The numbers are pretty stark, and while it doesn’t hurt to be available on streaming services, if for nothing else than the opportunity to be found by new listeners, unknown artists are better off leveraging social media and sites like Bandcamp to manage their own digital distribution.

Galaxie 500 drummer Damon Krukowski¹, writing at Pitchfork:

Since we own our own recordings, by my calculation it would take songwriting royalties for roughly 312,000 plays on Pandora to earn us the profit of one— one— LP sale. (On Spotify, one LP is equivalent to 47,680 plays.)

I’m a happy user of Rdio, which is Spotify’s primary competitor. My fiancée and I pay $17.99 per month for Rdio’s unlimited streaming and downloading to our phones. At first glance, Mr. Krukowski’s article calls the morality of that set-up into question, particularly for someone who wishes he could make a living on his own music.

Some streaming subscribers probably buy more records than non-streamers as a result of discovering new musicians or getting so attached to a record that streaming it just isn’t enough. But Mr. Krukowski casts serious doubt on the idea that streaming can, in any way meaningful to artists, replace the CD/vinyl/iTunes mode of music distribution.