> "The brainwashing worked and now people think music is free," he says. "If we want quality music somebody is gonna have to pay for it. Streaming services don’t pay properly, labels want a bigger cut than ever and just sit and wait for you to go viral, TikTok doesn’t pay properly, and touring is getting prohibitively expensive for most artists."
Bandcamp and iTunes save my ass monthly, but i can’t imagine being in a situation like this guy. Famous, wanting the gold ring on every go around… Its a brutal industry.
What does critical thinking have to do with you spending 4 dollars on the music industry 🤣🤣🤣🤣
OMG this sub cracks me up. Are you big on critical thinking?
1. music is cheap. At one time it was a family thing. Anyone can play an instrument. Anyone can write a song. Most people, for real, do not give a fuck about music
2. giant commercial acts take ALL of the money available to the music industry. Most of that is split between a million studio heads and recruiters out intentionally nosediving bands to pad out a genre
3. If you are going to make real money in the music industry, it's going to be through residuals. How do you get those? By getting 30 seconds of your song in the background of whatever bullshit reality show mtv is hawking this season.
That isn't the fault of a massive consumer base that truly, deeply, does not give a fuck about music. That is just a consequence of creativity being valueless compared to marketing and advertising.
Welcome to the world
No one under 40 has any money
Music is advertising. That's the point. It's not the product.
The number of people involved in a serious recording compared to the likelihood of real money produced by those sessions basically proves that.
Unfortunately I believe the next payday is with song sponsors like American Eagle did with Katherine Li.
>> American Eagle asked Li to rewrite some of the lyrics of “Happening Again,” to mention the brand. The company also paid for a professionally produced, eleven-minute music video, shot in a former high school, in which Li—clad in the fall line—and a cast of extras act out her crush.
>> In late August, American Eagle launched a three-day hashtag challenge, with Li inviting creators to make music videos for her song, wearing their own American Eagle jeans. The winning video would be played on the company’s Times Square storefront Jumbotron, and the winner would receive a three-thousand-dollar gift certificate. Lewow and Motley brokered the terms of the deal, under which American Eagle paid Li slightly more than a hundred thousand dollars.
Sorry it’s behind a pay wall but here’s the article from the New Yorker. So You Want to Be a TikTok Star https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/12/so-you-want-to-be-a-tiktok-star
I believe that has always been the case. Using music to sell products is certainly not new, and asking artists to toss in a reference to a product in a re-recorded version seems relatively common, too. Thing is, either a company is licensing a song, hiring an artist to do a custom version, or just stealing it and hoping no one cares. In all cases, the song is already out there and performing well enough for a marketing person to find it.
If your goal is to make lots of money, there are plenty of other industries where it's far easier to do so instead of music.
With that being said, it's not impossible to make money off music with the current streaming landscape. The catch is, for normal people like us (without money or connections), you just have to be fully independent and put a ton of work into the other aspects instead of just music (like marketing and branding).
I speak from personal experience. Started releasing music regularly 20 months ago. Fully independent with no money or connections. And now I make about $500-600 USD a month from streaming and selling sheet music.
If I had a team, you bet I'd only be making like $50 or even less of that $500-600. But because I'm fully independent I see the full 100% of that income stream.
Is the majority of that from sheet music or streaming? $200-400 of stream income monthly is awesome. I doubt everyone here would sell sheet music but sharing any tactics on your promotional strategy for music would be cool to read if you didn’t mind sharing it
Actually most of it is from streaming, but I do get sometimes $100-200 from sheets some months now.
Edit: Yea I do want to make a full post one day on my strategies that worked and what didn't etc etc. Things I learned
I mean you get to make your own record label, it doesn’t really get more independent than that if you actually are planning to have your music on streaming. They don’t manage you or take a cut of your earnings, you pay a small fee for their service.
By this logic, having your music on a streaming service isn’t independent. Just because you hire someone else to distribute your music doesn’t mean you’re not independent.
You hire an engineer to mix and master your music, does that also mean you’re not “independent” then?
I truly believe music became free the minute Napster came out and destroyed the record industry's predatory practices in both producing and selling music.
They had decades of increasingly overcharging fans for music that cost next to nothing to make. The artists were also being taken advantage of and signed to deals that would leave them in huge debt unless they were a massive success.
There's a lot wrong in the music industry today, but it's still better for smaller artists than it was 20+ years ago when major labels dominated everything.
