Doing the math...at $.002 per stream, at one million streams, that’s $2000.
Unless the song is big hit, most won’t get even close to a million streams.
This is ludicrous. Apple is essentially getting their product free, and while the ‘trial period’ is only 3 months, many will download everything they can during that period and then walk away after the period is over, leaving the artists without any real revenue...................
Streams is like the radio. It costs anywhere from 80 cents to $1.50 to download a song, where often streaming is free, or really, really cheap (iTunes radio is free, Pandora costs what $9/month - for how many songs?). If Apple is paying per stream but not charging for it, they're doing the artists a favor.
So... the question I have is... how much do the indies normally get for the play of their music via Apple ?