Downstream – sheet music organ

Description

Downstream is about his experience with the music industry. It is the 'Industria Ministrat Musicum' (Industry Serves Music) translated into music. In October 2019, he began releasing parts of his compositional work through the major and sometimes smaller streaming services of our time. It has led to remarkable results. While through some services there is hardly any listening, through other services some listeners hardly seem to listen to anything else. 

Someone unfamiliar with how the music industry works might imagine that a musician will make a nice living from it. Little could be further from the truth, however. Alex Ruis is both composer, producer and performer of his works. For that, he receives about €0.0011 per stream from the major services. A sheet of toilet paper or a plastic garbage bag through a discount store will cost you even more! So per €10,000 investment, you need about 9,090,909 streams to recoup that alone. Without compensation for all the work.

According to musicbusinessworldwide.com:

"

• 120,000 new tracks are being uploaded to streaming services every day.

• Since first quarter 2024, Spotify no longer pays royalties to tracks that have attracted fewer than 1,000 plays on its platform in the prior 12 months.

• According to Luminate’s 2023 Year-End Music Report, fully 158.6 million tracks each received 1,000 or fewer plays on audio streaming services in 2023.

• 86.2% of the 184 million music tracks on audio streaming services at the close of last year via ISRCs (International Standard Recording Codes).

• 45.6 million tracks received zero plays in 2023. That represents 24.8% of the 184 million tracks available on audio streaming platforms.

• 37.9 million tracks received zero plays on streaming platforms in 2022 – a rise by 20% in 2023, or by 7.7 million.

"

Someone who is listened to 9,091 times a month needs €10,000 / €10 = 1,000 months = 83.33 years to recoup such a simple investment. So one might conclude that musicians who release tracks are doing charity to a large extent. But it is unclear how long they will continue to do so.

He recently discovered that there are also producer-friendly solutions that take into account that producers need more than fractions of pennies to get their work out there. The above investment can be recouped with such a service in 3 years and 4 months at an equal number of listeners per month. Releasing your work through them currently seems to go against the grain, but that may change. If an unknown composer/producer/performer dares to release his work exclusively through an "insignificant" streaming service, it is only a matter of time until better-known ones will follow. Then we will collectively go Downstream.

What about this version?

The piano performance is the closest to how he plays this piece himself. The organ version is just another one.

* according to him, music industry could more aptly be called money industry. In which the most important links - composers, arrangers and performers - are the least rewarded for their efforts. As a result, music, like many valuable things, loses out to greed for money.