
Cellist Zoe Keating has posted her "Online Sales & Streaming" numbers - jamesbritt
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkasqHkVRM1OdEJFUnhyNFFkZjVSUWxhWGl1dE9lQXc#gid=2
======
beatpanda
All up, it looks like she made about $85,000 from October of 2011 to March of
2012. That's antihistamine money, especially for someone not making pop music.
This appears to be unambiguously good news for independent artists.

~~~
revorad
_unambiguously good news for independent artists_

What algorithm do you use for your amazing extrapolation based on one data
point?

~~~
LockeWatts
"Good news" is an extrapolation requiring a trend line? Please.

~~~
revorad
Proclaiming 2 quarters' income figures from one single player as
_unambigiously_ good news for a huge diverse market is a bit hyperbolic, don't
you think?

It's like saying a $1M exit for a random startup is unambigiously good news
for all startups. What if the startup took an investment of $2M? What if the
founders lost money and are now stuck in a low paying job? What looks good on
the surface could very well be bad news if you know all the facts.

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malbs
Just wanted to say thanks for this link - I'm not interested in her numbers,
but to stumble across this on HN, and head off and listen to her music,
awesome. I really love the sound of the cello, and discovered another cellist,
Philip Sheppard, in a similar way.

And her album is only 8 bucks! in FLAC format!

~~~
leftnode
Yup, same here. I've never heard of her before, but thanks to this link I went
to her site, listened to the album and picked up a copy. Great programming
music.

~~~
darkmethod
"Great programming music."

I completely agree. Been listening to it all day. I'm thankful that the OP
added this link to HN. It made my day that much brighter.

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k-mcgrady
32,000 plays and only $132. That seems really bad, if music does start to move
more towards streaming than purchasing artists are screwed. It would take
nearly 300,000 plays at this rate for someone living in an average city
apartment to make rent.

The internet and technology in general have done some great things for music
but making money is harder than ever.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Think about that for a minute.

How many people listen to a song, how often, and at what licensing rate?

Clearchannel radio claims their network reaches 237 Million listeners a month
[1]. If they managed to hit one play for every listener they reach at
$132/32,000 that is $977,592 per month.

Yes, its hard to get between 'starting' and 'living large.' And no, not
everyone will go there, but the numbers here aren't "really bad" they are in
fact pretty good.

One business which is an analog to the current music 'label' business will be
similar to what search engine optimizers do, they will contract with a
promising artist and say "I'll pay you $x up front, and in exchange for that
you will sign over all the income from this song for the next 'n' years to
me." Then the muscian gets paid up front, the music distributor/marketer has a
chance to make some money, and everyone 'wins.' Once the contract expires all
the rights revert back to the artist.

The artist is making a bet that they will get more money for the first 'n'
years of the song this way, and the distributor is betting they can make more
than that on the song.

[1] <http://www.clearchannel.com/Corporate/>

~~~
jrwoodruff
'reaching' 237 million people is a lot different than 237 million people
actually listening to your song. Old media like radio have a long history of
making these stats as inflated as possible to keep ad rates high. Things
change drastically when you can accurately count exactly how many people are
tuned in at any given moment.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Listeners, like web site visitors, can only be reasoned about statistically.
This is even more true in this century than it was in the last century. If a
service (say Spotify or Pandora or whatever) has a population P then the
probability that they request a performance of a given piece might be f(P).
Popularity might be measured by the number of unique people who request a
performance g(P) and quality might be measured as the mode of the number of
times a unique person requested a performance.

The remuneration rate, like the 'average selling price' for a commodity, is
the median price of the performance across all requests.

My original point is that the 'size' of the music market, in terms of the
number of times a song is played, is very very large. There are probably close
to a billion 'plays' of songs on any given day in the US. I'm sure Pete Warden
could come up with a way to figure out an exact number, I base that guess on
half the population, 150M people, and 6 songs per person per day median, so
900M plays.

If the ASP, _to artists_ , is $132/32000 (not saying it is, just its the only
real number we've got in this discussion) that would make a daily sweep of
like $3.7M. So if, as an artist you were the top song that day you might take
home 1% of that or $37,000.

My overall point is that the music industry that is being birthed out of the
ashes of the old one, looks a lot different. It's more 'on demand', it's more
relational, and it's less understood. Consequently there are a lot of people
trying to mold it to something they can control and get the money out of, and
that reality distortion makes seeing the real forces driving it harder.

