Some food for thought here from Alex here, though exact recent numbers for BBC airplay per minute are as follows...

R1 £13.63
R2 £24.27
6music £5.25

But then there's also PPL payments for the performers on the track. Again per minute...

R1 £37.67
R2 £82.07
6music £8.06 https://twitter.com/alexandernut/status/1200413553125154816

Lets see how that breaks down for one of my original tracks.

It'll be 50/50 with me and the vocalist. Then from that 50% my publisher will take 30%. A 3min single played once in 6music will earn me about £5.51 in royalties

Now to PPL. Same track on 6music.

Not sure of the exact breakdown here but let's guess aside vocals, I've played everything else - bass, drums, keys, guitar, etc - so about 70%?

But 50% goes to the rights owners so 70% of 50% at 3mins =

£8.46!

Let's say I get A-listed on the 6music playlist (made it into the playlist just once back in 2010).

A list is roughly 25 plays of your track in a week I think. So after cuts, adding PRS/PPL, i would earn in that week...

£413

Thinking some more about this

The rhetoric surrounding these arguments is often about how radio royalties compare with streaming. The latter looks quite poxy when you compare the per-play figures which Alex Nut shared above but let's compare listening figures...

Let's say I get played on @laurenlaverne's breskfast show (this has happened, thanks Lauren!).

The show has 1.28m listeners each week, roughly 256,000 each show.

We've established 1 play (PRS + PPL) earns me personally £13.97

So let's compare that with Spotify...

Spotify payments are, I think, less than Alex stated. Closer to 0.005p per play

So 256000 plays = £1280

But then theres the splits, and spotify plays work like sales rather than radio royalties, so assuming Im 50/50 with the label, and then 50/50 with the vocalist =

£320

But then getting 256,000 people to listen to your track on spotify is the tough part.

My Wrongtom Meets comp came out earlier this year. Out of the brand new tracks, only 2 have had more than 5000 plays.

So £320 seems far fetched

However you can submit a track from each forthcoming release to Spotify's playlists. If accepted you have potentially millions of listeners that may play your track (depending on genre obviously).

If so... £320+++

Comparing them is interesting but it's barely half the story. One doesn't negate the other. Obviously you can have (and need) airplay AND Spotify plays, and let's not forget the main reason you want radio play is for people to hear and then buy/stream your track after the fact

And now to sales, and if you weren't already rubbing your temples reading the measly figures above, here's where we start subtracting!

If you're on an indie label like me, you probably have a 50/50 after costs are covered kinda deal.

So what are the costs..?

Ignoring the costs of recording (and the cost to your mental health, lolz etc) once you have delivered your release, it'll need mastering.

You'll be looking at 30-50 quid per track, so let's say £40.

Approx £400 for any album.

There goes that £320 already!

Artwork, you need artwork.

DIY? £0

If you get a pro you should be paying at least £500 for an LP. If you're not and they're supplying amazing artwork that you think your music deserves, you're ripping them off.

So, £500

What's that grandad? Oh, you want to press vinyl? Well ok...

We're probably talking fairly niche music here so let's say 500 copies of a single vinyl album with full colour sleeve will set you back about £1500.

Let's retail the album at £15.

Remember the shop needs a cut, and the distributor needs a cut, so the label will get half of that if they're lucky. Let's just say, £7 back from the distro in each unit

If you or the label can sell 100 units directly, you'll break even.

Entirely possible with a bit of graft, I flogged 30 of In Time myself in a day, but you'll find yourself in a long queue at the post office and you may start to feel like you should just join the dole queue

But wait, in all your excitement leaving the post office you forgot you also spent £900 on mastering and artwork.

Back to the graft and back in that queue with another 60 albums to break even!

So you've broken even with your vinyl and you've got a few hundred more to sell on top of that: money in the bank, right? And then there's digital sales (I'll get to that), Spotify plays, and of course there's the royalties from radio play, which is where this thread started

But

How are you getting your music to radio? Or to the press for that matter. Chances are you're also paying out for promo.

Huge speculation on this outlay. It could be anything from £50 to a few grand depending on the scale and scope of the project. Choose wisely.

Obviously you can do this yourself but it's a long and laborious task, especially if you're cold calling strangers. You'll need a thick skin and some time on your hands. It might be worth the outlay.

So just to be on the safe side let's add, say, £500 to your promo budget

Back to the post office queue, and another 33 1/3 copies will cover your promo.

But of course there's digital sales, that's where the money is now we're living in the future, yeah?

Well, it all depends on the music, the kind of audience you have etc etc

Digital sales.

Every shop takes their cut, and if you want it in all the shops, a digi distributor gets their cut too, so a 99p sale might become 79p, which then becomes maybe 59p which, as you know, is split 50/50 with the label and then in my case is 50/50 with the vocalist.

At this point I have to gush about @Bandcamp who run a fantastic service where you can sell digi, physical and other merch.

Great to deal with directly. They take 15% of digi sales and 10% of merch. They have great editorial.

Every artist/band/label should be using them.

I've been keeping an eye on @danlesac's feed this week after he released his new The Death Of Me EP (really good, buy it!) exclusively for now via @Bandcamp, and he's been candid about how sales are going. 85 in the 1st 4 days last time I checked.

https://twitter.com/danlesac/status/1198752631986040835?s=21 https://twitter.com/danlesac/status/1198752631986040835

So 85 x £4 - 15% = £289

Minus mastering of course. That'll pay a couple of bills for now. Fingers crossed the sales continue.

It may look a little futile reading all this but actually, with a lot of effort and perseverance, it all adds up. Especially once merch comes into it. Gigs off the back of releases. Remix jobs. Shopping mall appearances.

Thick skin is a must.

Now go make some wonderful music!