While Taproot commanded a respectable fanbase amid their early 2000s heyday, the staggering commercial success enjoyed by a number of their peers and tourmates at the time ultimately eluded them. As of February of last year, the Ann Arbor, MI-based nü-metal outfit were about 9 million streams short of their 2002 sophomore album “Welcome” attaining gold status in the United States. Should they manage to hit that milestone, it will be the group’s first hardware from the RIAA.
While periods of inactivity likely hampered the overall performance of the group’s digital catalog on digital service providers, the rejuvenated outfit, who returned to active duty in 2023, have retained a sizable following over the years. Current Spotify stats have the band at 263,351 monthly listeners as of press time.
As you’re likely painfully aware by now though, streaming numbers hardly pay the bills for the majority of recording artists these days, often serving up fractions of a penny. Unfortunately, many artists of the early 2000s also took on large advances, or worse, predatory 360 deals, for their albums and respective promotional cycles.
Those arrangements ensured the lion’s share of those fractions goes to labels, and potentially other parties, long before the band sees their cut. There’s also the added wrinkle of the writing credits split between individual bandmembers on material to consider as well.
Taproot drummer Jarrod Montague recently shared his ASCAP (royalties) payout for the band’s music streams between October and December of 2023. While the complete accounting was not provided, the excerpt he posted does little in the way of encouragement for financial stability when it comes to the current streaming model.
Back in 2020, Montague explained how Taproot‘s own songwriting split was implemented, stating on social media at the time:
“All bands split up writing credits differently. We agreed on 30/30/20/20 for everything early on: 30% for Steve and Mike (primary song writers) and 20% for Phil and me. So Phil’s would be the same as mine; Steve and Mike’s x 1.5.”