So when you reason about the music business and someone says "Gee the artist
only sees one tenth of a cent each time spotify plays their song.", that
sounds horrible! A song, for only 0.1 cent? Gee I'd have to listen to the same
song all day just so they could buy a cup of coffee at Peet's. But if that
song is reasonably popular and it's being played 10 million times a day, that
means the artist is making $10,000 a DAY on just one song. That sounds
awesome! The difference between these two is all that probability / market
size reasoning that is sometimes glossed over.

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ralphleon
She's amazing live if you ever have the chance to see her. A 6-foot tall woman
with red dreadlocks playing the cello beautifully.

~~~
daeken
She opened for California Guitar Trio in 2006 in San Diego. It was a tiny
venue (an old church) and it was spectacular. I was maybe 15 feet away from
her, and the acoustics were fantastic; she just kept layering things over and
over. She played with CGT as well, at the end; never heard anything like it.
One of the best shows I've ever seen in my life.

------
jamesbritt
This was linked from some Twitter posts from cellist Zoe Keating, who makes
some interesting modern music. I'm impressed that she's making here numbers
public.

She gets more from Pandora than Spotify.
<https://twitter.com/zoecello/status/231126328924061696>

~~~
citricsquid
What I find most interesting is someone with 1.3m Twitter followers is having
so little of her music streamed, I assume that this is because the majority of
her fans purchase her music? I notice she has a Bandcamp account. I think it
would be great to see her Bandcamp sales figures too as a point of reference,
and ideally an explanation of how being available on Spotify / Pandora
affected her sales figures.

She's also posted some more stats here:
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkasqHkVRM1OdEJ...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkasqHkVRM1OdEJFUnhyNFFkZjVSUWxhWGl1dE9lQXc#gid=6)

~~~
beatpanda
Her Bandcamp sales figures are in the spreadsheet.

~~~
citricsquid
oh, the spreadsheet has changed since posted. Thanks!

~~~
jamesbritt
Also, there are tabs at the bottom to view different pages of the spreadsheet.
(Sorry if I'm saying something obvious; I didn't catch it at first myself.)

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bunderbunder
Don't miss the Notes tab, it has some interesting and thoughtful comments.

~~~
MartinCron
Including this gem:

 _Some people say that if I was on a record label, I'd have a larger reach and
therefore would be making more money. To this I'd like to point out that I
make instrumental cello music._

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chucknelson
My initial impression: if you like the Journey soundtrack or soundtracks by
Clint Mansell, you'll like this. Had no idea who this was until this article,
but I'm buying her album after listening to the tracks on her website.

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kristianp
No mention of Grooveshark revenue (I mention it because I like to use it).
After reading some stuff online including [1], I'm going to guess it is zero.

[1] [http://blog.tunecore.com/2012/04/grooveshark-trolling-the-
se...](http://blog.tunecore.com/2012/04/grooveshark-trolling-the-sea-of-
artists-to-make-a-buck.html)

------
MartinCron
Kind of off-topic, but it's worth pointing out that Zoe Keating has done some
great work with the Radiolab guys.

~~~
spacemanaki
Not sure if this was what you were referring to, but as well as some of her
music being used in shows, she was interviewed in a podcast:
[http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-
blog/2008/aug/25/quan...](http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-
blog/2008/aug/25/quantum-cello/)

------
jlarocco
This is nice, but I'd still like to see a complete nobody, without previous
record deals start out on the internet and "make it".

So far all the examples of internet distribution "working" have been from big
(or relatively big) artists.

~~~
jamesbritt
From the Notes tab of the spreadsheet:
([https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkasqHkVRM1OdEJ...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkasqHkVRM1OdEJFUnhyNFFkZjVSUWxhWGl1dE9lQXc#gid=3))

"I thought it might be helpful for interested parties to see what a DIY artist
receives for plays of their music on Spotify and elsewhere."

and

"My financial picture would be worse if I was on a record label. Some people
say that if I was on a record label, I'd have a larger reach and therefore
would be making more money. To this I'd like to point out that I make
instrumental cello music. There is about as much chance of my music becoming
mainstream as there is of me being elected President of the USA (hint: not
possible, I was born in Canada and there are naked pictures of me at Burning
Man). While it is probably true that the right label could help with the reach
part, I don't think they could help me enough to offset their cut, and you
know what….no label has ever approached me and the ones I've approached said
no, so I'm guessing they think the same thing."

As best I can tell, she _is_ someone without a record deal who made it. And I
don't think shes's even relatively big but she seems to do OK for herself.

------
noonespecial
Awesome. She's a hacker; first order.

