Quiz: how much money has Stairway to Heaven made in royalty payments?
 

It's the honor system. Make your guess and then check out the number from this article about the Taurus lawsuit: http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/15/medi...ial/index.html

Wow. I guessed low. By a lot.

Given that Zeppelin was notorious for never allowing anyone to use their music until just recently, I would imagine that the lion's share of that is record sales.

The publishing royalties account for more than 70% of those earning but keep in mind, that's total earnings, not what was paid to the Artist or the songwriters.

Publishing

Probably way too much.

$38

100 mil

What would you say is the percentage paid to the band as a whole? The writer?

I would imagine that the hourly rate for writing it was superb.

Now there would be an interesting numbers break down.

My brain is fried after a long day (amd the 3 year old has been home all week with the stomach flu after the 8 year old was home all last week), so please give me a day or so and I'll put together an accurate number.

There's a lot of math involved because the Statutory Rate was very low in the 70's but changed over time with each "Remastered Version" (which is why remasters exist) along with the fact that Zeppelin had their own record company, which was a joint venture with Atlantic (and I'm not sure if it was 50/50 or not, so I'll need to shoot a few emails).

Don't go to trouble but would be interesting to know. The summer puke flu. Ugh. Here's hoping you and momma dont get hit.

shit load of money for a song that sucks balls

Mommy got it, Dad didn't, fortunately.

No worries, as these types of exercises are fun.

:thumb:

I also heard it will be for FUTURE royalties. How much can that be?

Plus it only took them 50 years to do this. There should be a statute of limitations on this.

Streaming pays 1/10,000th of a cent per play currently on Spotify. Pandora and other services pay less.

I'm sure there will be tens of millions earned in the next 100 years but I seriously doubt it'll match what it's earned previously.

Sirius/XM around the same rate of pay per play?

WTF? So a band has to have its music streamed 60 million times to earn one ****ing $?

Is that math correct?

I was going to guess $10 million. Looks like I was a bit off.

FYP

If you just googled it, then you mean 60/100 to 84/100.

Wrong


You can Google all you want but the real numbers are far different

Yes

That is probably close to what the talent took home...

Yay labels.

bands don't make much money from record sales.. touring/merch.

Guessing 500 Million.

$800M?

I don't work in the industry, but I did call Logan Mize who is married to my first cousin and he confirmed that your numbers are off. Not that I give a huge shit, but 1/10,000 of a cent sounded pretty far fetched.

I'm sorry, that's the correct number. Each streaming company has a different agreement but Spotify pays 1/10,000th of a cent. They claim that they pay an average of .0007 cents but that figure is extremely rare.

James Blunt claims that he's paid 0.0004499368 per stream. There are artists that have had millions of streams, only to be paid less than $20.00 dollars.

I had a statement in which I was paid $16.35 for 59,990 streams via Netflix. That's .0002 cents, which is higher than Spotify, proving that all streaming sources aren't paid evenly.

It's a mess.

:D

That's hard to believe. I know that I pay spotify $9.99 a month for as much music I want (and can download). That's not much to pay but I've also noticed that spotify doesn't have the full catalog of music from many of the artists I listen too. I just don't see how spotify can pay an artist just 1/10,000th of a cent to an artist to stream their song. Even if 1 million people a day streamed one particular song, that only pays the artist, what, $100? I can't even do the math, lol!

My Song Got Played On Pandora 1 Million Times and All I Got Was $16.89, Less Than What I Make From a Single T-Shirt Sale!

https://thetrichordist.com/2013/06/2...-t-shirt-sale/

There are plenty of examples on the internet of people who earn peanuts from millions of streams. As I linked earlier, James Blunt earned 0.0004499368 per stream.

The crazy thing is that companies like Spotify are valued in the billions yet they own nothing. They don't own the music or the rights to the music and they use a loophole in the law that musicians, composers and artists have been trying to get closed.

But WE are the thieves because we used sites like Napster.

Don't even get me started on the stupidity of the music business.

