Pandora’s founder Tim Westergren shed some light on Pandora’s artist payments in a blog post today. Westergren says the artists at the top of the heap are bringing in $3 million annually from the service. Westergren sees a future middle class of musicians making a livable income from internet radio but only if the RIAA’s performance fees are reduced to encourage investment in the space. Pandora’s reach is only 6.5% of radio listeners in the US.
Read this letter written into The Lefsetz Letter in response to another letter written to Bob from Bonnie Hayes. The writer of this letter makes a very good point about playing clubs and where to focus on building a fan base and it’s not in the clubs. Now, every local market is totally different so just because the DC club market apparently sucks according to the author, you should still expand your horizons.
Here is the text of the letter…
“Hey Bob,
I’m a musician from DC as well. This is advice is wrong. No musician wanting to be anything but a hobbyist should be playing in bars at all. I don’t know what its like in other places, but in DC payment for playing in bars hasn’t gone up since the 70s. There is a reason: NO ONE GIVES A SHIT. The bar owners don’t care and the audience doesn’t care. It’s standard practice for venues to forbid bands from playing anywhere else within 30 miles for a month in exchange for a gig. The reason for this is they know that no one but your friends are going to come. If bars could make money off of a house band, they would have house bands, not DJs, and you could build an audience. They can’t and you can’t so don’t do it. Don’t spend your money and muscle on shelping expensive equipment around or moving to LA. Spend that money on Pro Tools, a Mac and a camera. The internet is the only place where an unknown (without an uncle in the business or a million dollars) can get an audience at all. Make a video a week, think of it as your gig. Do covers and originals.
Most important of all, interact with your audience. Think of it like your talking to fans after a show. We are a really small band, 2000 subscribers and over 200,000 plays on YouTube, and we were able to raise over $8000, via Kickstarter, to make a record and none of that money came from Mom and Dad. Here is an example of a conversation with one of our fans from Australia. In a casual message on facebook we told her we couldn’t afford a new camera. She wrote this:
“Hard work deserves being rewarded. I have been very impressed with the effort you are putting into your career.
I am not rich, and I don’t intend to be. I am comfortable and if my ‘folly’ is giving you guys help every once in a while… I see as rewarding!
I don’t ever expect anything back long term out of you either. I see a life as ‘being full of stories’. Basically this money I am giving you entitles me to tell my grandkids about the really cool band that I helped buy a camera for at the start of their career:)”
She then gave us an additional $500 to buy a new camera. This fan was out there for us. She was in Australia. GO FIND YOUR FANS, THEY AREN’T IN A BAR!!!!
Here is our latest video, it’s a cover of Justin Bieber’s “Boyfriend” played only with stuff we found in our kitchen… sounds like The Neptunes. http://youtu.be/9dmuZmo8R4o
Tristan Shields”
Having been in a band for the better part of college, finding a gig was one of the hardest parts of making it. The tunes were there, but getting a place to showcase them was nearly a full time job. Using a crowdfunding model, Hear It Local (http://www.hearitlocal.com) is taking an new approach to connecting musicians to venues, promoters, and, ultimately, the audience. According to this TechCrunch article (http://techcrunch.com/2012/
The pay to play model that too many music venues subscribe to doesn’t help the band or the club. Every gigging musician has come up against it and most, me included, cave and bring the required number of friends to the gig so the club can sell them drinks and we get a chance to play live. Many of the people who are nice enough to show up for the gig and support the band would probably rather be doing something else and odds are they will never step foot in the club again so who’s really winning here? No one. Zero sum game.
Here is an open letter to Los Angeles club owners by Dave Goldberg, a LA jazz musician that beautifully lays out the flaws in the pay to play model. He’s advocating musicians take a stand and try to change this lame institution.
Spotify is finally going to launch in the US tomorrow. I’ve been waiting to use this service for at least a year. Here’s a blurb from the NYTimes.com article today:
Spotify will be offered in the same three-tier plan that it has in Europe: a free, ad-supported version; a basic ad-free version for $5 a month; and a premium service for $10 a month that adds access on a mobile phone, higher audio quality and other perks.
At first, Spotify’s free version will be available by invitation only, given out through current users or by the company to the thousands who have requested the service on Twitter and through its Web site. (Paid subscriptions will be available right away.)