Watch this blurb from Wired. So much win.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6C1k5qer8k>

------
swang
I can't access Google Docs, can someone summarize what is on there (assuming
it is summarizable)

~~~
lelandbatey

       These Here is her summary on the final sheet. I will try to format it as much as possible:
    

_What is this?_

This accounting data is payment for plays of my "One Cello x 16" recordings
from Spotify. The payments are minus the 9% taken off the top by CDBaby.

 _Why did I post it?_

You've probably heard a lot of discussion on how musicians should be
compensated for their work: There have been numerous articles on the subject;
We know how the big players in the industry: - labels, digital retailers,
streaming companies, etc - make money; We get reports on the industry-wide
sales figures. But all the way at the bottom of the food-chain, how does a
recording artist make a living? How much cold cash does an unsigned DIY artist
make from a stream or a sale? These figures are surprisingly hard to come by,
which is why the Future of Music Coalition has been surveying musicians on how
they make a living (really worth reading: <http://money.futureofmusic.org/>).

I thought it might be helpful for interested parties to see what a DIY artist
receives for plays of their music on Spotify. But I admit I have grander
designs: if we are going to discuss the ideal structure of the new music
industry, we need to know how recording artists make a living today or we're
just spouting hyperbole. So, in the interest of evolving the discussion, I am
making myself into a data point. I encourage other artists, if they are able,
to do the same.

_What is in the data?_

Again, this is what I received from Spotify for plays of a portion of my
catalog. One of my albums is not on Spotify however because I don't have a
digital distributor for it (I sell it on my own website, on Bandcamp and
through my own label account with iTunes)

Since I posted this info I've gotten a lot of questions about my music sales
income for comparison, so I added a snapshot of iTunes, Bandcamp and Amazon
and accounting from Soundexchange (i.e. Pandora) and ASCAP (i.e. Radio)

 _Why aren't all my albums on Spotify?_

When I started releasing music in 2005 I used CDBaby since at the time it was
the only way into iTunes for DIY'er. Years later, I got a label account with
iTunes so I could release "Into The Trees" to them directly, without a service
in the middle. This year I took my "One Cello x 16" recordings out of CDBaby
and re-uploaded them into iTunes through my label account (losing all my
rankings and reviews in the process, which is why I put if off for so long).

Spotify does not work directly with artists, so to get my music in there I
have to use an aggregator like CDBaby, TuneCore or Orchard. I've yet to find a
digital distributor who will take my recordings without also having a piece of
iTunes....and so that is why "Into The Trees" is not on Spotify yet.

 _Bonus, Deep Thoughts!_

I think Spotify is awesome as a listening platform. In my opinion artists
should view it as a discovery service rather than a source of income.

The income of a non-mainstream artist like me is a patchwork quilt and
streaming is currently one tiny square in that quilt. Streaming is not yet a
replacement for digital sales, and to conflate the two is a mistake. I do not
see streaming as a threat to my income, just like I've never regarded file-
sharing as a threat but as a convenient way to hear music. If people really
like my music, I still believe they'll support it somewhere, somehow. Casual
listeners won't, but they never did anyway. I don't buy ALL the music I listen
to either, I never did, so why should I expect every single listener to make a
purchase? I think that a subset of my listeners pay for my music, and that is
a-ok because...and this is the key.....there are few middlemen between us.

My financial picture would be worse if I was on a record label. Some people
say that if I was on a record label, I'd have a larger reach and therefore
would be making more money. To this I'd like to point out that I make
instrumental cello music. There is about as much chance of my music becoming
mainstream as there is of me being elected President of the USA (hint: not
possible, I was born in Canada and there are naked pictures of me at Burning
Man). While it is probably true that the right label could help with the reach
part, I don't think they could help me enough to offset their cut, and you
know what….no label has ever approached me and the ones I've approached said
no, so I'm guessing they think the same thing.

I've said multiple times what my issue with Spotify is: fairness. I care about
making the playing field level for all recording artists: signed or unsigned.
Let it be a meritocracy. Also, I wish Spotify would do more to facilitate the
connection between listeners and artists - i.e show that the artist is playing
nearby, or add links to buy music. It's early days, so maybe this will happen
eventually.

p.s. What did I make on iTunes during the same period? I also sell digital and
physical copies on iTunes, Bandcamp, Amazon and at concerts.

It's comparing apple to oranges, but I for the same time period (Oct 2011 to
March 2012), I received, net (i.e. after fees):

 _\- $46477.77 from iTunes

\- $25,000 from Bandcamp

\- $8352.45 for physical sales on Amazon

\- $2821 from Amazon MP3 _

p.p.s. I'd like to be known for my music more than my tendency to stir up
controversy, so I probably won't say much more on the subject because I have
some music to make….;-)

