As ideas go, you have to admit that it’s a good one. Rapper Nelly was recently hit with a bill for $2.4 million by the US tax authorities. The state of Missouri is also on his ass and are seeking nearly $150,000 in unpaid taxes and interest from 2013. What’s a dude to do when the suits come around mob-handed?
In the case of Nelly, his fans reckon the answer to his woes is to keep streaming his biggest hit Hot In Herre until the tax guys have their money. There's not an app for that (yet), but there is the #HotInHerreStreamingParty hashtag.
The only problem is that it will take some time for this innovative idea to actually pay off, given the fact that Spotify’s royalty rates are so low, between $0.006 and $0.0084 per stream depending on the artist.
Spin magazine pulled out their calculator to do the maths and reckon that it would take between 287,176,547 and 402,880,500 streams to clear the debt. That, of course, is before you factor in any additional interest on the outstanding tax and the royalty split with label and publishers. It all adds up to a whole lot of Nelly, no matter how you slice it. However, there are probably enough fans out there who feel sorry for Cornell Iral Haynes, Jr to try to make this stick.
But if it doesn’t work out, Nelly has plenty of non-music ventures to try to make some cheddar. He could always, for instance, go back to some of the non-music ventures he has tried out in the past such as high-profile poker championships, a radio gig in St Louis, the Celebrity Sweat fitness DVD or even the Mike & Ike fruit flavoured chewing gum. Best for all concerned if he remembers to pay his taxes on all these ventures this time around.
