Much has been written about the future of music over the past 20 or so years as the internet has made universal distribution a technical possibility. Despite a few breakthrough success stories like Justin Bieber (discovered on YouTube) and Lorde the increased potential for creative work – especially music has mostly changed the business in a career limiting way for actual musicians.
Most of us are aware that despite it being easier and less expensive to record and produce music and other creative content than before; it is also much harder to make a living from recorded content.
If we can’t improve incomes for artists then this will slow down and may even stop the creation of new music. Existing catalogues are also important but the real risk is new music.
A recent New Zealand story about a local band made public some numbers that many have suspected for a long time. The true cost of streaming: Spotify paid Kiwi band with five-star reviews and 90,000 streams just $130 the short version is that despite relative local success the actual business returns show that the music industry is still structurally broken.
So he’s seen the industry change, and had low expectations for selling any albums this time around – but the reality surprised him.
She’s So Rad ( listen on Bandcamp)
……
Exactly what the solution is of course remains unclear. The best revenue streams for artists in terms of profit – digital and physical sales – are no longer as appealing to consumers as they once were.“The idea of owning a digital file is not appealing to anyone and fair enough” Toy adds. “I pay for digital content not because I want to own a digital file, but because I want to show support to the artist which in turn helps make their art sustainable” Toy. “Streaming doesn’t help to keep music a sustainable resource.
“It’s tricky to work out what that means in the future. It just seems a pity that music can’t thrive because it’s an important part of our culture. I mean, I guess everyone could just be making it for free, which is essentially what a lot of us are doing, but everyone will burn out I think.“
5 Practical Steps we can do to to Support Musicians
1. Cancel your Spotify* account ( unless spotify changes the payout rates greatly) Streaming is a good idea and suits mobile users especially but the payments to artists are miniscule. Maybe Tidal Music which is an artist owned label can tip the balance up by charging an “artists premium” but so far they don’t have that much of a catalogue.
*Clarification – see quotes below from Liam Boluk who thinks streaming services will be part of the answer. My view is that it is better as an artist to stay off them and as a consumer if you have a choice choose a higher value option.
2. Deal direct with the band. If they have a bandcamp account buy whole albums that way as more of the revenue (85%) goes directly to the band and they pay at the time of sale.. iTunes is OK but they charge 30% and pay months late.
Bandcamp is (in my opinion) the best service option that any musician can have to get music to the public. More on bandcamp here a post I wrote in 2011 and still true.
3. Become a patron by helping fund album productions via crowdfunding or presales for new work.
New albums still cost $10-50k at least. That is a lot less than it used to be and typically doesn’t cover any marketing or promotion. In the conventional model the music labels used to try and pick winners who they would fund to record new music.
4. Pay reasonable cover charges to see your favourite bands/ performers live.
In many venues the band takes the door fees and the venue makes it’s money from the drinks. Venue wants the door fee low to get more drinkers in the house but that pricing can work against the band. See Kiwi musicians no royals especially the insights about live venues.
A book referred to The Problem With Music In New Zealand And How To Fix It by Ian Jorgenson explains some of the local difficulties around venues. A review of that book by Graham Reid is over here.
5. Support discovery radio or live showcase performances to find new music.
Buying the same old bands you liked when you were 17 doesn’t build an industry.
6. Tell your friends this story. Be fair to musicians and pay them fairly. If you are active on social media hen let people know when you find great music. As someone who runs social and email marketing campaigns I can tell you that engagement rates on social media and emails are very low but they can be influential. For example an email campaign is lucky to get a 30% read rate – it is often lower and actual clicks and transactional clicks is more like 1% if you are lucky.
#befair2musicians A hashtag isn’t the answer but if it helps build critical awareness then lets do it.
Other recent stories include Apple Music another music streaming fail for Kiwi musicians
In NZ commercial radio stations do pay some form of licensing fee to musicians by way of an industry organisation. although there is always debate about how these levies work and how much of that fee revenue gets back to performers.
