Gary Numan says he was paid £37 from a million streams

Gary Numan has revealed that a million streams of one of his songs saw him receive a pay out of £37.

His comments arrive as representatives from the three major record labels – Universal, Sony Music and Warner Music Group – provided evidence to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) committee inquiry into the economics of music streaming earlier today (January 19).

Last year, musicians such as Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien, Elbow’s Guy Garvey and Nadine Shah warned MPs that unfair streaming payments were “threatening the future of music” during the first hearing.

Numan hasn’t appeared at the inquiry, but gave his thoughts on the revenue from streaming – putting the figures into context.

“The solution’s simple,” he told Sky News. “The streaming companies should pay more money. They’re getting it for nothing.

“I had a statement a while back and one of my songs had had over a million plays, million streams, and it was £37. I got £37 from a million streams.”

Sharing another example, Numan continued: “I printed out, I think it was about a year ago, a statement – my streaming statement came in and I didn’t look at it, I just put it to print, and I looked over about half an hour later, it was still printing.

“It was hundreds and hundreds of pages. And the end of it was, like, £112. It was barely worth the [paper] it was printed on, and it took nearly half an hour to print. You know, it’s so much stuff, so much streaming, and there’s absolutely nothing in it.”

According to the Broken Record campaign, while the UK brings in more than £1 billion from streaming, artists receive around 16% of the total income, while record companies get around 41% and streaming services around 29%.

Numan added: “If you’re really at the top, then you can earn pretty well from streaming. If you’re not, you might as well forget it, it isn’t even worth printing it out, printing out the statement.”

Meanwhile, Numan recently announced his 18th solo studio album, ‘Intruder’.

The upcoming release, which is the follow-up to 2017’s ‘Savage: Songs From A Broken World’, is set to arrive on May 21 and is preceded by its lead single and title track.