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Musicians don't usually get a lot of money. The go-to scapegoat remains copyright infringement or piracy as the industry tries to call it. However, that is contradicted by the reality that music industry revenues have been rising for years. The percentage reaching musicians being always small turns out to be due to mostly unnecessary middlemen. TechDirt has done analyses before and now that the data is in for 2017 it shows that only 12% of music revenue collected currently reaches the actual musicians.
Now we have even more data on this. Citibank recently released a massive and incredibly thorough report on the entire music industry showing how and where the money is made. There's lots of interesting and useful information in the report, but the headline grabbing fact is that musicians end up with just about 12% of global music revenue. As I said, the report is incredibly thorough (and a really useful read if you want to get a sense of just how convoluted and complex the music business really is), but the key is that there was ~$43 billion spent on music in 2017. Approximately $25 billion of that went to everyone (outside of the labels) who helped make the music available: digital streaming services, retail stores, concert venues[.]
[...] That leaves $18.2 billion in money distributed out to the labels. But of that amount, only about $5 billion actually goes to artists, which means right around 12% goes to artists[.]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29 2018, @03:53PM (5 children)
If you notice, it's 12% of REVENUES, not profits. Therefore, after the manufacturer/distributor sells the product and pays for their own costs, then there is PROFIT. From that profit, an amount that is 12% of REVENUE is taken.
Wow, that's not bad.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 29 2018, @04:12PM
12% of revenue is a cost for the music label, it will be taken out even before taxes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29 2018, @04:22PM (3 children)
Read the full article. Much of that 12% comes from live performances. So per digital/record sale, the labels, distributors and lawyers get over 95%.
Regardless, lets stick to that 12% figure and compare to going off label. Bandcamp asks for 15% revenues and your typical studio asks for $50-250 per hour which usually ends up as $30k recording and mixing. So, with a safe margin, you'd need to make around 2000 $20 digital album sales to eat. Tough? Well, with a record label you'd need 8 times that in sales.
Still not bad?
(Score: 2) by Taibhsear on Wednesday August 29 2018, @06:45PM (2 children)
And it drops down to 10% revenue once you make $5k in sales.
https://bandcamp.com/pricing [bandcamp.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29 2018, @08:39PM (1 child)
With bandcamp I can find music that I actually enjoy, and am quite willing to purchase. Where else can I find anyone making new 80's style synthpop music? It's great for having a soundtrack to which I can shake my cane to scare neighborhood children off my lawn.
(Score: 2) by Taibhsear on Thursday August 30 2018, @03:50PM
Yeah, bandcamp basically got me into paying for music again. Proper formats available (flac), flexible pricing (most of the bands I buy from have 'pay what you want to'), artist gets most of the cash, tons of music you'd never hear on the radio.