Liam Boluk @liamboluk has also written about extensively about these issues from the U.S perspective.
….. Liam presents more data and background but his final paragraph offers his answer
“Services such as Spotify, Pandora and Tidal have the opportunity to reverse 15 years of declining consumer spend and B2B revenue. Their models will likely need to evolve, but most key metrics continue to improve even as the major services have scaled their user bases. However, many musicians – especially those sitting atop the industry today – will need to come to terms with the fact that their music could be worth less than they believed and that they’ll need to find new revenue opportunities outside the recording studio. This outcome is far from unique – it’s affecting publishing, gaming, television and film. Most importantly, however, artists must recognize that without new label agreements, their tide will never turn.”
I agree with Liam but I think that we can start those changes at an individual level by voting with our wallets and our feet when there is a chance to support a musician we like.
Andrew Dubber @dubber is a music industry specialist whose work I follow with interest.
Andrew is one of a number of music industry thought leaders who penned this music manifesto. Music Technologism
We discussed and debated what we thought to be the most important things about music and technology – and we came up with a declaration that reflects what we believe and what we hold to be important. Things like:
“We call on companies to produce music technologies that matter, that foster meaningful communities, that consider musical culture and user bases as much more than cash registers.”
What do you think?
Notes: Tks @StevePalfreyman
Patreon is a link that I had left out but it should be mentioned as another great way to support artists.
Interesting ideas here and I certainly agree it is important for people to better understand how to seek out and support independent artists. But I don’t know that I agree that people should cancel their streaming accounts and direct their funds elsewhere. This works if a fan genuinely wants to purchase individual albums, but if they’re doing it because they think they should, then it won’t be sustainable.
There’s a fundamental problem in this industry that has crushed other industries too and that is we’re too inward looking, not outward looking. Uber is a perfect example of a platform that is looking outward – it’s built for the consumer. Every part of Uber is about making people’s lives easier. The taxi industry is at its knees not because of all the legal grey area going on, but because they refused to adapt.
The music industry is still refusing to adapt in a lot of ways, despite having its fundamental business model torn a part over a decade ago.
We as content creators should be placing more value, power and experience in the hands of the fans we want to reach. We should be giving them more, not asking for more help. If somebody wants to consume my music via streaming, great. If they want more from me, it’s my job as a musician to find new and more interesting ways to give them that. I think if we start looking more at what our fans want and finding more engaging ways to give that to them, we’ll be heading in a better direction longer term.
The royalty issue is a concern, but what I fear would be worse is if these streaming companies weren’t to exist anymore. I really feel that we would be better off as an industry driving the message to consumers to invest in any way they see fit. Patreon is great, we can think about that as being a place for our super fans. But if someone just wants to connect through a streaming platform, so be it – we just need a lot more people to dive into the paid plans. We need more revenue and we need a fairer split. We need more opportunities and more support but we’re asking the wrong questions.
Instead of “how do we get more people to pay” I think we should be asking “how do we get more people to care”.
Thanks Steve,
I don’t think that most consumers know that streaming pays so badly. It may be that TidalMusic or another system can change that but part of the challenge of getting people to care is telling them what happens now.
I’ve seen great live performances where the promoters think that the artist will make money from sales of CD’s or some other product and it just doesn’t happen.
It seems to me that 90% + of any general audience assumes things are much better than they are. I work with musicians and film makers and I can tell you that flat licence fees or very low returns have now reached the point where making new music or even films is some kind of glorified hobby.
Also I’m not sure that most people know this but you can listen to whole albums on Bandcamp as a stream without buying anything. Somehow Bandcamp has created an artist friendly culture that makes it easy for consumers to listen and to buy.
New platforms are dedicated to artists and trying to solve some of those issues: Distrokid in SF, Tradiio in London…. In my opinion it’s easier to provide the right tools for artists to showcase their music and progress than trying to say to fans you should buy music otherwise the industry will collapse (it didn’t work with Napster, it won’t work now, where streaming is legit…).