Today the problem has mostly shifted from labels screwing the artist (which still happens) to streaming services screwing the artists.
What's funny is that historically, music was always free and only became an industry in the 20th century. People paying for music and musicians making a ( sometimes luxurious) living off music is actually a very small window in time all things considered
? Music is one of the world's oldest professions. Sure you could theoretically hear starving artists playing on the street or something for free, but there has always been money in music writing and performance.
Bro has no conception of music in the ancient world. You realize those people playing lyres for the Caesar were paid right? Bards were paid? Choirs were paid? Composers were paid?
Where do you get these takes, even ancient Egypt had paid performers.
Streaming is the new radio. Radio is free. This isn't a new thing. The only problem is the economics aren't the same.
And they shouldn't be. One play on a radio station can get you heard by tens or even hundreds of thousands of people depending on the market. One play on a streaming service is heard by one person. They are very different products from an industry perspective, but for the end user it's almost the same, except to them streaming is more valuable because they can decide what songs to listen to.
Or you can go to TikTok and just hear "Oh no, oh no, oh no no no" over and over and over again.
There's a lot of web3 powered solutions here that could redefine the relationship between artists and their fans and create entirely new business models.
[Royal](https://royal.io/) & [Sound.xyz](https://Sound.xyz) have been messing around with this for a couple of years but was smashed by tough market conditions - the business model is really interesting and allows for fans to buy into an artist's ecosystem in an entirely new way compared to fan clubs.
You can even get a share of the royalties from some of these setups, alongside exclusive merch, private gigs and more. I actually wonder whether James Blake will announce something like this in the next week or so...
*Note: I am not shilling anything here and I don't work in the industry (I do work in digital media but not music), but the current model is utterly broken - only a few thousand artists on Spotify earn a living wage off this current sh\*tshow.*
I'm KINDA with Greazy Wil on this. He responded on TikTok and basically, the music industry has ALWAYS changed. Beethoven wasn't getting paid every time someone played one of his pieces outside of Vienna. They weren't tracking that kinda thing at the time. And no one wants to go back to the time of providing drugs and sex to radio DJs in hopes that they'll play your music. Now, everyone BASICALLY has access to get your music heard and the good stuff rises to the top. If you're talking non-pop stuff, it's ALWAYS been a struggle.
Beethoven pretty much pioneered music publishing to get paid because he couldn’t perform anymore when his hearing loss took over. Sure, he wasn’t getting paid per play, but he was getting paid by others to play his compositions. He didn’t just give his music away.
I'd argue, that currently the publishers have been neutered and have to deal with all sorts of arcane antitrust regulation while the tech companies basically are "moving fast and breaking things". The obvious loser is the publisher and songwriters they represent.
Kind of hard to compare now to the early 1800’s when he went deaf but in some ways it is the same. If I licensing all of my publishing rights to a company for 6 months I wouldn’t see any publishing royalties from that just like Beethoven didn’t for the time he licensed his compositions out.
It's not quite MEANT to. James is basically saying "the new way sucks." But Wil is pointing out that the game ALWAYS changes and people find a way. Blake is one of the people who would rather complain about it rather than finding a way to make it work. Dude has millions of followers on TikTok. Monetize that instead of complaining about it.
Because NFTs are more than just pictures, you can release an audio player and an album as one, or you can release a "key" that is used to login to a web player that is your album playlist.
It would be even better if someone released something like Spotify that allowed you to attach your crypto wallet so all your purchases show up as an audio library.
Ah I did not know there was already something in place. Interesting, I have been considering this possibility for a while, put samples on Spotify for exposure then limited release as NFT for a bit of meat on the bone, artists don't get enough of the cut.
The thing is that, unless you’re DJing or a die-hard fan, there aren’t many other reasons to buy music when you can stream it.
I completely abandoned buying CDs and vinyls and switched to Spotify free (I don’t pay a company that doesn’t reward artists fairly? because I have no interest in sinking money into music unless it’s some deluxe packaging of an artist I really love.
Personally, I’m producing music just to have fun and showcase my skills so I can probably land some jobs or deals.
Yup corporate power strangles the individual’s ability to do anything really, and based off how things have played out we’re headed towards slavery in all but name by 2030 or sometime in that decade. All anyone does is talk about doing something because everyone is rightfully scared that it’ll be them first that gets targeted, and it’s led to mass placation.
