Snoop Dogg joined Gamma CEO and ex-Apple Music Creative Director Larry Jackson last week for a conversation at the Milken Institute Global Conference. During the panel, Snoop Dogg took a detour, calling out music executives for their meager digital music streaming payout system.
“It’s an exciting time, but streaming got to get their sh-t together ’cause I don’t understand how you get paid off of that sh-t,” Snoop told the audience. “Can someone explain to me how you can get a billion streams and not get a million dollars? That sh-t don’t make sense to me.”
He added, “I know I’m going off-script right now, but f-ck it. This is business. In a room full of business people and somebody may hear this so the next artist don’t have to struggle and cry for his money because some of these artists are streaming millions and millions and millions and millions of f-cking streams and they don’t got no millions of dollars in the pot.”
Streaming is one of the leading music revenue streams for artists in 2023, but even so, the payout rates are relatively low. Spotify pays out an average of $0.003 – $0.005 per stream. The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers found artists were paid an average of just over half a cent per stream in 2018. This dropped to under a third of a cent in 2020, signifying that the average artist pay rate declined 43% over two years.
“I don’t know who the f-ck is running the streaming industry if you in here or not? But you need to give us some information on how to f-cking track this money down,” said Snoop. “Because one plus one ain’t adding up to two.”
The rapper compared the low payouts to the ongoing writer’s strike in Hollywood. “The writers are striking because streaming. They can’t get paid!” he declared.
