Why are acts with multi million unique listeners on Spotify unable to convert even a fraction of that into album sales?

    Quote from quarkie

    NMIXX's blind sales were less about Big 3 privilege and more about recognition of JYP's brand with girl groups. People who think the company have a good track record aren't going to blink at paying $20 for something like that. It's no different than people who love eating at Popeyes or Burger King being willing to try a new menu option or even people rushing to preorder Elden Ring based on the studio's previous work.

    Brand recognition is one of big3 privilege.

    You are right with the burgers. Lol

    But now the burger tastes bad. Still they will sell/buy the same amount or more next time. While most would never try to taste a burger from a small shop even if half the population say it tastes good.

    Its like McDonald's burger. Low quality mass produced because the majority of the audience will eat whatever they get served anyway. Those who want quality dig deeper to find a shop that suit his/her taste.

  • AllKill VIP

    if we're talking about kpop it's mostly due to casual listeners. everglow used to have millions of streams back in the day but couldn't even crack 100k. people loved their music but weren't invested in the group at all. similar thing with clc


    if we're talking about the west its mostly because no one really buys albums anymore. we can use drake or bad bunny (or even ariana), the fandom is def there but they don't buy albums because that's not how fandoms of *urban*(for lack of a better word) acts work. why spend money for something like that when you can support that act in another way by streaming on spotify or apple music.

    acts who fit in the more "traditional singer-songwriter" image are bound to have a fanbase that pays money for their faves' music (see: taylor, billie, olivia, harry)

    Quote from TheBotter

    Again look at Itzy, if JYPE was paying for playlisting why would they have MITM have around the same as The Feels and Maniac, but have Loco barely have any at all? It doesn't make sense to me.

    We know that Loco is more popular internationally and when we look at the number of streams they are slightly higher than those of MITM so nothing weird for me. the company must have just invested less for Loco, neither you nor I would have been surprised ^^

    At least they get fractions of a penny for each one of those streams.


    That is more than what they get from YouTube.


    Quote

    If you distribute your music to YouTube you can expect $0.000069 per stream whilst Spotify pays out $0.0043. So, to earn $1 with YouTube you would need to be streamed 570 times and on Spotify, you would need 229 streams. This seems low but it does add up over time, especially if you distribute independently and maintain all the rights.


    Does YouTube or Spotify pay more? - RouteNote Blog
    Which platform pays more YouTube or Spotify?
    routenote.com

    Because you think of unique listeners as of fans of said artist but that's not like that at all. For example, if song of artist is added on playlist it gives that artist some number of unique listeners, but does it mean this number is fans of that artist? No, not at all. These listeners just happened to listen to this playlist and this song and thus they are added to a number of unique listeners while they don't give af about said artist. Or for example, RM was a feature in Lil Nax X remix of Old Town Road which was uploaded on Lil Nas X spotify account thus RM's unique listeners jumped to highest levels but does it mean that those numbers are RM fans? No, he got those numbers thanks to listeners of Lil Nas X acc. Yoongi got his big jump in unique listeners recently too due to his collab which was uploaded on other rapper account - it's very usual. Or for example, some person heard some kpop song, liked it and added it to his/her playlist thus adding themselves to number of unique listeners, does it make him/her a fan of said artist? No, he/she might not give af about said artist and just add this song without even checking anything else from that artist (I do it all the time) if such person follows that artist after listening to the song then yes it's bringing this person closer to being a fan. So basically number of unique listeners just don't showcase a number of actual fans and amount those actual fans there is even smaller number of fans who want or can buy a physical album.

    Can you give an example? Even smaller groups with lots of casual listeners on Spotify like Ive are able to sell +600k albums for a single, and for other groups it's because they had a viral song (Ikon with "Love Scenario" for example) but weren't able to translate song virality to fandom, but that also reflects in how many of their other songs don't have the same streams.


    Who has consistently (let's say 5+ million) Spotify unique listeners but unable to sell close to 500k albums or above?


    If you mean Western artists or alternative kpop artists like soloists/duos etc, the culture and fandom are different. Western fans don't buy physical albums but they'll still attend concerts. Popular Western acts pocket more income than many kpop groups with big fandoms, even without physical album sales. And most soloists, with only a few key exceptions like IU or LWY, don't have big fandoms unless they started in a kpop group.

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