Peloton King Of Streaming Services When It Comes To Artists' Payouts

Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal… Pure trash. If you really want to be bout-it-bout-it in the music game and stop stacking pennies, the only thing that makes sense is to get your music viral on one of the best-paying streaming services around —Peloton.

Did I stutter? Yes, that Peloton — the same one upper-middle-class suburban wives, young professionals and all kinds of weekend warriors flocked to in order to fulfill their fitness goals during the heart of 2020s Covid-19 spurred pandemic.

According to the music industry blog The Trichordist which aggregated the data the glorified exercise bike payout rate per stream based on 2019 data was 3.1 cents, a sum that made the totals of streaming juggernauts like Spotify (.35) Apple Music (.68), YouTube (.15) and Tidal (.88) seem pale in comparison.

Only Facebook, with a relatively massive 6 cents per stream payout — boosted by the platform’s direct monetization deals with artists as well as songs streamed on its gaming platform, fared better. 

Still, it’s probably not the time to devote too many tracks to riding dirty in one’s living room. Overall fitness accounts for still a very small share of the total market and Peloton’s revenue through streaming is only 1.28 percent of the industry total. Spotify brings in more than half of global revenue and YouTube is responsible for more than half of globally licensed music streams.

The whole study is available to read here.

 

Don't Call It A Comeback; Red-Hot Vinyl Market Proves Medium Is Here To Stay

Don't toss those turntables yet Super Throwback fans! One thing we know is our readers love music and real music aficionados have always had a place in their hearts for vinyl — whether it's

 for the so called "warm sound" of pressed records or the fact that it is the only lossless recording medium.

We can't count the hours spent arguing which medium is superior since CDs and finally digital recordings took over the majority of the market. The correct answer of course is vinyl, and 2021 is giving us a little hope that the much-maligned grandfather of the music market isn't on its last legs.

Analytics firm MRC Data, which specializes in collecting data from the entertainment and music industries, recently reported that in the first six months of 2021, 19.2 million vinyl albums were sold compared to sales of just 18.9 million for CDs. It continues a trend that began during 2020 when revenue from vinyl sales eclipsed that of CDs for the first time in 34 years. Overall vinyl sales were up 9.2 million over the same period in 2020, led by Taylor Swift's "Evermore," which moved 100,000 units to set a record for most vinyl copies ever sold in a week during its December 2020 release.

Other artists profiting from the vinyl renaissance include Harry Styles ("Fine Line"), Kendrick Lamar ("Good Kid M.A.A.D. City") and Billy Eilish ("When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?"), whose efforts join Swift's at the top of the vinyl charts at the midyear point. 

Chicago Rapper Shot 64 Times Across The Street From Jail Following His Release

Earned or not, Chicago has long had a reputation for gun violence, and it looks like it will only continue to grow in 2021.

Londre Sylvester AKA KTS Dre

Shortly after his release from Cook County Jail on Saturday night, 31-year-old Londre Sylvester, a local rapper who performed as KTS Dre, was ambushed and shot. Sylvester, whose stage name reportedly stands for "Kill To Survive" was riddled with 64 bullets — several finding his head and chest. He was transported to Mount Sinai Hospital and later pronounced dead according to police. 

A 60-year-old woman who was with him and took a bullet to the knee was in good condition at the time of this report as well as a 30-year-old female bystander walking in the area who had a bullet graze her face.

The shooting appeared to be an ambush targeting Sylvester according to the Chicago Tribune which published the following excerpt from the police report:

“It appears Sylvester was the intended target while (the women) were inadvertently struck,” the police report states.

Sylvester had “just been released” from custody and was fitted for electronic monitoring “as a condition of his bail,” the police report said. He and the 60-year-old woman were walking “to an awaiting vehicle when several unknown (suspects) exited two separate vehicles and all began to shoot in Sylvester’s direction, striking him numerous times,” the police report said.

Sylvester was ordered to be held on $50,000 bail on July1 after prosecutors hit him with a petition for violation of bail bond last month for allegedly failing to meet conditions of his release in a 2020 felony gun case. He had posted $5,000 bail on Friday before walking into his apparent execution.

The murder was only the most horrendous example of gun violence over a weekend that saw 10 people killed and 35 injured in shootings, prompting a meeting with Chicago's top cop, Police Superintendent, David Brown and other city officials to meet with President Joe Biden Monday afternoon to address the problem.