While She Sleeps campaign against streaming revenue ‘if bands are to survive we need to find new income’

It’s not a new conversation, it’s not a new topic, however, it’s a topic that people just don’t seem to take seriously, mainly the listener, the music consumer. It’s not the fault of the audience though, many music fans have now been conditioned to believe that music is free and comes at no cost to them. Music has become a free commodity that nobody needs to trade.

It’s served to the public on a free platter and this very concept is wiping out the traditional methods of how music fans connect with artists. Artists are becoming nothing more than jesters fit for entertaining and nothing more. Whilst more and more artists struggle to generate revenue from record sales, record labels and streaming services are turning huge profits. Literally multimillion dollar profits.


“The majority (76% in fact) of music in 2019 is streamed. Probably by you, definitely by us & there’s nothing bad about that.

But if bands and artists are to survive and win the battle of art vs money, we need to find new income to keep afloat. One stream on Spotify pays approximately 0.00429p to the artist, which means it takes around 5000 streams to make £20.” - While She Sleeps

Whilst there are many benefits to streaming services, they are slowly destroying career opportunities for many artists. Mainly the independent artist that need the revenue the most.

“One stream on Spotify pays approximately 0.00429p to the artist, which means it takes around 5000 streams to make £20.”

The issue here is that people are aware of the implications of streaming music and not buying records, people know this has a huge impact on the artist, however, it’s more convenient for a user to not pay for music so why would anyone campaign to bring back having to actually pay for a record? If your Government said “Hey, we are thinking of scrapping tax but you still get all the benefits, what do you think?”, would you say no?

"This is about how you can support the music you love.

Not just our band and our music – this is aimed at every working band trying to make music and get it out there. Today, we are launching a free-to-use design to highlight the realities of being a band today.

It doesn’t matter how successful you look from the outside, the music industry is a tough place to survive."

While She Sleeps have taken it upon themselves, as have many artists, to try and tackle the issue. They are well aware that streaming is not going anywhere, not for the foreseeable future anyway, and as such, have decided to run a new campaign to highlight the importance of supporting artists by purchasing physically merchandise.

Taking to social media, While She Sleeps have launched a free to use T-Shirt design with a message to anyone willing to read it, and use it. Explaining the financial impact of streaming compared to directly supporting the band and how vital this is for artists to survive.

Even Corey Taylor of Slipknot recently made his opinion clear that streaming is stripping artists of vital revenue. Streaming needs a massive overhaul but there’s no one to govern or control it, and with huge labels signing their catalogue away to streaming platforms in multi-million dollar licensing deals, what can the little guy do here?