Music sales today...

[deeaa]

Interesting article I read of a Finnish band today...about how impossible it is to make a living with records etc. these days.

Being a small country our market is small, and thus 10.000 copies is a LOT for a band here. Only the ones frequently in radio and playing all the big festivals will reach that elusive goal, while the great majority of working bands, even with a good fan base, will usually sell a few thousand and consider that very good.

Well one of such bands, who've been quite popular here for over a decade - everyone knows them and/or seen them play, and they have a dozen CD's out plus live DVD's and poetry books and whatnot...very famous anyway. Well, they usually sell about 10.000 copies of their album, and the singer in the article said that means about $3000 in royalties. He went on to say that 10k is roughly the limit where the CD actually starts making money, as it also costs circa that much to properly make and release an album.

He went on to say that in his view maybe half a percent of touring pro musicians here make a living actually out of music, and it's getting harder and harder all the time. Practically the only income comes from radio play, which is way more than they get for CD sales, and gigs. However gigging is hard in that people demand better and better audio experience etc. these days, and it is rather costly to tour too with all the gas prices and roadie fees these days, which cuts the income quite heavily.

They have also gotten roughly two million listens on Spotify by now for their latest album...grossing a whopping $50 for the band :-) so that is hardly any income either. Four million listens would buy half a day of studio time for recording the song in the first place.

I always knew this, of course...it's impossible to make any real money with music here; the only possibilities are either becoming some hit singer off Idols or a Tango singer or something - not a band, absolutely - or be one of those one in ten thousand bands that somehow manage to make it internationally, in which case it can actually yield a living.

I know a few guys from my town who play in such international bands...one is Tarot, and they've toured all over the world and do pretty OK on their tours but still the drummer for instance can't afford a decent car even.

Much better does this guy whom I know and who plays in Nightwish, and they've become quite a success internationally, topping charts even in many countries and playing for tens of thousands. He's a really nice fella and he's done pretty well, he's been able to afford a nice normal house for his family and a nice upper-middle-class living obviously. But he's also often appeared on TV for other things etc. I often see him sledding with his kids near my home. But he doesn't seem to be no millionaire either, despite the huge success.

I dunno what I'm trying to say here...likely that those rockstars of old are history more or less...it's just hit music basically these days it seems that makes any real income.

[Eric]

Interesting. I had heard similar things, like that even over here, pretty big acts make maybe 40k per year if they're packing out the moderate-sized clubs (just short of the arena acts). I don't know if those numbers are true or not, but that's not exactly millions of dollars.

In one way it's kind of sad in that there is less music floating around in the world, but in another way I think it's fine. Just sort of the natural order of things, really. Art always has been hard to use as a means of supporting yourself unless you could get a commission like the old composers did back in the day. Even those rock stars we all think about weren't just putting out whatever their muses told them to write; they were working for the hits and making what people wanted to hear just as much as anybody else I think.

Anyway, interesting stuff, and kind of a harsh reality of things.

[deeaa]

I agree.

One thing that people seem to also forget is the law of supply and demand. Yes, I can understand a band like that ***** about the situation, sure...but, one has to also realize the sheer number of offerings out there.

When I was a kid...well there was literally a handful of bands to dig in a given genre.

These days...go online, or even scan the local training facilities and such...there's a gazillion of bands in any given genre.

And not only that, some of them are really very very good, and quite often even better than these mainstream bands that ***** about not making it financially.
There are likely millions of hobby players out there, and a huge number of them can actually equal or even top the playing skills of a whole bunch of well-known artists.

Don't mean to sound arrogant or anything, but even I am quite sure I'm much better a guitarist and singer than a whole bunch of people out there in bands doing it professionally. (Of course there are hordes of them much better than me too, but you know what I mean).

When there is such an excess of supply of quality music...there can be nothing more than lack of demand for all of that. Basic laws of business.

I can also understand it seems insanely low to get like $50 for hundreds of thousands of listens...but, that should change when there are more subscribers...hopefully...and, then again, how much would YOU personally be _willing_ to pay for listening to music on such a service?

I can tell you I would NOT want to pay much more than the $10 a month I do...I listen to maybe 50 songs for that money per month at max, albeit I do sometimes just leave it on and playing background music...but even that comes to 20c per song I actively listen. I think that's more than fair amount I pay for my listening to it.

[marnold]

From a historical standpoint, the whole "rich rock star" thing is a relatively recent phenomenon. For the better part of history you had two choices: 1) Make music that will appeal to just about everyone (think modern pop music, music for commercials, etc.), or 2) Get a rich person to be your patron and make music that he likes. That's really true of the other arts too. How many great painters died penniless? Even in the halcyon days of the rock star, out of a thousand bands how many of them "made it"? One? Maybe? Out of those who made it, how many of them could handle success?

