The internet is a bizarre place - and music distribution is just bonkers!

[paulears]

I don't do tiktok - never appealed to me, but I got my distrokids statement for the music I have out there on itunes, spotify, Youtube and being honest, I never pay too much attention because Distrokids will show you the painful detail of how much the streams generate, but I noticed one track was streets ahead, and it's not one of my songs, but an instrumental backing track I put out there really just to see how covers do against original songs. I had a bit of a surprise when a month ago, PRS picked up on a playing of an instrument cover - a slowed down version of a 60s hit - and used by the original artiste, I think as walk on music to start the show. A few pounds, is a few pounds in this covid no money world. Anyway, Mr Blue Sky was listed quite a few times with the platform tiktok as the source. I found it used on loads of tiktok videos, and another of my pieces - remember John Mile's Music - the 7/8 section is on lots of other ones, and Mr Blue Sky is over half a million likes! They seem to range from 10 seconds of it up to nearly the whole song - and some people talk over it so it's faint in the background and other have no sound apart from me! It's really, really weird and a few others are there too but with a handful of plays and likes. Distrokid are the people who distribute the music and I always smiled at the few hundred streams and downloads - but they grew steadily and the $0.00236746354 per stream wasn't really the point. I'm just thinging about the smug expression on my face when I point out that one of my recordings has been heard 576,000 times. even odder is the fact that lots seem to be on Russian vidos!

Just plain odd!

EDIT

I just found another that's 275K!

EDIT 2

I'm stopping now - I got to 1.5 million likes on the videos they're attached to, and that's enough!

 

[NorBro]

The enthusiasm in your description is exactly the inspiration that many people feel to keep at it when they see any kind of increased progress.

 

[paulears]

I'm oddly more pleased with this sheer fluke than anything I've really striven for for ages. I've got to stop looking now, because next step will be to work out how on earth the figures make sense. I have detailed info for 2000 individual sources - 90 streams from the US netted 33 cents, and 1 from Bulgaria got .3 of a cent - how this relates to so many likes, I don't know - it does state updates are 2-3 months late sometimes, so I'll try to forget about it now and come back in a month and see what has happened?