The Music Industry

Interesting stuff.

http://blog.tunecore.com/2010/10/music-purchases-and-net-revenue-for-artists-are-up-gross-revenue-for-labels-is-down.html

Z

Interesting......but I think that any one of us could have written the essence of this because we are all well aware of it being on the front line.

Also Tunecore charge where Routenote do not

At first glance you could misinterpret the meaning here and think that musicians are all doing better....but we know that's not the case.

While overall music sales may be up there are now so many artists in the market that the sales are quite thinly spread over the huge number of tracks available.

To sum it up: It's still bloody hard for Indies to make sales with good promotion and a certain amount of luck.....but when we do we make more money per album / track than a signed artist.

However the signed artist will be selling thousands while we are lucky to get out of double figures !!!!

Good summary Peter. All true.

It is possible for a musician these days to make more of a % profit per sale.
But generally with far fewer sales and far more one-track-at-a-time sales.

It's similar in fiction publishing. On Amazon I can make 70% royalty on fiction sales.
But I have to do all my own promo and so on. All Amazon has to do is host my content
and display it, and do some book-keeping.

so the secret still comes down to getting buyers.
as indies we are far less likely to "make it big," but we do have an opportunity to build a base
and make a small income and try to build from there.

and if we aren't paying for gas and paying other band members to show up to gigs, we should be able
to make some money.

Z

If you can just cover any expenses and perhaps the cost of some new gear then that helps.

When you also add up the time spent making your music and the extra time trying to promote it then you have to admit that you are only doing this because you love it.

The real truth is we do this because we want to.....its a love of music and being creative.

Yes it would be great to make money but we are just players in a huge lottery when it comes down to it.