Garbage Singer Shirley Manson Blasts Spotify: ‘Average Musician Makes $12 a Month’

With conscionable a fewer weeks near connected what Garbage accidental is their final headlining North American tour, vocalist Shirley Manson is saying the large portion adjacent louder. During a amusement successful Denver connected Sunday (Oct. 12), the outspoken vocalist explained to the assemblage wherefore the long-running radical does not program to equine specified a circuit again, telling fans astatine the Mission Ballroom, “It has become wholly unsustainable for a set similar america to travel and circuit anyplace but the coasts.”

Manson past laid retired wherefore the radical consciousness that mode successful a broadside against what she described arsenic the chaotic inequality successful streaming payments to non-superstar moving musicians, astatine a clip erstwhile she said immoderate popular stars are making “billions and billions and billions of dollars,” portion the bulk are conscionable getting by.

“Most of the euphony manufacture is not made of these large popular stars. They’re made of moving musicians,” Manson said. “And this is not a pity enactment for us. This is an alarm telephone for each the young generations of musicians who are successful our aftermath and we consciousness work bound to talk up for due to the fact that there’s cipher speaking up for them,” she added to large applause from the audience.

“The mean instrumentalist makes $12 a period connected Spotify,” she said, noting she has brought the substance up “every night” connected the circuit arsenic a mode to constituent retired that determination is nary governmental assemblage oregon national for musicians warring to assistance young acts get paid.

“They’re sleeping successful their vans. They’re holding down galore jobs. And they’re playing their guts retired each night,” Manson said of roadworthy canine touring acts. “The information that they are not adjacent capable to merchantability a grounds and it’s taken from them by affluent motherf–ers connected streaming platforms who get paid royally by grounds labels, who get paid royally by Ticketmaster, who get paid royally by merch companies, who get paid royally — the database goes connected and connected and on. There’s accountants, there’s lawyers, they’re each f–king getting paid, but for the musician.”

At property clip a spokesperson for Spotify had not returned Billboard‘s petition for comment. In 2024, Billboard reported that Spotify paid retired astir $4.5 cardinal to autarkic rights holders successful 2023, making up astir fractional of the much than $9 cardinal the streaming work paid to each labels and publishers that year.

After 30 years of roadworthy work, Garbage — which released its eighth workplace album, Let All That We Imagine Be the Light successful May connected BMG — are successful the midst of their Happy Endings Tour, which volition play the Knitting Factory successful Boise, Idaho connected Friday (Oct. 17) and upwind down its North American tally connected Nov. 14 astatine the Corona Capital festival successful Mexico City.

Manson said she brings up the inequity each night, due to the fact that “you are the ones who volition suffer retired connected a procreation of esoteric, risk-taking, creative, adventurous weirdos, rebels, agitators, provocateurs. You’re gonna get f–king achromatic bread.”

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