Aaron M. Fortkamp

Apple Music is currently ranked as the highest-paying streaming service for artists, coming it at around $12-$15 per 1000 plays of a song. So, if I want my student loans paid off, I should write a song that will get played….

…somewhere around 7 million times.

Suppose I decided to take on this task myself. If I wrote a three-minute song and listened to it myself and put it on repeat and just left it playing on repeat, this would take 21 million minutes, or 350,000 hours, or 14,583 days, or approximately 40 years.

Alternatively.

Suppose I had two devices simultaneously playing my song. Then it would only take twenty years. With a family plan, I can stream music to six devices simultaneously. That’s only about 6 years and eight months.

Hmmmmm.

I’m not sure how the algorithm accounts for song length. If I can still expect the $12 for a song that only lasts perhaps two minutes, then that’s only like four years and two months.

Still. This is going to have to be, like, a really good song. For me to listen to it from six devices simultaneously for over four straight years. I should really put some effort into it, probably.

Alternative alternatively: Apple Music now has over 27 million paying subscribers. If I could get one out of every three Apple Music subscribers to listen to my song once, simultaneously, than this would only take three minutes. Or two, if I’m really clever.

That would be a hell of a birthday present. That’s two months away, my birthday. If I could write a song and get it up on Apple Music in about two months’ time, can I count on seven million of you to give it a quick listen? Or a long listen, I don’t know, maybe three minutes is a long time for you, I’m not here to judge. Look, I’ll even start a Facebook event for it, if that would help. I would do that for you.

More on this later, perhaps.