EXPERIMENT: Is It Possible For An Indie Artist To Earn $20,000 In 200 Days On Spotify?
[UPDATED] Here one entrepreneurial musician outlines his experiment to see whether or not he can generate enough revenue in 200 days of streaming his music on Spotify to buy his family a house.
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Guest post by Mike Holden from Medium
This is my goal for 2017. Follow along for updates. All you need to do to help is Like, Share and Listen (here: http://spoti.fi/2bHDdYB)
Have a few minutes to take part in an experiment? I have a really big goal for 2017 and could use your help.
You don’t even need to leave home and it doesn’t require you to spend any money. All you need to do is Like, Share and Listen. It’s a little like a Kickstarter, but with streaming music.
I want to see if I can make $20,000 in streaming revenue through Spotify in 200 days, a half a penny at a time, and then buy a house for my family. Yes, a house. There will be some prizes for participants along the way too.
Here’s the deal: I have a four-song EP called “Level” on Spotify and earn about half a penny (I’ve averaged $.00527 per stream in 2016) each time someone listens to a song. So for every 200 times one of my songs is streamed on Spotify, I get about a dollar.
I want to see if we can stream our way toward a big chunk of the down payment. Because, why not??? My songs are just sitting there on Spotify waiting to be put to work.
My wife and I have our sights set on buying a house for our family (five kids and one medium-sized poodle) and I want to see if we can stream our way toward a big chunk of the down payment. Because, why not??? My songs are just sitting there on Spotify waiting to be put to work.
It’s a very aggressive goal, but here’s the math: If my four-song album averages 5,000 streams a day for 200 days, that’s 4 million streams (5,000 album stream x 4 songs X 200 days). At an average of half a penny earned for each stream, that’s $20,000.
It was reported this year that Spotify has over 100 million users. If just a fraction of them stream the songs daily, this can happen, especially if this post — and some other posts in the next 200 days — go viral from people liking and sharing them (hint, hint).
This won’t be easy, but that’s one of the things that has me excited about it.
So, what do you think? Want to help?
THINGS YOU CAN DO:
1. THIS IS THE BIG ONE…Stream my four-song CD, “Level,” every day you can and ask your friends to check out the music and do the same. You can get a free Spotify account if you don’t have one. Here’s the link to stream “Level”: http://spoti.fi/2bHDdYB
THE NEXT TWO ARE BIG TOO…
2. Click the heart button to your left or at the bottom of this post as soon as you’re done reading it
3. Share this Medium post on Twitter and Facebook to your left or at the bottom of this post as soon as you’re done clicking the heart button
4. Hit the Like button on my Facebook music page to become a follower if you aren’t one already, so you get updates there along the way.
5. Follow me on Spotify and ask your friends to do the same thing. Just go to this page (you’ll also see a song there called “68th Dimension” — that’s not me. It’s a different Mike Holden and I’ve asked Spotify to remove it from my page) and hit the “Follow” button: https://play.spotify.com/artist/59Tc46VkgwXjDCaBSRrbGF
6. Add my songs to Spotify playlists and then share those playlists with people, text them to friends with Spotify, email them to people, post them to Facebook and Twitter, play them at parties, stream as you commute, ask Alexa to play Spotify on your Amazon device…and on and on (please use the comments section below to post your ideas too)
7. Tell your friends about this idea offline as well and send them to http://www.mikeholden.com.
8. Have Twitter? Follow me at @mikeholden and @mikeholdenmusic, and tweet about this idea with this link to Spotify: http://spoti.fi/2bHDdYB or to mikeholden.com.
9. Follow me on YouTube, where I’ll begin posting regular updates about this project: https://youtube.com/mikeholdenmusic
10. Hit the follow button at the bottom of this post to keep up with me here on Medium
10. Join my mailing list by clicking the sign-up button on my Facebook page
11. Check back often for updates on social media. I’ll regularly share my streaming stats so you can see the progress being made. And stay tuned for some other announcements related to this experiment.
That’s it for now. Please use the Like and Share buttons on this post. It’s going to take a lot of you doing that for this to have a chance. Comments here are welcome and appreciated too! And I’m at mike@mikeholden.com if you want to reach me directly.
Thanks for reading! 200 days to go!
Mike
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Send friends here: https://www.mikeholden.com
Stream songs here: http://spoti.fi/2bHDdYB
