see a cent.
A song that popular used to lead to 1 album million sales or more. If there are ten songs, it would create $910,000 in royalties JUST for the songwriters. There would be that amount or more for the producer and band.
Although Spotify pays better than Pandora used to, let's give a real world example of how streaming companies rip off writers.
https://www.businessinsider.com/pha...-43-million-plays-of-happy-on-pandora-2014-12
"Despite Pharrell's ubiquity, "Happy" made $2,700 in publisher and songwriter royalties from 43 million Pandora streams in the first quarter of 2014, according to an email from music publisher Sony/ATV CEO Marty Bandier obtained by Digital Music News."
By having such terrible sales, fewer artists get opportunities. With so little payout, you can't take as many chances.
Don't take this to think I am defending the whores that ran the music business ,but the reality is it's much, much. much harder to make a living as a songwriter, band and because of this even sidemen/women are not making a living.
File sharing and streaming are killing the industry and driving incredibly people into other professions.