I warned ASCAP, publisher and record companies in 1997 about the impending situation and was ignored (promoted within, but ignored). While Napster was killing the industry, Apple "saved" it, while all of the labels and publishers stood around thinking it was going to go away.

Well, it did, but not the way they expected. And we're all worse off because of it.

I hesitate to weigh in on this because it's a subject I know nothing about, but I will say this.

Spotify says they paid out $300 million in royalties in teh first three months of 2015.

http://www.spotifyartists.com/spotify-explained/

If the price was 1/10,000 of a cent ($0.0001) per stream, and they paid out $300 million, that means that in the first three months of 2015 their members (or whatever) streamed three TRILLION songs in just three months.

With 75 million active users (as of November 2015), that means each user streamed 40,000 songs EACH during that timeframe.

And that seems pretty darn unlikely.

Though, again, maybe you're distinguishing between what Spotify pays in royalties and what the actual artists get. Maybe there are 20 middlemen in between those two ends of the spectrum that each get their cut.

And to the OP - I guessed 50-75 mil. Wow.

Does that include illegal downloads?

For what it's worth, content PROVIDERS are crushing, absolutely crushing, content CREATORS in all spectrums of media.

Newspapers are dying, but Google, etc. are killing it.

Books and authors are limping, but Amazon rules the world.

TV networks are struggling, while cable and internet companies, and Netflix, conquer all.

The pipelines that get eyes on site are all that matters now. The people that create the stuff that people want to see (or hear) are getting raped.

Okay, as to the original question posed, I can't fathom how they got to the $575 million dollar number, unless they included the actual album sale as a complete number. On a side note, Led Zeppelin opened their catalog up to the streaming services in mid 2013, so those figures, as low as they may be, weren't included in the reported number.

Led Zeppelin IV, at least according to the RIAA (which is unreliable, as they only counted shipping, not Point of Sale) sold 23 million copies in the United States and about another 7 million worldwide.

Stairway To Heaven was one of 8 songs to appear on the album. Prior to 1972, the Mechanical Statutory Rate was 2 cents, meaning that the songwriter(s) earned 2 cents for each album and single sold. All songwriter(s) of that era were subject to a Publishing or Co-Publishing deal. Led Zeppelin had a Co-Publishing deal which mean that 75% of the income from mechanical sales and air play (Performance) went to the songwriters and 25% of mechanical and performance went to the Publisher.

So, at 30 million copies, divided by eight songs, multiplied by 2 cents, multiplied by .75 equals $56,250.00 in publishing. The total of all 8 songs would be $450,000 dollars.

The price of albums varied in the 1970's but for this example, I'll use $4.99 as a median cost of an album. So, $4.99 times 30 million, which equals $147,700.00 dollars for the entire album and $18,712,500 dollars for Stairway To Heaven.

The average record deal back then paid the Artist 14% of the total sales of an album or single, which wasn't payable until the Artist recouped the advance money given for the production budget (Producer, engineers, studio cost, etc.). Back in the day, those costs were in the millions. Anyway, 14% of $147,700 dollars is $20,958,000, which would have been paid to the band.

So here's where were at:

Publishing: $450,000.00 dollars
Unit Sales: $147,700.00 dollars

At this point, we're only at $150 million dollars generated by the sale of Led Zeppelin IV, which is far shy of the $575 million that Stairway To Heaven allegedly earned on its own. $10 million was estimated for Synchronization (use in Film, TV and commercials) but even then, we're only at $160 million for the entire album.

Could the additional $400 million come from radio airplay? I'll need to open some old databases but it's very possible that Stairway to Heaven earned an average of $10,800,000 per year in Performance Royalties (Radio Play) over that 37 year period.

I know this all too well, unfortunately. :(

Here's the real deal about Spotify: They don't pay artists equally. More importantly (and something that is mostly unknown) is that the Major Labels own 20% of Spotify.

Now, while Spotify may state that they paid out $300 million, that figure includes the Master License Fee, which could be anywhere from $100 dollars per song to $100,000 per song. Artists and songwriters don't see that money from streaming services. That goes directly to the record label, as they own the Master Recordings.

