*Intended sarcasm. But seriously now, we all secretly knew that unless a musician was moderately famous, online sales garnering even a decent chunk of change would be nearly impossible – any artist in any medium can tell you the promise of the new ‘internet economy’ is essentially the same old chestnut: undiscovered, unemployed. I mean sure, we’ve heard of the Indiegogo and Kickstarter success stories that raise 100k when they set out to raise 10k, but if you travel in circles of ‘un-influence’ and have equally broke friends and family–raising enough to buy a pack of Mini-DV tapes is a miracle in and of itself.
OK, people LOVE to get their music online, and 10 years post-napster they’re more willing to pay for it. So yes, there is a demand to download music. Alas, there is not a demand to download your music if no one knows who you are. Unless you and keyboard cat make a viral music video–which will cause a brief spike in your downloads at best, viral does not necessarily lead to a sustainable career**–expect to peddle your music and build your fan base the old fashioned way: trolling open mics, booking bar gigs, and minstreling about college towns until that single, almost mythical-connected person forwards her iphone video of you crooning ’til the cows come home to that one industry dynamo who can make your track the intro (or at least background music in one episode) of the latest repackaged pilot of “Dawson’s Creek” known by some other new-fangled name (which smells equally as unsweet).
My favorite new thing ever, InformationIsBeautiful.Net, did the math and came to the conclusion all of us knew in the nitty, gritty parts of our soul. We just didn’t know how bad it actualy iwas, because WOW, look at the figures below. (thanks to Ben Williams for providing this amazing link).
HOW MUCH DO MUSIC ARTISTS EARN ONLINE?
APRIL 13, 2010
Recently, the UK government passed The Digital Economy Act which included many, perhaps draconian, measures to combat online music piracy (including withdrawing broadband access for persistent pirates).Much was proclaimed about how these new laws would protect musicians and artists revenue and livelihoods.
But how much money do musicians really get paid in this new digital marketplace?
[image/ analysis by InformationIsBeautiful.Net]
** I think the “Canada On Strike” episode of South Park, featuring a room full of Internet Memes hoping to get paid is best represented by this. Rebecca Black is an exception, for the meantime, as well is Justin Bieber (who started out on youtube). For every Rebecca Black there are 500,000 youtubers covering any song and every song, hoping to get discovered. And many are more talented than the people that actually sing the songs they cover.
When waiting on hold goes terribly wrong…
How sad is my foods I can cook at work dinner?
Yaya I can monitor sound again properly!
No seriously what is all this? Yeah I have no idea either. It’s kind of terrifying, it’s kind of weird, it’s kind of magical. Come Spelunking with me.
