Comments on: What does it take to earn a living with digital music?

By: Chris Bracco

Chris Bracco — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:01:31 +0000

I saw this infographic a while back, and it really is an eye-opener, especially to those who continually praise the digital success of artists.

It is insanely easier and more profitable to sell 143 CD’s at a gig than to hope spotify users will stream your song 4.5 million times. However, that doesn’t mean that your music shouldn’t be there! It should just be another piece of the revenue stream.

Like you said, what streaming services like Last.FM lack in royalty payouts, they make up for in the potential exposure your music can receive.

Thanks for sharing this!

By: refe

refe — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:55:26 +0000

You’re right – just because something pushes a little bit of revenue your way doesn’t mean that’s all it’s good for. Or that it should be measured exclusively by how much revenue it earns an artist.

Setting aside streaming, digital downloads themselves are being given away by many artists to drive the sale of other products or to gain exposure in general.

By: Shane Foxx

Shane Foxx — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 22:13:30 +0000

Well actually, even if you don’t get a lot of money from that, you get noticed and foundable in public places, and that’s important for after selling self pressed CDs, for example…
Independant artists get their money from gigs mostly anyways.

By: Carl L.

Carl L. — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 18:22:24 +0000

Great article. Thanks for breaking this down. Bottom line is that making money from recordings is harder than ever. Artists need to find another channel – performance, use in films, whatever.

By: refe

refe — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 14:28:07 +0000

Setting revenue aside entirely, the quality of a single listen on a streaming service like Spotify, compared to the quality of a single listen on broadcast radio is much higher. In general, the listener makes a choice to listen to a track, rather than have it passively inserted into their day. That’s another consideration that swings in streaming radio and on-demand services’ favor.

By: refe

refe — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 14:16:06 +0000

Here are two pieces that I wrote on the Performance Rights Act last year. As a quick disclaimer, my views have changed considerably since writing this, largely because the bill has changed considerably. They’ve put in place some safe-guards to (hopefully) insure that this bill doesn’t have the kind of huge, unintended consequences that seemed inevitable in earlier revisions.

Read this one first:
http://www.creativedeconstruction.com/2009/06/5-reasons-why-the-performance-rights-act-is-a-bad-idea/

And this one for some updates:
http://www.creativedeconstruction.com/2009/08/performance-rights-act-discussed-in-heated-senate-hearing/

You can see in the comments of the first article that my opinions were not well taken by the musician community, of which I myself am a member…

Hope that helps!

By: Rich Huxley

Rich Huxley — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 12:40:07 +0000

I’m very interested in the rates applied here. It’s to do with the number of plays versus the payment.
Two breakfast show plays on BBC Radio1 play in the uk, could very well be the same number of “listens” as the spotify stream in the above diagram. It will not however result in anywhere near minimum wage, or anything like enough to live off. Spotify is actually playing More per listen on that basis.

And yes, I wholeheartedly agree with you Brenda… Steve’s an inspiration.
xR

By: Brenda K

Brenda K — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 08:03:28 +0000

Steve resonates with me for many reasons, starting with the fact that he’s a career instrumentalist (to place that remark in context, as a career instrumentalist/orchestra player/session player turned indie artist, I have found the dearth of information relevant to that particular career trajectory extremely frustrating since the indie artist scene is extremely singer-songwriter/indie rock band-biased) who is making a viable go of it as an independent artist; he shares his wisdom liberally with others; and I love his sense of humor and spot-on posts that have amassed an especially interesting community.

He did another blog that incited an especially impassioned response from his fan base (including moi, and in fact it literally hijacked my entire weekend!) on the subject of your remark about the camp that believes musicians and creators of content ought to be reasonably compensated for their product. You can peruse that here if you like: http://www.stevelawson.net/2010/05/sharing-is-not-stealing-cost-value-and-the-desire-to-share/

Do you happen to have a link on hand that encapsulates the essence of the extreme debate about the performance rights act in the US that you alluded to? Apologies for my indolence – I’ve been trying to follow that, but am stretched so thin (in fact, the stress of it all is making me fat!) that I’m always delighted to be treated to a “Cliff’s Notes” version of any given flashpoint….For that matter, Steve did a brilliant post on a similar subject in Europe: http://www.stevelawson.net/2010/04/my-letter-to-the-musicians-union-about-the-digital-economy-bill/

For the record, Steve has not hired me to flack for him – I just find his posts exceptionally insightful and helpful, as well as humorous, kind of like my favorite journalist Firas Al-Atraqchi. (He’s gonna trip hard on being name-dropped into a music punditry conversation!)

It’s all just food for thought and/or creative fodder.

Very best wishes,

Brenda K

By: Carla J. Patterson

Carla J. Patterson — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 01:46:43 +0000

I find this really helpful as I am producing my own music and have limited opportunities to get out and perform for various reasons. I think it’s awesome that the plans I have to release my own CDs through CD Baby pan out about the way I thought they would. I’m already releasing my original music and collaborations at iCompositions.com, MacJams, AcidPlanet, and MySpace and have always considered it as less of a money maker and more of a way to find artists I’d like to work with and to get my music out into the world. It’s nice to know that I may be able to recoup the expenses I have in terms of equipment and software through selling a few CDs (let’s say a few hundred a year). That’s awesome for me since I don’t need to make my living through my CDs.

I think that young musicians and/or those who can still tour and make money that way have a chance to make enough money to live at least – being a musician is not an easy or a lucrative life for most – never has been. But, if music is the thing you love most and do best, perhaps that’s still a tradeoff worth considering. Or it may be a good way to live while young and fit, with fewer responsibilities, then follow it up with teaching, being a studio musician or backup singer, and/or the many other ways one can use music in a career which isn’t quite as focused on one’s original music and performing.

Anyway, thanks very much for posting this and for the discussion of what it all means as well. Enjoyed reading it and it’s being discussed at iCompositions.com as well (where I saw the link to your graphic and these comments).

Carla JP
singer/songwriter/composer/arranger

By: refe

refe — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 01:28:32 +0000

I don’t know him personally, although we’ve crossed paths once or twice. I think Rich Huxley, who contributes to this blog, knows him fairly well.

Steve’s is a great post – I hadn’t seen it before posting my own thoughts. He delves much more deeply into the value of streaming music as a promotional vehicle, and his opinions are spot on.

I think that for many the argument over streaming music boils down to two major camps:

On the one side you have those who assert that artists should be paid what they believe to be a reasonable fee, and that this takes precedence far above the promotional value of streaming. (An even more extreme example of this can be found in the debate over the Performance Rights Act here in the US.)

On the other side, you have those who are happy that they are earning anything at all from streaming, because they understand the incredible promotional value of having your music included in the catalog of a service like Spotify.

In Steve’s post he compares streaming to ads, arguing that having your music streamed is like free advertising.

This is accurate, I think. Just like broadcast radio was never meant to be a primary revenue source, but rather a promotional vehicle for recorded works and live performances.