With its lightning-fast interface, easy integration with Facebook and “freemium” business model, Spotify has quickly become the most popular such service in the world. Begun in Sweden in 2008 and until now available in only seven European countries, it has signed up 1.6 million paid subscribers and more than 10 million registered users in total. It also has been one of the fastest-growing investments in the new digital boom, having recently raised $100 million in a round of investment that valued the company at $1 billion.
In December of 2009 I received an email from Spotify about getting my music onto their service. They suggested using one of the following services:
http://cdbaby.com/
http://www.recordunion.com/
http://www.dittomusic.com/
http://www.zimbalam.com/
I’m sure they have agreements with most artist-aggregators so check with yours. I use IODA and received notification of my IODA distribution agreement being modified to include Spotify in July of 2009.
I’m definitely looking forward to trying Spotify out, I hope if lives up to the hype.
TourIntel.com allows users to see concert revenue generated by artists of all sizes touring all over the world. Right now the service is offering free membership. Seeing the gross revenue generated by some shows is staggering such as the $32.7M gross generated by the 3 Sao Paulo U2 and Muse shows in early April. Lady Gaga at her recent show in Toronto “only” generated $1.8M. The site offers a simple to use interface and you can drill down into the data. Obviously if you own a venue or are a promoter this site is a helpful tool but even if you’re not a promoter, TourIntel is a good place to gain some insight into the world of touring acts.
Jim Eno from Spoon was interviewed at the site of this week’s Rethink Music conference in Boston. In this short clip he reiterates what most musician’s already know; advances from record companies to record are a thing of the past. Today artists must be creative about how they fund their recording projects. Crowdfunding recordings will become more and more common in the coming years.
I recently met a person who left a job at an indie distributor after six years to join a start-up in a lesser role and in a completely different industry. I asked him why he would leave his music industry job to join a risky start-up where he had no experience and he said the music industry had become too hard and too stressful. I prodded some more because I wanted to understand if he was referring to the corporate music business or the indie world. He said both were hurting. He claimed no one was buying music any more. The distributor he had recently left had laid off 50% of its staff in the last couple of years.
The comment “no one buys music any more” was interesting. Maybe fewer people shell out $15 – $17 for a CD any longer but iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster, Spotify and Amazon seem to be doing okay. Its also never been easier for an indie musician to get their music distributed through these sites and take an even bigger share of the revenue than a traditional label or distribution deal would offer.
The music industry as we’ve known it is definitely in decline for a host of reasons the biggest of which, in my opinion, is its reticence in accepting the realities of a digital world and intelligently pivoting to integrate digital distribution as part of their business. Why did Apple have to figure it out? Watching the music industry implode for the last few years has been a sad experience. It could have been avoided if only the suits had embraced innovation instead of litigation.
I asked my friend if he had ever heard of crowdfunding and he had not. I’m not going to say crowdfunding is the savior of the music industry but I do believe it is an extremely viable way for indies to chip away at the hurdles they face as they manage their careers. Its a concept that’s been around forever but sites like TunePledge make it simple to create and promote a fund raising campaign.
The thought of helping musicians from every genre move forward in their careers is what is behind TunePledge. Knowing we will help make musician’s journey just a little bit easier gives us a tremendous satisfaction. I believe TunePledge and sites like it will become an important part of the new indie driven, DIY music industry.
There is a great blog post by Suzanne Lainson from her blog Brands Plus Music that outlines several tactics and strategies that could lead to a successful music career. The list covers musical ability, performance skills, fans, merchandise, technical/production skills, image, marketing and touring. Several of the tactics she mentions including;
TECHNICAL SKILLS
Can you make frequent videos? At home? On tour? Using split screen? Animation?
Can you do all of your recording in a home studio that you’ve put together yourself?
HAVE STUFF TO SELL
Do you have great looking merchandise? Or maybe not so great looking merchandise, but you made it yourself and you’re marking up the price like crazy?
Are you offering merchandise at multiple price points?
Do you have something for the guys and something different for the girls?
Limited edition items?
Vinyl?
A snazzy display table?
A sexy merch person?
can be paid for with a crowdfunding campaign. Crowdfunding for musicians is becoming part of the standard arsenal of tactics to establish and build a successful career.
What other basic strategies and tactics do musicians have to master to manage a career in music today?
We’d like to know what the most expensive aspects of being a musician are so we created this simple poll. In our experience these are the most common expenses most musicians and bands face but if we’ve left something off the list please email us your thoughts or leave a comment.
This is the first in a series of polls we’ll be publishing to learn more about your funding needs as an independent musician.