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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Local Studio explains the "business end"
Local Studio explains the "business end"
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Jim Rumbaugh
1302 posts
Jun 14, 2018
10:54 AM
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From Gary Kesling of Two Cats Studios. He did our last CD:
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Ever wonder how it works?
When it comes to the music sales business. The whole world has changed since the heyday of The Beatles, Elvis and the other iconic artists that we all know.
It used to be 45's, LP's, then 8 Tracks, Cassettes and to some extent, Still CD's but now it is downloads and Streams and as the tech has advanced, the revenue for song writers and musicians has dwindled. Almost to the point of extinction when it comes to the ability for musicians to make a decent living from sales. Live shows and selling merchandise is about the only avenue left for them to survive financially..
In a real life, up to date report from my indie label, 9 Lives Records, Here is an example of what is happening.
We are a small label. approximately 135 artists strong. This info covers all genres from spoken word to Gospel. Bluegrass to Metal and all points between.
Our label has sold about 50 physical CD's in the past 30 days. These are sold at shows by our artists and through our online CD store. The revenue varies from artist to artist, depending on what they can convince the customers to pay.
In contrast, we have had 167,441 streams and downloads.
Not bad for a little basement label from Ashland, KY but . . . Here is the rub . . .
those physical 50 CD's generate as much or more income for the artist as do the 167,000 plus streams and downloads.
Downloads translate into about $.70 per single and $8.00 per album and streams add up to between $0.006 and $0.0084 as reported by Spotify.
so . . . 1000 streams would translate to between $6 and $8, and this is before the "Store" (iTunes, Amazon and the others) take their share.
So, as you can see. These musicians need your support, if you want to keep the world fresh with new music, new ideas, new talent!
Support Music, anyway you can!
Thanks for you time!
Gary Kesling
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theharmonicaclub.com (of Huntington, WV)
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jbone
2583 posts
Jun 14, 2018
12:50 PM
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Over the past several years I have tried to convince myself to go to downloads and streams for our 3 self produced CD's but the above figures point out why I didn't. We do sell some at gigs and it helps out a lot. Not only as a bit of revenue, but to put our music out. Not that we've had any offers really but in terms of feel good- for us and for a buyer- it can't be beat that a physical icon of our work is being appreciated. And people- some at least- like having a signed copy from the artist.
I'm old school, and so is my partner Jolene, We do Raw Real and Right Now, which is to say as little tweaking of the sound as possible. We want what is on our CD to be as close to live as possible. No loops, electronic drums, etc. No pitch shifting. From instrument and vocal cord to the medium, in this case CD. If we could afford to we'd go to vinyl. To me nothing beats it.
We buy CD's or swap with other artists but we're all in the same boat. It's a tough living these days. Even James Harman had to sell swag when I saw him around Dallas 20 years ago. Not to mention the opener band for Bob Dylan both times we've seen him in recent years.
Our typical gig is a few bucks, maybe a meal or drink, and the chance to run a tip jar and sell CD's. We're retired so we won't starve. I work some day gigs too. This may be as close to the DREAM as we get. Last year we toured the US and played wherever we could. It was great the further west we went. We plan to get back out next year if at all possible.
Thank you for the illumination!
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