
How bands are escaping the music industry snake pit - T-A
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-43156285
======
jrimbault
On a related topic, Bandcamp does something right. Until I first heard of it,
I had very rarely bought music (I was born in the early 90s), and very often
just _downloaded_ it. Which meant manually (or automating) tagging of tracks.

But Bandcamp _feels_ fair, I pay the artist/band the amount they wish or I
wish to, and in return I get flac files _I own_ with correct id3tags.

(Maybe it's just that Bandcamp was made when I started getting revenue, two
unrelated events that just happen to coincide.)

~~~
jonathanstrange
Although I like Bandcamp, it's in a sense an even bigger rip-off than
traditional labels. They get hefty shares for merely offering you a pre-
designed web page and hosting. The vast majority of artists on Bandcamp make
no money.

The problem is like with all alternative distribution channels - if you
actually want to sell your music, marketing is more important than the music
itself and very few people have the ability and time to do the creative work
and the marketing at the same time. If nobody knows about your music, nobody
will buy it. It's the same with self-publishing platforms for books.

Traditional publishers have all the marketing channels already set up, so
marketing is easier and more affordable to them than for startups, let alone
individual artists.

~~~
KozmoNau7
Excuse me for being direct, but do you work for a record label?

Bandcamp takes 15%/10% (depending on your yearly sales). Combined with the
payment processing fees, that gives a return of around 80%, as mentioned in
another reply to your post. I think that's perfectly fair, considering the
hosting costs for thousands and thousands of hours of music, and their entire
platform.

What Bandcamp offers is a sales channel that is already configured, all you
have to to is give it a theme, upload your music in a lossless format, name
the songs and choose a price. Bandcamp handles the layouts, the tagging, the
multiple formats, the embedded album art and the whole shopping experience.
You do the art, they do the technical stuff.

You're spinning a yarn that the traditional labels are necessary in order to
do marketing, but with the rise of social media and the huge trust people have
in word of mouth, the big in-your-face advertising campaigns of yesteryear are
simply outdated. The only reason the big labels still have some kind of clout
is that they own all the big radio stations. But the rise of streaming and
internet radio has eroded that power.

And even if what you say was true, it only holds up for mainstream pop
artists, not the much more interesting indie artists out there.

~~~
jonathanstrange
_Excuse me for being direct, but do you work for a record label?_

Not at all, I'm an independent artist at Bandcamp. What I am saying is that
without marketing you have 0 sales.

I'm also not saying that there are no artists who can do the marketing
themselves (through social media, etc., as you mention). Most artists,
however, neither have the time nor the connections to do that.

It's the same effect as with app stores, where also just a very small number
of developers make any money. You're right that Bandcamp offers a sales
channel,of course. That's essentially all that these alternative distribution
channels offer. We can debate whether that's worth 15% of the sales, though.
As I've said, it works for some people who are well-connected and have a
natural talent for self-marketing. For most of the artists, it doesn't work.

~~~
KozmoNau7
It has always been just a small segment of artists who could actually make
money directly from their art. Most artists in history had a patron of some
kind, either a rich person or royalty, or the church (or other religious
institution).

The sales pitch from the big labels is that they will use their connections to
get you noticed, but the prerequisite is that you should already be reasonably
established before they want to pick you up, or ridiculously lucky that you
just caught the right person's attention at the right time.

The best way to get your name out there is still to play tons of smaller
shows, build a local fanbase, and get on festival lineups, either through
competitions or because your fanbase pesters the promoters into booking you.

------
r3bl
From a different point of view, the most popular band originating from my
country[0] became popular _because_ they dismissed the idea of trying to earn
money via streaming and album distribution, and focused on live shows to
actually make money (with more gigs per year than I thought it was humanly
possible). You can still buy their music if you feel like it, and they're
available on streaming services as well (although they get added to Spotify
about a month after the official release).