Part of the problem today is that the record companies insisted on holding on to an outdated model for so long that piracy almost became de rigueur. Now there's almost a whole generation that thinks that the price of music should be nothing. It's going to be really hard to close Pandora's box.

One source of hope or perhaps a new business model might be something like Rovio, the makers of Angry Birds. They "sell" the game for little or nothing but make money in other ways, viz, merch, advertising, etc.

[jpfeifer]

Good discussion points on all of this! It is ironic that on one hand, it's never been a better time for bands to get their music heard via the internet and social media, but on the onther hand it's never been harder for musicians to make any money with their music. The music industry has pretty much fragmented into so many areas that there is no one single place where people find out about new bands and listen to the latest stuff. Record companies (and the musicians) aren't making anywhere close to the amount of money they would in the heyday of vinyl records and CDs (before iTunes).

The whole industry is changing, and still in the midst of that change. I saw this article on the PBS site about a documentary that is covering this whole thing, talking about the role of online music aggregators, music blogs, etc. I haven't seen this show yet, but I'm anxious to see what they say about the future direction of the music biz:
http://www.prefixmag.com/news/the-evolution-of-music-quality-and-quantity-in-the/60605/

--Jim

[Glacies]

What is incredible to me is how talented and creative people are. WAY more than what gets exposed to us by the entertainment industry.

Years ago I used to buy a CD based on what I heard on the radio. Now I buy CD's based on what I find on youtube, and most of them are not names most people have heard of (see Allensworth).

I've recently started playing a star wars game called "The Old Republic" - their community servers are filled with incredible fan art and fan based stories that rival some of the deepest plots I've ever read in an NY Times best seller.

The general creativity and skill of the world's population is now easier for anyone to see than it has ever been before, and they're sharing this stuff for free on the internet. That's putting the squeeze on music, movies and books.

[NWBasser]

When you consider the amount of investment involved; equipment, engineers, distribution costs, and pay for the musicians versus the income gained, it looks like a losing proposition for nearly any new artist to get started.

To get a return on investment, you almost have to focus only on the artists with the most potential for popularity and sweep under the carpet the really good musicians.

[R_of_G]

When you consider the amount of investment involved; equipment, engineers, distribution costs, and pay for the musicians versus the income gained, it looks like a losing proposition for nearly any new artist to get started.

To get a return on investment, you almost have to focus only on the artists with the most potential for popularity and sweep under the carpet the really good musicians.

A lot of artists/bands that I respect have turned to things like Kickstarter to fund their recording. It's an interesting concept, essentially asking fans to pay in advance for the music, but with an artist that has any kind of following, it can mean the difference between finishing an album or not.

I think this is just the beginning of artists using the means now available to explore new ways to produce and distribute music. Perhaps the new distribution models make it unlikely to make much money on the sale of the music itself (as Dee and Marnold laid out above) but if the relative ease of internet distribution allows an artist/band to have greater exposure, they can play more shows in more places and hope to make some money that way.

It's also a matter of having realistic expectations about a "career in music." Maybe you won't be super rich and famous and playing out sold-out arenas worldwide, but if I could live even in the same fashion I do now but not have to work any other job besides playing music, I'd consider that success.

It's a very interesting time to be a music consumer. We're all old enough to remember the old model and understand how it works. It's fascinating to me to watch different artists and bands find strategies that are well outside of that model.

[NWBasser]

One really awesome aspect of internet availability is that I've found so many new artists that I never would have heard of through radio airplay.

I don't mind paying iTunes for music that I've found through Youtube, bass forums, and this forum (thanks Maxi!). A whole new world of music has opened up to me this way.

I'd like to see things work better for the creative artists though. For instance, I think it would be a good idea of Youtube took a bit of their ad revenue to pay ASCAP fees or some similar artist compensation system.

[R_of_G]

One really awesome aspect of internet availability is that I've found so many new artists that I never would have heard of through radio airplay.

I don't mind paying iTunes for music that I've found through Youtube, bass forums, and this forum (thanks Maxi!). A whole new world of music has opened up to me this way.

Exactly. For instance, take an artist like Kasey Anderson. I found him through Twitter. In fact, the first few weeks I followed him I didn't know he was a musician, I just thought he was funny. Then he started posting stuff about his new album so I checked it out. Within months I bought his entire catalog. The guy uses social media very well to promote his music and has a following he couldn't have had ten years ago. He's currently doing a Kickstarter-type fundraiser for his newest album and seems to be getting a good deal of support for it. Bands like American Aquarium and Glossary have successfully done the same.



