TORONTO -- In Amy Millan’s 20 years of playing music professionally, she never thought she would do anything other than performing as a source of revenue – but the pandemic changed everything.
The singer and mother of two plays in the Montreal-based pop band Stars. While touring has been halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it has also presented other opportunities for the band.
“We’re doing things we never thought we would. Lessons, surprise downloads and meet-and-greets at future concerts,” said Millan.
The pandemic has had a devastating impact on her band’s revenue, giving her little choice but to find other sources of income.
She and her band have since found alternative revenue streams through digital patronage platforms like Patreon and Bandcamp.
“These sites have been an amazing home for artists who are struggling through these times. It’s a very exciting experience to engage with your audience and a lot of other people,” said Millan.
Millan and her husband Evan, who plays bass in Stars, offer their online subscribers weekly guitar lessons, access to unreleased recordings and gear rundowns. For $5 every month, the band walks their online members through how a record is made and communicates directly with their fans in chatrooms.
They now have more than 1,000 members.
“There’s an incredible community within these websites and it’s basically making people apart of the band,” said Millan.
Platforms such as Bandcamp allow artists to retain nearly 100 per cent of the revenue generated for their songs.
Other revenue streams have come from licensing music for television and radio programs.
But Millan said that despite her band grossing more than 10 million streams through Spotify this year, each member made approximately $4,000 after royalty fees.
After taking to Twitter to express her frustration with the streaming service, she heard from others in the international music industry who shared a similar story.
“When I tweeted that I saw $4,000 from 10 million streams in the entire year, it woke a lot of people up and made a lot of music fans upset. Within 24 hours we had 40 new patrons.”
While the patronage platforms do not completely make up the band’s lost touring revenue, they are able to provide some stability in their income.
“It makes a huge difference and it’s a steady income we can rely on to help us in some ways during this very troubled time,” she said.
Currently Spotify pays its artists based on a stream sharing system. The company pays based on a proportion of total streams in the country, and then looks at how many of those listeners stream a specific artist. The earnings are then divided up amongst record labels, producers and band members.
She said by increasing the rate of pay to one cent per stream it would have an immense impact on the band’s revenue.
“That’s a living wage for six people who have been working in this band for 20 years,” she said.
Until then Millan and her band want to create a coalition of Canadian musicians who can bring change to the music industry.