Artists should take advantage of the good tech platforms and use the ones that can help them reach their own goals. Not all platforms / tools are for every artist but with the right mindset you can filter the ones that matter for you.
Thanks Eric,
Understand that but the sheer volume of consumers is what will make the difference here. Most artists I know aren’t interested in selling merchandise or having ad supported streams but those options may also work. Distrokid (https://distrokid.com/) looks like an aggregator like Tunecore (http://www.tunecore.com/) . It doesn’t matter how you get onto iTunes you still only get 70% of the revenues 3 months late which is still not as good as say Bandcamp which pays out 85% at the time of sale.
http://tradiio.com/ ‘artist accelerator’ looks great though so thanks.
Knowing that I always buy off Bandcamp if I can and only use iTunes if I have no other option. I have used Spotify and Soundcloud but I choose not to use those generally as they don’t really support artists to make new music. Over time they might be OK for back catalogue but as Taylor Swift, Radiohead? and others note the return rates are not worth it.
I have used Tunecore to load music to Spotify and every other streaming channel as well as Amazon, iTunes etc. Over time we noticed that certain channels do better than others with streaming generally the least useful for an artist.
Bandcamp is a great solution for artists – no one will deny it – for users it is just not natural anymore to pay for individual music. We can argue ages if it’s right or wrong but this is the post-Napster reality. Artists need to adapt not to protest and wait for some changes to happen as it won’t! Majors have more financial cushion than a small independent artist….
Even if you get 100 fans paying for your album you still are not making enough money as an artist to sustain your life….
Patreon (http://www.patreon.com) is a good platform to support creators in general, still it is niche as people don’t feel it’s their role to give $$ for an artist to keep on improving and creating.
Look at Tradiio (http://www.tradiio.com), great concept. You support for free new artists, and they get ways to improve in their career. This is going in the right direction (evolving from the streaming model to a career accelerator model) – however it might take a long time for people to join the platform (even though it’s completely free) for the same reasons that I mentioned.
Innovation will come but artists should be proactive and use all the tools that makes sense for them to make their content available to all their possible fan base. Grow your fan base first.
If you are not willing to market your work as a creator, nothing good will happen in this industry – your only alternative will be to strike a deal with a label and focus on creation only (with the downfalls that we know)
The problem needs to be solved by artists, not consumers. That is, if an artist cries “I haven’t got any money!” the general solution isn’t, “Here, let me Paypal you some $$$”. That’s not a sustainable long-term solution. The solution needs to feel as natural as it once did to pay $35 for albums.
Look at all the vlogging kids. They don’t make their audiences pay to watch their vlogs, but the most successful ones make a good income on YouTube income and via endorsement deals. I’m not sure how this would exactly translate to music, especially in the smaller NZ market, but it’s already happening in greater amounts in the general pop world.
I have this idea that in future successful musicians will need to be good at more than just music, in order to take advantage of all potential income streams. Look at Lorde – she curated a Hunger Games soundtrack, a role that was as much about her making phone calls and emails and wrangling and nagging other artists than it was about studio time.
P.S. Lorde is just Lorde, not Lorde Music. @lordemusic is the account name she uses on various social media profiles, as (one assumes) @lorde was taken years ago 🙂
Thanks Robyn,
Very much appreciate the your comments here. Most of the musicians I know are pretty much independent DIYers without record company backing. They have had to work other jobs for the most part as the NZ audiences are just too small. Even with access to international it is still hard.
I agree it needs to be solved but since there are far more consumers than artists I think it is smart if we support our favourite artists in ways which are the most helpful.
I don’t know how payments from YouTube work but anyone who has been out there for a while will tell you there is a constant stream of new submissions which use music that belongs to someone else. Sometimes that gets picked up by YT systems but often it is just another headache.
Also: Thank you for your fine website over at 5000 Ways to Love You- Exploring the world of NZ On Air music video funding
http://5000ways.co.nz/