That's just another reason why people like Tom Petty have long lobbied for the reversion of the Master Recordings to the Artist after a period of 15 years.

I wonder if some of the money they are claiming Stairway made comes from the Song Remains the Same film and soundtrack? The film been released a couple of times to theaters and also DVD and Blu-Ray. The soundtrack is probably in most Zep fans' collections, too.

I would imagine that was the case. I think they were using Stairway to Heaven as the driver of Led Zeppelin IV, which in turn generated the majority of revenue.

Would IV have sold 30 million copies without Stairway? IMO, no.

Yeah, I typed this and then laughed at myself because I'm reading about this crap and you're living it. Bit silly, but maybe others didn't know.

It looks like they just added up the sales of the four Led Zeppelin albums that Stairway appeared on:

http://upstart.bizjournals.com/cultu...es.html?page=2

That's a very interesting point. I wonder if one could conclude that by making it very easy to get content, the providers have diluted the value of content. It could also be the simple answer that they providers control access and so can leverage that to drive down content prices, but I don't really see that as the market dynamic.

Thanks for doing all the leg work.
Wow, now I see why some artists try to start their own labels.

Dane might have more insight on this than I do (likely so), but it's my understanding that it's the final point you raised that is driving the issue.

Controlling eyeballs is what gets you market power now.

What do artists get paid per listen on "real" radio? Say a song plays in LA and potentially 4 million people hear it, or even just 500,000 people? Hint, it's less per listen than streaming.

Any good tunes I hear on a streaming service, I go buy the album, from the artists website if possible. I've bought a lot of music because of Pandora, and by extension because of Youtube.

But that's not how the payments for terrestrial radio are calculated by BMI, SESAC or ASCAP.

I just opened some old databases and was pretty shocked at the low amount of Radio Airplay revenues.

We didn't have Led Zepplin but we had some pretty huge artists and songs, including the hit song from the Titantic soundtrack, and we only collected $8 million in an 5 year period from ASCAP for radio performance.

Local, Cable and Network TV accounted for $23 million during that same period.

I think that $10 million per year for Stairway To Heaven is extremely unlikely.

Can I ask a question -- why in the **** are royalties and such REGULATED BY FEDERAL LAW?

Why isn't that just determined by the market?

Or am I misunderstanding some of what I'm reading?

Royalties are regulated by Federal Law because artists and composers would have no one to speak for them (us).

The Statutory Rates are determined by Congress and if you ask anyone, whether it's a producer, musician or songwriter, they're WAY too low.

9.1 cents per song before the Publisher's take? That's insane and it used to be waaaaaaaaaaaaay lower.

In Europe, artists are paid performance income for radio play, yet they're not paid in the United States, only the songwriter(s). Film Performance Royalties are also paid in Europe but not in the United States.

It's a crazy business and without government regulation, none of us would earn any money.

Also, because of that, there's no performance income on movie trailers. So every single time you sit through a trailer at the theater, the composer(s) doesn't receive a dime.

The only way trailer composers are paid is via a sync fee and because it's a such a competitive field, sync fees have plummeted in the last decade. What used to cost $100-500k can now cost $10k.

For that reason alone, I don't participate in that area of the business. I'm not going to waste hours and days creating music that could be licensed in a movie trailer for a small upfront sync fee and no performance royalties, when I can earn upfront fees a large performance royalties from TV.

Right, but what do they get paid per play, since we can't just compare the rate per listen via terrestrial radio since there are more listeners than per play on streaming services. It's a paltry amount per listen when you put the numbers to it. Kind of makes the whining about streaming seem a bit ignorant.

The reason why it's not ignorant is that BMI, SESAC, ASCAP, PRS, etc. are all non-profit organizations. Sure, their employees are well paid, as is their CEO.

The streaming companies only payout approximately 20% of their revenues, whereas the PRO's here and abroad payout over 97% of money collected.

Big difference.

Led Zeplin IV :shake:

Geez it's like no one ever heard of this band before 1995.

that does it!

