By Nathan Shubert. Streaming services like Spotify and Rdio erode musicians’ ability to support themselves and sustain their musical careers. In order to earn a US monthly minimum wage, an artist would need to sell 143 self-pressed CD’s a month, 155 CD’s on CD Baby, 1,229 album downloads on iTunes, or get 4,053,110 track plays on Spotify 1. Lady Gaga is rumoured to have made a mere $167 from over a million plays of her song “Poker Face”, the most popular song on Spotify during that period of time 2. If Lady Gaga, the number one artist on Spotify, can’t earn minimum wage from streaming, then who can? Feeling like they’re receiving the shaft, many artists have elected to remove their music from these services entirely, most notably Sir Paul McCartney 3. Swedish artist Magnus Uggla went as far as to say “I’d rather be raped by The Pirate Bay” 4.

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