I'd like to see things work better for the creative artists though. For instance, I think it would be a good idea of Youtube took a bit of their ad revenue to pay ASCAP fees or some similar artist compensation system.

That's an excellent idea.

[deeaa]

Yep it is exactly the same for literature as well...I just got another no thanks letter for my 1St book (400+ pages of fantasy adventure) and it was accompanied by a letter lamenting just these issues - these days it is a big risk to publish anything by unknown authors, ebooks etc. Are eating away readership and for an unknown author, the novel would have to be truly exceptional to warrant publication these days.

Well, Im gonna try and finish my second novel (scifi this time) in the next few months anyway...hopefully I can make that "exceptional", Lol...

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[marnold]

For instance, I think it would be a good idea of Youtube took a bit of their ad revenue to pay ASCAP fees or some similar artist compensation system.

They have made deals with the labels, although I don't know the details. Of course, making a deal with a label doesn't mean the money is necessarily filtering down to the artists.

[R_of_G]

Yep it is exactly the same for literature as well...I just got another no thanks letter for my 1St book (400+ pages of fantasy adventure) and it was accompanied by a letter lamenting just these issues - these days it is a big risk to publish anything by unknown authors, ebooks etc. Are eating away readership and for an unknown author, the novel would have to be truly exceptional to warrant publication these days.

Well, Im gonna try and finish my second novel (scifi this time) in the next few months anyway...hopefully I can make that "exceptional", Lol...

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Perhaps you can eBook the first one and sell it for $1 and market the hell out of it on social media and through other means available to you via the internet. If you can build a readership that way you can demonstrate to a publisher that there is a certain demand for your work that might mitigate the risk of working with an unknown author. Either that or you can continue to publish them as eBooks yourself and just charge more once you've established a readership. Dunno. For a buck, I'd read pretty much anything once.

[tunghaichuan]

Perhaps you can eBook the first one and sell it for $1 and market the hell out of it on social media and through other means available to you via the internet. If you can build a readership that way you can demonstrate to a publisher that there is a certain demand for your work that might mitigate the risk of working with an unknown author. Either that or you can continue to publish them as eBooks yourself and just charge more once you've established a readership. Dunno. For a buck, I'd read pretty much anything once.

+1

I'd look at publishing in ebook format for Kindle and Nook. Remember that most big-selling authors like James Patterson or Stephen King charge $9.99US for their ebooks, so you'll most likely have to charge a lot less. But you can make up for price in volume. A lot of people are willing to take a chance on a $1-$3 ebook.

Traditional print fiction is dead for new authors. Only established authors like the aforementioned Patterson and King still make money publishing that way.

Self publishing in print format for new authors is a risky proposition. I've worked with a local group of self-published authors and a great many of them have cases and cases of printed books they cannot sell. Electronic format is the way to go.

Also, I work in a library, and the person who buys books in my library will not buy self published books. It is too risky: most self-published print books get weeded out of the collection very quickly after low circulation.

[deeaa]

Yep...epublishing it is, I am sure!

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[NWBasser]

It's a very interesting time to be a music consumer. We're all old enough to remember the old model and understand how it works. It's fascinating to me to watch different artists and bands find strategies that are well outside of that model.

It would be nice to have business model that would be more direct between the artist and consumer. Doing away with the records companies might be a good thing if it means that the artist can get more money from each sale. Systems like Kickstarter sound like a good way forward on this front.

[R_of_G]

It would be nice to have business model that would be more direct between the artist and consumer. Doing away with the records companies might be a good thing if it means that the artist can get more money from each sale. Systems like Kickstarter sound like a good way forward on this front.

I thought since I used him as an example above I'd reprint Kasey's letter that accompanies his Kickstarter-type campaign. Interesting perspective to get it from an artist's point of view...


I've been doing things on my own for a while now. Most of my career, really. My first record, Dead Roses (2004), was self-released - a process that took me nearly three years. While the follow-up, The Reckoning (2007), ended up being released by label, that process also took three years, and ended with me deciding to start my own label and, once again, do things on my own. Both Nowhere Nights (2010) and Heart of a Dog (2011), were released on Red River Records, which I continue to own and operate, mostly by myself, though I certainly owe a large debt of gratitude to a few friends. (Heart of a Dog was re-released by Red Parlor Records in late 2011, but Red River Records co-released that, as well.)