...gonna listen to III !

<a href="http://s1260.photobucket.com/user/KCTattoo58/media/Pawn-Stars-Rich_240_zpsnomu1u2n.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1260.photobucket.com/albums/ii574/KCTattoo58/Pawn-Stars-Rich_240_zpsnomu1u2n.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo Pawn-Stars-Rich_240_zpsnomu1u2n.jpg"/></a>

Before I make a lowball offer I got a buddy to tell me what Stairway to Heaven is actually worth but I'm going well under market value anyways.

What makes you buy albums? Just curious because since Spotify i don't buy anything other than the subscription fee.

I'm probably behind on technology, but when I go running I don't really want to take my large phone. So I have an ipod, and I buy songs (and a very occasional album) on itunes. I hear good things about Spotify, but I don't know how to get songs from there onto my ipod (or something similarly small).

I purchase the 256kbs Mp3 albums from Amazon of artists and albums that I like.

They end up on my iPhone, on a USB stick in my car and I import them into music projects as comps when mixing.

Plus, I feel somewhat obligated to purchase music I enjoy, especially when the albums are $6.99, $7.99 and $8.99.

They are fully Apple compliant. They have a promotion where you can do 3 months for $.99/month.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spot...324684580?mt=8

Oh i feel you on being industry loyal. I have Prime but haven't ventured into amazon music simply because I'm already used to spotify. I get it for $6/month through sprint. Too, I'd venture to say you may be just a bit more of a music aficionado than I.
Do you SoundHound?

Hmm. I'll look into that. But I need to get my songs offline since I don't run with anything that has access. How does that work?

Same as itunes. You download them. Song, album, Playlist, whatever. I'm no shill for them nor am i an expert, Dane would know more. My individual experience has been satisfying and cost effective.

Nope, no SoundHound.

This may or may not be surprising but after working on music 8 hours a day or more, I prefer silence when driving, hiking or biking. I resisted Spotify for a long time due to their low royalty payments but I have to admit, I really enjoy it from time to time.

The most exciting aspect is reading books about how old records and hit songs from the 50's, 60's and 70's were made, then listening to them in my studio with critical ears towards the recording an production. I also enjoy listening to the old jazzers like Tal Farlow, Barney Kessell, Herb Ellis, Howard Roberts and Kenny Burrell.

Completely understandable on getting away from work. Ilike soundhound because I can be anywhere, hear a song ilike, identify and store to load to spotify later.
Cool on the history. Jazz is something to which I've not been overly expulsion exposed though I'm big into Blues.
Did you view Vinyl?

It doesn't, as it's an Internet service. You need to be connected.

Well, that won't work. I'm an off grid runner.

Nah.
https://support.spotify.com/us/using...isten-offline/

Initially, I was excited about Vinyl because I know a lot of old timers from that era and their stories were amazing. So much sex, drugs and rock and roll and with Mick Jagger as an EP, I expected there to be many depictions of actual events or at least allusions.

While I thought the series started strong (and I LOVED the Bowie episode!), the series devolved into a typical Scorsese tail of the Mafia, drug use and lives spiraling out of control. By episode seven, I'd lost all interest.

The show runner was fired before the end of the season so hopefully, next season will deal more with the actual music business (and music creation) than the Mob and drugs.

I have high hopes for Cameron Crowe's series, Roadies, which debuts later this month. Almost Famous (and especially the Director's cut, Untitlted) was amazing and honest and true. I've had friends tell me that the dialog was literally lifted from actual conversation, mainly those with Peter Frampton, which made it all the more sweet for me.

Oh, wow! I had no idea. Thanks!

That's where being an insider might be a negative. You know to call bullshit. I really enjoyed it for an in your face series with cool story lines.
You think Roadies will be worth watching? Previews don't strike me as gritty enough but the majority of roadies I've seen came when my brother was starting his tour coach business and I'd ride on tour segments with his B list bands. Guys that were driving their own uhaul or van before they got signed to open shows.

My emotions are being thrown about like a midget wrestler.