At first I was thinking "$4 for 14k plays sounds pretty good!", but then I did a little math.
If I listen to a streaming service for 10 hours a week (seems like a plausible average?), that's about 800 songs per month. So I'm probably paying in the range of a penny per song listened to. If I played 14k songs, that's $140. So only 3% is going to the artist[1], which does actually seem fairly low.
To put it another way, he's making the same amount of my subscription as the credit card company is.
1 - We have no idea how much he's previously been paid via advances, etc.
My initial thought is the amount going to artists with volume like The Rolling Stones, and Bieber (or whatever the kids are clamoring for these days) must command a much higher rate per listen presumably shifting the total percent going to artists to be much higher than that.
His $4 number is misleading. You have to look at both his BMI and SoundExchange statements. The webcasting Pureplay rate was $0.0021 per play for 2013. 14227 plays is about $30.
If I listen to a streaming service for 10 hours a week (seems like a plausible average?), that's about 800 songs per month. So I'm probably paying in the range of a penny per song listened to. If I played 14k songs, that's $140. So only 3% is going to the artist[1], which does actually seem fairly low.
To put it another way, he's making the same amount of my subscription as the credit card company is.
1 - We have no idea how much he's previously been paid via advances, etc.