The first part of this article ended with two open questions. Let’s start from the second one: how are artists doing, taken between streaming services, torrent leaks and the need to release records for free?
I found some data (updated to 2010), and the situation can be defined, for a lack of better terms, “quite interesting”. Let’s make the case of a solo musician (not a band) willing to earn a minimum salary of $1.160 a month selling the music he, or she, composes and play.
If this musician would choose to print his record, and sell the CD at an average price of $9.90, he would be able to keep, after expenses, about 81% of the proceedings. He could then reach the “goal salary” selling 143 copies a month of that record. For somebody with talent and small crowd of fans, it wouldn’t be an impossible mission.
Going through iTunes, and considering the “selling the whole album” scenario, proceedings would drop suddenly to 9,45%. This way, reaching the “goal salary” would require 1.229 sales. This situation is similar to obtaining a decent recording deal , where sold copies would need to be at least 1.161 – or 3.871 in the case of a first contract. The drama begins when we start to count how many downloads of single songs our musician would need: 12.399, to be precise, both with iTunes and with Amazon.
The situation becomes even less appealing considering streaming services: to survive, a solo musician would have to be on air 849.817 times on Rhapsody, 1.546.667 times on Last.fm and a shocking 4.053.110 times on Spotify. Just to make a comparison, an enormusly popular band like The Cure, has a total of “only” 86.000.000 scrobbles on Last.fm.
Unconfirmed rumors speak of a $167 check given to Lady Gaga to pay for 1.000.000 plays of Poker Face on Spotify. If these numbers are true, there’s no doubt that an indie band of 4-5 elements, possibly in need of middlemen (say, a webmaster), has no hope of making a living relying just on digital distribution.
On the bright side, nothing prevents bands from using all channels at the same time, for different purposes. For example, streaming services to get the name around (or lure supporters to concerts) and “fan editions” to recup most of the expenses. Many artists seem to have embraced this philosophy: although proceedings from the music itself have shrinked, the system works for more than one band. Condition sine qua non is an intense live activity, or ends will not meet.
A fact remains: the mythologic musician that just makes music is quickly disappearing, relegated to the backlines of non-profitability. Recent developements force many bands – willing or not – into the “manage your brand” position: they have to multiply their presence both online and offline, or die trying.
A few words now on the first question we left unanswered (“What’s Apple plan?”): a new service called iCloud was introduced the 6th of June at WWDC in San Francisco. At the moment of writing its implications are not clear yet, but in the regards of iTunes it seems it will be possible to move, for $24.99 a year, all your collection of records and mp3s (original and ripped) in the cloud. Probably a good deal for iTunes power users, but nothing that could really hurt established streaming services and the new mindset they created in the audience.
