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Boring music business thread here! I’m often asked how musicians (songwriters/composers) earn money from radio plays of their music. Assuming an artist is a registered member of their local rights organisation (IMRO in Ireland), here’s roughly how it works: 1/
2/ Radio stations pay a royalty rate to IMRO for every track they play on the radio. This rate is usually a function of audience size and a percentage of the total revenue of the station, so fluctuates over time. Every few months, IMRO make a payment back to its members.
3/ The royalty rate is (usually) set per minute of music. For example, if a song is 3 minutes and the rate is 20c/min, the royalty paid is 60c. If the rate is €1.50/min, the amount paid is €4.50. Most radio stations use computer systems which generate logs of all music played.
4/ Generally speaking, the national stations pay more than regional or local stations. RTE pays the most, smaller local stations pay the least. Rates as of July 2020 are published here https://bit.ly/35wWBSM
5/ On Beat, the rate is currently 11c/min of music. In 2019 it was 27c. The revenue for all radio stations is on the floor at the moment (hello COVID!), hence the rates being down. KFM currently pay 8c. Spin SW’s rate is 16c. Today FM’s rate is €1.11. 2FM pay €2.90.
6/ Let’s take a track, such as ‘Holy Grail’ by @DeniseChaila which is 2m45s so would be counted as 3 mins of music. A play would earn 24c on @kfmradio, 33c on @beat102103 , 48c on @SPINSouthWest, €3.33 on @TodayFM and €8.70 on @RTE2fm
7/ Any one play is insignificant income for an act, but you’ve got to think of it like a multiplier. Let’s say ‘Holy Grail’ was played 20 times on Beat last week, so that’s €6.60. 20 plays on 2FM would be €174! You can see how these figures scale up
8/ All of these payments are tracked and then paid out by IMRO every three months to songwriters/composers. That can be a decent chunk of change! The rates are all much higher on RTE stations than anywhere else. I assume this is due to the licence fee
9/ NB the rates on radio stations are at an all-time low at the moment. I would expect those to go back up when business resumes some semblance of normality. In July 2018, Beat’s rate was 32c/min, so that was roughly €1 per play of a song https://bit.ly/3iGkI4Y
10/ Compare these rates to streaming sites. With Spotify, a song earns US$0.00437 per play. With Apple, it’s US$0.00783. That means ‘Holy Grail’ would have to have nearly 2000 streams on Spotify to earn the equivalent of those sample 20 plays on Beat from tweet 7
11/ I’m not having a go at streaming services BTW. I find them absolutely fantastic and am a daily user. Streaming services can scale to a level no radio station can match. They have an almost global reach whereas radio is generally limited by geography
12/ There’s a good short article on streaming services with a royalty calculator here https://bit.ly/2Zyz93E
13/ One thing to remember is that the radio royalties are for songwriting only. That could be divided between 4 people or all kept for a single person. It also depends what kind of deal someone is on and how much of the rights are signed over elsewhere
14/ An independent solo songwriter might own 100% of a song. A band might have them split 4 ways. A signed act will have a split with a record label, publishing company, etc – but they’ll also be dealing in much bigger sums of money! 15% of €1m is much larger than 100% of €1k!
15/ Mechanical royalities are a whole other kettle of fish. These are for musicians who play on a recording but aren’t credited songwriters (e.g. the drummer). There’s a good article on those here https://bit.ly/33pT7Pj
16/ For most songwriters radio royalties are a valuable form of income. Having a hit song is like winning the lottery, so the likelihood of you earning big money is very small. However, a moderately successful act can expect to have some money coming in every quarter
17/ Apologies for any inaccuracies in this thread, but this is my understanding as to how this all works
18/ * full disclosure. I don’t work for IMRO, but am a member of IMRO as a songwriter (though I haven’t released anything under my own name in some time). I’m not a songwriter with @spidersfighting just one of those people not earning much by way of mechanical royalties 
19/ I do host a weekly Irish music show ( #IrishBeats) on @beat102103 and very happy to promote interesting sounds on the radio whenever I can.
20/ Forgot to mention, @IMROireland pay out most of the money they collect to their members (songwriters!). AKAIK they keep a bit (18%?) to pay salaries, put on gigs, provide grants, run workshops, etc. If you create music in Ireland, it’s worth your while joining.
