As Ken says streaming is seen as marketing your band and increasing public awareness. Labels often have this written in to a contract.

There's long been a massive asymmetric power relationship between the artist and the label in favour of the label. The more it's skewed to the label the less chance you have of negotiating more royalty etc. If you look back at artist who have managed to increase their royalties it's nearly always/ is always the major names - Lennon/Ono, G Michael, Prince, Michael Jackson...

BINGO!! In general, the record label (even if it's an artists own label with only one artist) is the legal body that negotiates with the streaming service. Big artists may get a bigger slice of revenu but still only a pittance in streaming. Many labels simply refuse to have their music on spotify/etc. due to the low payout. Streaming, like cds, is just a loss leader (e.g. loses money just to promote the artist). So it's just promotional mostly.

Yes, the marketing value is undeniable, especially for artist still on the way to the top. I just imagine it reduces physical and digital sells enormously for mainstream top acts and these are making streaming services so attractive for the majority of users. I find it weird that record labels seems to support streaming services instead to fight against it. At the end it doesn’t seem so much different to illegal downloads from the income point of view. They complain about nobody is buying music anymore, but provide the product more or less for free.

Btw .. i have nothing against streaming. I have a paid subscription with Deezer and as a user i’m happy to have lots of music available on all my devices without to deal with GB’s of mp3’s .. and for cheap! I can legally download music to my phone. Even pop acts like Rhianna, Daft Punk and such .. thought it’s not my taste of music, but i guess i would have bought some of these tunes to keep my girls singing and entertained in the car

Overall, i would and would be forced to buy more music if the streaming catalogue wouldn’t be so “complete”.

After getting CRUSHED by mp3/the internet, you'll notice labels trying to get with technology instead of fighting it just to survive. Also, it makes good biz sense for them as the payouts are very very low and they get a slice for doing nothing after the record is made.

Digital Pennies will never replace analogue dollars as the saying goes. So finding your own way forward is more important than ever

To be honest I'm just a step before uploading full CD of my band to You Tube. I spoke to some friends who did this...and guess what? The sells of regular CD was increased after such an operation. I do it myself...I listen to the album on YT and then I buy it to get a full flavour of listening to a high quality product. Of course I won't speak in the name of famous bands / artists but for the second leguae band it's probably better why to promote because people won't buy something they don't know...

I said this many times and probably will never change my mind. People who don't want would never buy Your CD. No matter if it's internet era or "record me a tape...mate" period. Those who respect artists, buy CDs as an act of appreciation and their own need. Those who steal...would steal anyway. The differency is..You can get extra amount of selling because some people who didn't know the band can listen to full album and get interested.

Sure, they have to work with technology, but i think they shouldn’t use every possible option especially if one (streaming) reduces the sells of the other (iTunes, ..). I guess i still don’t get the whole picture how income is done for the record label over streaming services. Maybe there are other money flows which we or i don’t know of (?)