One play equals one play, for that one song, for you as a band or artist. It doesn’t matter who the person is listening to it. All the plays are the same.
If the head of a label, president Obama or Michael Jordan want to listen to your song, you get one play. And you get paid for it. You get paid for their ACTUAL interest.
It used to be you manufactured a thousand or a million records, the got shipped various places, sold, given away, returned, listened to, never listened to, only certain songs listened to, forgotten, cherished. Anything and everything.
That lead to lots of questions. How many records were actually sold? How many were given away/returned/promo copies? How many people actually listened to it?
Now you know for certain that generally speaking the further down the track list you go, the less those songs get played. You know exactly how many times someone checked out a song. You get paid (and further validated) every time someone is interested as opposed to being paid only on a single impulse (to buy a song/album).
There’s less of an ability to hide.
And that’s what most people do (hide) when talking about sales from an album/song. There’s a long answer, with too many details, with too many layers, with too many excuses.
Streaming gives better transparency, which leads to either more fear or more freedom.
Would it be such a horrible thing if everyone could find out EXACTLY how many people cared about your band?
It’s probably not really that important for people to know, but why does the thought of it conjure up such fear and insecurity?
You can live with a constant, subtle fear that someone is going to pull back the curtain on you. Or you can pull it back yourself and let people come and go as they please.