Their last two albums (+ an EP and a few singles) got released as a free
download on their site, and they've released a pretty cool music video[1] in
which they've encouraged people to get their music for free (the video was on
the front page of The Pirate Bay for a while), featuring lyrics such as "we
don't give a shit about the copyright law" and "we do file share like we don’t
care, throw music industry in despair".

[0] [http://dubioza.org/albums/](http://dubioza.org/albums/)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOqxarVWKRs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOqxarVWKRs)

~~~
gkya
Live musical performances are the only thing in music that nobody can fake or
pirate. Even the video recordings of a concert is nothing near the actual
experience. Maybe the music business will move towards such a setting where
internet is the place to show off your work, and the concert venue is where
you earn money. More publicity, more fame, more venues, more tickets. Add to
that maybe a combined use of say Bandcamp, Patreon et al, Youtube, and
streaming services, and about everybody who wants to do music can find a niche
there for themselves.

Also, the Dubioza guys are really cool, thanks for the links!

------
shams93
Back in the 90s you didn't have to try that hard. The competition was
Blockbuster Video so it wasn't that hard to get booked 5-7 nights a week in
1991. There were lots of places to play live that no longer exist. You played
for donations but your share of the rent in 1991 was $175 a month. No cell
phone bill, not much to spend money on because you could get your guitar and
amp for cheap from a pawn shop. Today we have all this technology but music
struggles because its based on live person to person physical community. Today
in LA its all pay to play so music has turned into a vanity project for people
with the money to buy their way in. The one way in today is to develop over
the top, absolutely undeniably exceptional skills and then pair with a luthier
to produce signature instruments in a partnership. Tosin Abasi has the right
business model. Develop amazing technique then work with instrument makers to
rely on boutique instrument sales rather than album sales or even live
performance for the main income.

~~~
manmal
Sure, but playing even 3 times per week is VERY taxing. If you play, let’s
say, from 10 to 1, you probably won’t be in bed before 3. And it’s the
equivalent to running 10 miles or perhaps even more, if you move a lot and try
to engage the audience very much. It’s exhausting, and I don’t envy anybody
who has to play every day. I don’t know how people like Justin Timerlake are
able to keep this up for decades.

~~~
tetraodonpuffer
just like working out it gets easier as you train, for quite a few serious
runners 10 miles a day is par for the course (100mi training weeks are not
that uncommon).

My dad played for a living in the 60s and his band played TWO shows a day
(afternoon and evening, so the schedule was get up around noon, breakfast,
show, lunch, show, dinner, sleep) 6 days a week during the summer, it's just
like any other type of physical labor and listening to him it definitely beat
working 12 hour days in the fields which is what he did before...

------
forkLding
What SoundCloud could have become, a supporting brand of indie and music that
people appreciate but without as much obligations in revenue etc in exchange
for continued electronic streaming through SoundCloud

------
dharma1
It's tricky to make money from recorded music. I don't think the "industry" is
to blame - it's more about peoples' consumption habits (streaming services,
games instead of records etc), and the fact that there are so many artists, so
many people releasing music.

Most people listen to music on streaming services. In terms of making money
from streaming services, you don't. There are a zillion artists on them, and
the vast majority ends up with pennies.

You can sell on bandcamp etc, and that will probably generate more than
streaming services, but still very little for the vast majority -people don't
really buy downloads/physical music anymore, it's free on streaming services.

You could try Patreon, and that might generate a bit of recurring revenue if
you're active on social media.

If you start getting mainstream radio play, you're doing good as the royalties
from that are still pretty nice. But very few artists get there. Also,
tracking publishing rights and actually paying people for radio play (or
publishing in general) is an arcane, paper based mess.

If you're lucky, you'll get your music licensed to TV/film/games, and that can
also be a good source of revenue.

But sales of recorded music, as a way of making a reasonable amount of money,
is pretty much finished.

------
dmitriid
Too bad most of these articles are so superficial and never go into the actual
dynamics between artists, labels, streaming services etc.

That's a true snake pit, and there are very few attempts to untangle what goes
on.

