Taylor-Rae knows the value of a playlist. When the Alberta-born country artist released “Are You Still Up?” she watched the stats climb overnight. First, it was a trickle, then a surge of streams. Amazon Music picked it up, and as Taylor-Rae watched in disbelief, her numbers soared past one million streams.
It was a breakout moment that helped her land big festival gigs and grow her reputation. Soon after, she moved to the heart of the country music industry: Nashville. That is where she now lives and works.
“It’s a numbers game,” she says of streaming. “So when I’m booking festivals, being able to show I’ve got something going on, I’m not some small garage band, it does help.”
That’s one version of success. But for many indie artists, playlisting is a double-edged sword. The St. John’s, Newfoundland indie band Swimming is a lot like if Porno for Pyros and Weezer had a baby. The shoegaze-influenced math-rock band knows their concert crowds better than their streaming numbers, and they make more money through traditional avenues.
“We’ve been added to a lot of different playlists and built a kind of patchwork following around the world,” says the band’s drummer, Jacob Cherwick. “But we don’t know who those listeners are. We’re not really connected to them in any meaningful way, and we haven’t seen too much revenue [from streaming].”
Streaming is not always the dominant revenue engine
Streaming made up 79 per cent of all sound recording sales in Canada, according to Statistics Canada. That’s over half a billion dollars in revenue, up 25 percent from 2021. Revenues from streaming eclipse CDs, downloads, and vinyl sales. And according to Spotify’s recent Loud & Clear report, Canadian artists earned $460 million on its platform alone last year. Most of that, 92 per cent, came from listeners outside of Canada.
This means Spotify now pays out more royalties to Canadian artists than the entire commercial radio industry combined. Nearly half of those royalties go to independent artists like Swimming. But that stat obscures what that money actually looks like once split across the long tail of the indie scene.
Cherwick, the drummer from St John’s, plays in several different bands in the city’s thriving music scene. Only Swimming has managed to hit the Spotify algorithms.
“Swimming is kind of the first one where our music has done more numbers on Spotify than within our own community,” he says. “We’ve been added to all these different playlists and stuff, and that’s been gathering steam.” Cherwick says the band does really well with college radio stations across Canada, and they tour the country playing festivals. They’ve been able to take advantage of both federal and provincial grants to stay afloat, because their growing success on Spotify hasn’t translated into meaningful money.
Two artists, two realities
Playlist support was the big thing that helped move the needle for Taylor-Rae. She credits Amazon Music for taking a chance on her early career and sees clear value in maintaining momentum with new releases every eight weeks or so. That visibility has also helped build real audiences.
“Amazon’s a really great spot for that,” she says. “They’re super supportive of up-and-coming talent, whether it’s your first release or your 16th, they really stand behind Canadian talent.”
She compares Amazon to other streaming platforms like Apple Music and Spotify. “A lot times they want you to have a little buzz of your own before they start placing you,” she explains. “So, it’s different with all of them, but I think Amazon were some of the first ones to just really hop on board and push new talent.”
Taylor-Rae says she and her friends often stay up late to watch the 11 p.m. release of a new track on the platforms, and wait with bated breath as the number of streams starts to climb. “You’re immediately going to every DSP (digital streaming platform) to see which playlists you’re on, that kind of stuff.”
The experience is much different for Swimming. Their track “Sometimes Things Change” has racked up tens of thousands of streams thanks to Spotify’s editorial “Emo Right Now” playlist, but Cherwick points out they haven’t earned any significant money from it.
“Streaming has helped build an audience in theory,” he says. “But our real growth has come from touring, from vinyl sales, and a lot of it from being active in Canada’s music community.” He explains how this community is very small and tightly-knit, and every Canadian musician kinda-sorta knows of every other musician. “We play a show in Toronto, and we meet another musician from Toronto, and they know someone we know from Calgary, and that person knows someone we all know from Halifax, that sort of thing.”
The streaming platforms approach artists in completely different ways
Taylor-Rae performing at CMA Fest. | Image credit: Taylor-Rae.
Both Taylor-Rae and Cherwick agree that not all platforms offer the same opportunities. Taylor-Rae has met with executives from Amazon Music to help grow her career on the platform. Cherwick, meanwhile, sees the platforms as impersonal.
“We’ve never had contact with anyone from any platform,” he says. “We don’t even know how some of our songs landed on playlists.” He considers Spotify’s algorithm better for surfacing new music in niche genres, while Taylor-Rae considers Amazon Music a major factor in her career success so far.
“I would say they’re a bit like career partners in a lot of ways,” she says of Amazon Music. “They do help with a project, and they want to know what’s going on, if you have more coming up, that sort of thing. They want to make sure you’re not taking a spot in a playlist from someone else if you’re only releasing one song every couple of years.”
CanCon doesn’t always fit the new music model
Jacob Cherwick drums for Swimming at The Black Sheep Pub. | Image credit: Swimming.
Taylor-Rae is a believer in Canadian content rules. Although she has to navigate them from her new home in Nashville, she is undeniably Canadian, even talking about “going for a rip up to Alberta.” But it can be hard to deal with Music, Artist, Performance, Lyrics (MAPL) requirements for someone producing in the U.S.
MAPL is a set of criteria for Canadian Content (CanCon) rules in Canada. A song must have two of those four criteria created by at least 50 per cent Canadians in order to qualify as CanCon. Broadcasters like radio stations must play 30 per cent CanCon, with similar regulations potentially coming for streaming platforms as well.
“A lot of my co-writes are with American artists,” Taylor-Rae explains. “That means sometimes the songs don’t meet MAPL requirements, even though I’m Canadian.” Swimming has had more luck with CanCon rules, primarily because they haven’t hit the commercial radio stations yet. Both Taylor-Rae and Cherwick say the system needs updating.
“A lot of times, stations hit their 30 per cent requirement and then just branch out,” Taylor-Rae explains. “It ends up stifling a lot of other Canadian artists, who don’t get a slot in that station’s broadcast, and I can see it hurting smaller artists if it carries over to streaming platforms.”
Cherwick isn’t that concerned with CanCon. Most of his fan base is niche, and a lot of Newfoundlanders listen only to local music to begin with.
“We’ve always tried to stay focused on what’s real,” he says. “Streaming is one tool, but it’s not the point of it all. Playing shows, connecting with our fans in real life, that’s where the real work happens. ”
And for both Swimming and Taylor-Rae, where the real payoff happens, too.
With photography from Brad Bennett.
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