For example, if you look at this page, you can see all of the times that I've listened to the Sarah McLachlan song "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy (Junior Boys Mix)," from the "Bloom (Remix Album)."
Yes, I listened to that song 30 times over a two-year period. On March 27, 2008 at 9:13 (time zone unknown), I first heard - excuse me a moment...
Doo
Doo doo doo
Doo doo doo
Doo doo doo - dooooooo
What was I saying? Oh, I first the song in March 2008, and I listened to it pretty regularly after that, but stopped listening to it on June 26, 2009 at 14:23.
Why would I start listening to the song, and then stop?
Well, as I previously stated in these two posts from 2008 and 2009, I first heard the song after Steven Hodson played it and shared it on last.fm. In fact, I was so inspired by hearing the song that I bought the entire CD at a Barnes & Noble in Montclair, California in August 2008. However, my listening habits changed, and rather than putting a CD into a CD player and listening to it, I would take the songs from the CD, convert them to electronic format, and listen to them on a computer or phone.
Except for the Bloom (Remix Album). As I noted in my second post:
If you look at the first page of my library, you'll see a lot of scrobbles from the Röyksopp and Midnight Juggernauts albums that I recently purchased, but you won't see a lot of scrobbles from the Sarah McLachlan album that I recently purchased. Why not? Because the CD had a copy-protection scheme that I never bothered to master, so I never downloaded the songs to my computer.
Which, in present-day terms (even for me) means that I hardly ever listen to Sarah McLachlan.
It's important to remember that back in 2009, last.fm wouldn't let you just choose to stream a particular song, even if you had an electronic copy stashed away somewhere. You could listen to your electronic copy, but of course I didn't have one of "Fumbling" because of the DRM junk. So I couldn't regularly enjoy
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So as I streamed other music on last.fm, and eventually on Spotify after last.fm changed its streaming model, "Fumbling Toward Ecstasy (Junior Boys Mix)" remained out of sight, out of mind. As you can see, I never listened to that song from the Bloom (Remix Album) ever again.
But if you look at my last.fm records, you'll see this series of scrobbles for "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy - Junior Boys Mix." (See the difference?) These are my Spotify scrobbles, which began on October 23, 2014 at 1:06, as I was assembling the Emu201410f Spotify playlist that I tried to mention here.
Here is a better link to that playlist, which not only includes Sarah McLachlan, but also some NEW Midnight Juggernauts, and the Osmonds.
Crazy.
Horses.
So what does this mean financially for Ms. McLachlan? First, it means that she got some cut of the $18.46 that I paid for the CD back in 2008. Second, depending upon how last.fm pays the record labels, she got some cut of some or all of the 30 plays of the song from 2008-2009. Third, she's getting some cut (perhaps a penny per play - more here) of my current Spotify plays of the song. If my penny per play estimate is accurate, it will take hundreds of Spotify plays before she makes as much money as she did from the percentage that Sony gave her in 2008.
But that is entirely possible.
Doo
Doo doo doo
Doo doo doo
Doo doo doo - dooooooo
