The river of nonsense based on misinformation thickens every day! From idiotic videos ‘proving’ that no airplane hit the second tower on 9/11 (2.5 million views ladies and gentlemen!) to diet advice stemming from horribly wrong conclusions drawn from questionable scientific research, we are in danger! You see, humans put a value on information based in large part on how many others they hear state it. We are herd animals after all, and so we follow. Before the information age, in order for you to hear thousands of people say something, a very large percentage of folks directly around you would have to do so. These days, even if only 1% of a population believes something, but they are loud and active, it can seem like everybody believes it.
Here’s something I do know a something about: performance royalties for music. If one were to believe the internet, Spotify is taking advantage of composers and publishers, paying them horribly low amounts. Nothing is further from the truth actually. Two months ago I did an experiment: I signed up for a paid membership for one month, at $10, and then proceeded to put XR7 on loop. In the last few days I’ve been getting my regular payments for that period and they’re actually good: 1.24 cents per play! That means every time ONE person listens to ONE song ONE time, I get paid more than a penny. Contrary to popular belief that is WAY better than any terrestrial radio ever paid! Not all the songs have come through for this period, including The Robot Song, which I played on repeat separately, but already my little experiment has brought in $25, or actually MORE than I paid for my membership. How that is unfair is beyond me……
Now, I don’t know what the pay scale is at Pandora and it probably is worse, but still, whenever these musicians around here bitch about the new model, I want to slap them. They post stuff on FB, about how someone had a million plays but only made $400. Well guess what, if your song plays on a broadcast radio station and is heard by a million people, how much do you think you get paid? This is part of the problem caused by the idiotic price of 99 cents that iTunes has instilled on us. It’s outrageous……..
