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We came across this blog post by Benji Rogers, who runs the music donations website Pledge Music, and was intrigued by his concerns over the potential negative impact music streaming services could have on a bands cash flow whilst on tour.

Benji commented that on Spotify each time a track is listened to by a subscriber the band / artist will net $0.00077601. Based on this tiny return a band would need to achieve something like 15,000 plays to equal that of one album sale on CD – crazy then to think you could ever generate enough plays to sustain a tour from streaming alone.

Music streaming services such as Spotify (UK & parts of EU) and Pandora (US) are considered excellent platforms for discovering new music. You also have the chance to listen to the artist before you decide whether to invest into buying their recorded works, create and share playlists with your friends on Facebook & Twitter.

The question here is that if everyone were to adopt streaming music instead of purchasing CD or even digital tracks how this would impact on grassroots touring musicians who rely on direct to fan CD & merch sales to cover the costs of actually doing the show?