JACKSON: I want you all to get it in all the radio stations in America. And there are lots of ways to try to do that, like getting on the radio. GONZALEZ: We needed to reach more people. But come on, a thousand bucks for, like, almost a million streams? So not satisfying. This put "Inflation" in front of people who otherwise would never find it. Earnest's song is up there next to songs by Etta James and Jimi Hendrix.īERAS: And this was big. We pitched Spotify to add our song to these really popular playlists. GONZALEZ: And we did do this one big thing to try to increase our streams. So our share of streams is a lot less than it would have been if we released our song on a non-Taylor Swift month. She got, like, 200 million streams in a day. So for example, we uploaded our song the same month that Taylor Swift dropped her latest album. You get paid based on how many streams your song gets in one month compared to how many streams every other song in the country gets that same month. Basically, you do not get paid per stream or per listen. By the way, we, the record label, we made $387 on those streams.īERAS: You get paid based on something called stream share.
GONZALEZ: This is what he's getting with a record deal that we designed to be more favorable to the artist than the norm. Well, please, in Jesus name (laughter), let those sixths of a penny add up. And we have figured out, you, Earnest, are getting a sixth of a penny every time someone streams your song. GONZALEZ: Royalties are how you get paid if you own part of a song.īERAS: We did do the math. GONZALEZ: Earnest made $1,098.82 on his streaming royalties. NPR.ĮRIKA BERAS, BYLINE: And on March 1, we finally saw how much money our singer and songwriter, Earnest Jackson, got for those streams. GONZALEZ: Two months after our song dropped, "Inflation" had been streamed about 713,000 times across all the sites, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Pandora, Spotify. GONZALEZ: Are you just telling us that? Or is it, like, actually impressive? He works at Spotify.ĭUBOFF: Really impressive numbers for a first song released. SARAH GONZALEZ, BYLINE: So how's our song doing? Then reporter Sarah Gonzalez and Erika Beras wanted to see if anyone would listen. MARTÍNEZ: They released the song in October. That's been my dream since I was a little boy.
MARTÍNEZ: The song "Inflation" was recorded by a band called Sugar Daddy and the Gumbo Roux and Earnest Jackson.ĮARNEST JACKSON: I've always wanted to be a superstar. And listen to what I have to say, 'cause inflation is in the nation. Our Planet Money podcast team wanted to look inside that box, so they decided to become a record label and release a long lost song from the '70s.ĮARNEST JACKSON AND SUGAR DADDY AND THE GUMBO ROUX: (Singing) Now, people, stop what you're doing. How artists get paid for a song in the age of streaming is a bit of a black box.
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