Prior to Heart of a Dog, I was responsible for the entirety of the songwriting responsibilities for my albums, which is why the albums bore only my name. The songs were mine and mine alone. When Andrew McKeag and the rest of The Honkies came on board in 2011, the way I wrote songs, and the way I played songs, began to change. Eric Ambel - who had produced my first three albums - and I began to collaborate, and Andrew and the rest of the Honkies took that a step further, contributing lyrics, riffs, and arrangement ideas. Y'know, all the stuff a band does. Over the last year of playing shows with Andrew, Eric Corson, Mike Musburger and (sometimes) Ty Bailie, I've come to learn that not only is it okay to occasionally depend on others, but there's often a pretty great benefit in doing so.

As we start work on the next Honkies record, and as I watch my friends in their own independent, self-financed bands (Glossary, American Aquarium, et al) make use of platforms like Kickstarter and PledgeMusic, it dawns on me that maybe it's time to, once again, admit that I need the help of others -- this time of my friends and fans.

You see, we've got an idea for this record that we think is pretty good, but we'll need your help to pull it off.

Back in October, we had a little time between CMJ gigs and we figured we'd try to duck into a studio and record "Abaddon Blues" (which just so happens to be the song you'll receive immediately, free, when you donate to this project). While we were tracking at Strange Weather, Daniel, who was assisting Eric in engineering the session, mentioned that it had been a long time since he had seen a band track a song live, everyone in the same room, which surprised us, and got us thinking: why not make our record - or as much of it as we could - that way? So, with that in mind, we called up our buddy Kurt Bloch, who you'll know from his days with the Fastbacks and The Young Fresh Fellows, or from the records he made with Robyn Hitchcock, The Minus 5, Nashville Pussy, and a whole bunch of other bands. We started tracking with Kurt in mid-November, all of us in one room - no headphones (except Muzz), no iso booths - playing live, and playing together. A take is a take. If we don't get it, we try again, together. Sure, we'll need to do some overdubbing here and there, but the band you hear on the record - guitars, bass, drums, keys - that's us, playing live, together.

When we do need overdubs and other players, we think we've got a pretty good idea for that, too. We've all been at this long enough to have made a few friends along the way, and they're spread out across the country. As luck would have it, we'll spend a good part of early 2012 on the road touring behind Heart of a Dog, so we'll end up in the cities where our friends live and, if memory serves, there are studios in those cities. So, when we need a friend to lend a hand here or there, we'll bring our band, and our record, to them. A different studio in a different city, wherever we may be on any given night. The result, we think, will be a record that sounds like everything we love about playing music: being a band and having fun with our friends; playing live, playing together, and collaborating whenever and wherever we can with our favorite musicians.

In order to make the record this way - to record and produce and release and promote it - we'll need your help. This is where the pre-orders/donations come in. At first I considered using Kickstarter or PledgeMusic, but when you donate to those sites, they take a percentage of your donation (albeit a small one), so some of your money goes to Kickstarter, or PledgeMusic, or Amazon, or whatever. Kickstarter also lets you know who donated what, and how many people donated how much, and while I understand the need for transparency there, I've always liked to keep my private life private, and something about that rubs me the wrong way. Likewise, the fact that if project doesn't meet its "goal," Kickstarter declares that project "unsuccessful," doesn't sit well with me. How can a group of people donating money to something they care about ever be considered "unsuccessful," no matter how much or how little is raised? I've seen my friends use Kickstarter successfully, and I know they're very grateful for it, so maybe this is just me being stubborn but, if I'm going to ask for help, I've got to do it my own way. We'll still keep you updated - you'll get the occasional email from honkiesdonations [at] gmail.com if that's okay by you - so that sense of contribution and community that Kickstarter fosters won't be lost, and you can always drop us a line (again, at honkiesdonations [at] gmail.com) and ask any question you'd like.

Our goal is $15,000 and we hope to hit that goal by February 1, 2012. If we don't make the goal, or if we don't make it by that time, I highly doubt any of us will consider this little project "unsuccessful," and anyone who donated will still get every single thing they were promised.

We're so grateful to all of you for listening, for coming to the shows, and for taking the time to read this. If you feel like contributing to the making of Let the Bloody Moon Rise, we'll be infinitely grateful for that, too.

See you out there.

Kasey Anderson
December 5, 2011
Portland, OR

[Tig]

I thought since I used him as an example above I'd reprint Kasey's letter that accompanies his Kickstarter-type campaign. Interesting perspective to get it from an artist's point of view...

I pre-ordered this album. I like to help musicians like Kasey.

[R_of_G]

I pre-ordered this album. I like to help musicians like Kasey.

Same here. He's going about things in a way I really appreciate. He's not trying to be a "rock star." He's just trying to make a living playing music.

I have a feeling it's going to be a good one. The one song we already know will be on it will be "Abaddon Blues" of which there's an excellent live version on the Live Honkies EP, so I know what that sounds like. The presence of Kurt Bloch as producer also suggests this will be a great listen.