~~~
elmar
an old one from 2000 but detailed and probably some information still
relevant.

Cortney Love does the math

[https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/](https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/)

~~~
harrumph
"Cortney Love does the math"

Ms. Love appeared to be inspired by this piece written seven years earlier by
the engineer who recorded Nirvana's "In Utero".

[https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-
music](https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music)

------
ghostcluster
The rise of TicketMaster's business in the age of touring has been
interesting.

One of the very last interviews Charlie Rose broadcast before his
disappearance was a fascinating interview with Live Nation's CEO:
[https://charlierose.com/guests/12447](https://charlierose.com/guests/12447)

hmm. his site is down along with his entire show archive. That is a loss for
the Internet.

Rapino talked about how Live Nation has gotten into managing artists directly,
buying venues, and doing promotion and logistics for a wide array of artists
at a range of scales.

It's a big change now that artist's have a direct microphone to their entire
fanbase through Twitter, Instagram, etc.

~~~
svl
archive.org seems to have it saved:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20171121004935/https://charliero...](https://web.archive.org/web/20171121004935/https://charlierose.com/guests/12447)

------
cjslep
My father and his brother's entire business model in the 90s and 2000s was
mass producing Karaoke for America while giving labels the finger. He saw
digital downloads and streaming coming like a freight train from the future. I
worked at my colleges radio station with labels to examine their newest stuff
and add/omit it to our rotation for the metal segments. Finally, I have a
friend I met in college who is in a talented metal band (Aether Realm)
basically forging their own way. In all these interactions, the sense I have
gotten from everyone from labels to artists to derivative works is always
fundamentally a numbers game "how much and how many people will people really
pay" and smoothening out statistical noise in income streams.

The end result is truly if you care for the music and the art, buy the
merchandise directly from the artist. Go to the local concerts. Help reduce
the variance in the artist's income stream. Show them that despite not having
a big label, they can succeed. Once I realized I had this kind of power to my
favorite metal artists, it was nice to give back.

------
z3t4
Artists need to own their distribution channels. With today's technology it's
pretty easy! They also need to do marketing.

~~~
e_b
The problem is that if you own your distribution channels you need a massive
marketing budget to stand out from the other offerings as you are competing
with other distributors instead of getting help from them.

~~~
1337biz
Absolutely and you need massive manpower to be good at all media and
distribution channels.

------
breakingcups
Why does this sound like a paid advertorial?

 _This is because they 've signed to Kobalt, a technology-driven music
services company that gives songwriters and bands complete ownership of their
work and a greater share of income than has traditionally been the case in the
industry.

"We never used to make any money because we were always paying off our
advances," recalls Haggis, whose band formed in 2003. "We'd get about a 20%
share of revenues and the label would keep the rest.

"Now we get to keep about 90% of what we earn ...it's such a difference, it
just made sense."_

~~~
phaemon
Because you failed to read the following paragraphs that talked about
different companies?

It's the BBC. They aren't allowed to take money for articles. Of course, they
aren't particularly fussy about what press releases they run, so you can still
sneak in an ad for your company if you make the effort.

~~~
breakingcups
The fact that they mention other companies doesn't invalidate my point. Of all
companies mentioned, a majority of time is spent speaking about Kobalt, it's
founder and praising it. Kobalt gets around 6 paragraphs. Most other companies
only get a paragraph each which only briefly describes what they don, and they
aren't even all direct competitors.

I have read the article and I'm miffed you'd suggest otherwise. Please read HN
guidelines where it explicitly asks you not to suggest other posters haven't
read the articles but to stick to the facts.

~~~
phaemon
Fair enough. Sorry. I hate defending the BBC because they're so insidiously
biased, but they definitely don't accept money for articles. But my grumpiness
is no reason to miff people!