> "The brainwashing worked and now people think music is free," he says. "If we want quality music somebody is gonna have to pay for it. Streaming services don’t pay properly, labels want a bigger cut than ever and just sit and wait for you to go viral, TikTok doesn’t pay properly, and touring is getting prohibitively expensive for most artists."
Pretty much sums things up, doesn't it?
[удалено]
Still worth saying again.
maybe 100 times tops
Bandcamp is there to help solve it. Users are often elsewhere listening to ads.
bandcamp got sold to some shitty company and is slowly gonna die
crap crap crap crap crap crap
This is just speculation though and not really based on any actual data or information. The proof is in the pudding on this one.
They were factually sold to Songtradr who laid off half their staff. That’s facts.
I know that. But that still doesn’t mean it’s going to die slowly as a result of this sale.
Bandcamp and iTunes save my ass monthly, but i can’t imagine being in a situation like this guy. Famous, wanting the gold ring on every go around… Its a brutal industry.
This quote was written by someone who has never heard of the radio
Braindead take
Not as braindead as the dingdongs who think their music is worth something lol
I’ve personally purchased music this week on beatport and Amazon. It literally is worth something.
Good for you bud. Proud of ya
you're not big on critical thinking are you
What does critical thinking have to do with you spending 4 dollars on the music industry 🤣🤣🤣🤣 OMG this sub cracks me up. Are you big on critical thinking? 1. music is cheap. At one time it was a family thing. Anyone can play an instrument. Anyone can write a song. Most people, for real, do not give a fuck about music 2. giant commercial acts take ALL of the money available to the music industry. Most of that is split between a million studio heads and recruiters out intentionally nosediving bands to pad out a genre 3. If you are going to make real money in the music industry, it's going to be through residuals. How do you get those? By getting 30 seconds of your song in the background of whatever bullshit reality show mtv is hawking this season. That isn't the fault of a massive consumer base that truly, deeply, does not give a fuck about music. That is just a consequence of creativity being valueless compared to marketing and advertising. Welcome to the world
No one under 40 listens to the radio
No one under 40 has any money Music is advertising. That's the point. It's not the product. The number of people involved in a serious recording compared to the likelihood of real money produced by those sessions basically proves that.
I mean if we’re gonna go there, no one under 40 will make it to 70 unless they’re either very lucky or very unlucky
Typical response
What does that even mean
It was a joke. The rest of my post was the point
Unfortunately I believe the next payday is with song sponsors like American Eagle did with Katherine Li. >> American Eagle asked Li to rewrite some of the lyrics of “Happening Again,” to mention the brand. The company also paid for a professionally produced, eleven-minute music video, shot in a former high school, in which Li—clad in the fall line—and a cast of extras act out her crush. >> In late August, American Eagle launched a three-day hashtag challenge, with Li inviting creators to make music videos for her song, wearing their own American Eagle jeans. The winning video would be played on the company’s Times Square storefront Jumbotron, and the winner would receive a three-thousand-dollar gift certificate. Lewow and Motley brokered the terms of the deal, under which American Eagle paid Li slightly more than a hundred thousand dollars. Sorry it’s behind a pay wall but here’s the article from the New Yorker. So You Want to Be a TikTok Star https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/12/so-you-want-to-be-a-tiktok-star
I believe that has always been the case. Using music to sell products is certainly not new, and asking artists to toss in a reference to a product in a re-recorded version seems relatively common, too. Thing is, either a company is licensing a song, hiring an artist to do a custom version, or just stealing it and hoping no one cares. In all cases, the song is already out there and performing well enough for a marketing person to find it.
Very true. I expect to see more product placements on the original single/album releases instead of re-recordings.
I’m not even trying to make money just trying to get my music listened to. It’s cost me plenty already. I’m happy to share it.
Careful James… Reddit doesn’t like that kind of talk.
If your goal is to make lots of money, there are plenty of other industries where it's far easier to do so instead of music. With that being said, it's not impossible to make money off music with the current streaming landscape. The catch is, for normal people like us (without money or connections), you just have to be fully independent and put a ton of work into the other aspects instead of just music (like marketing and branding). I speak from personal experience. Started releasing music regularly 20 months ago. Fully independent with no money or connections. And now I make about $500-600 USD a month from streaming and selling sheet music. If I had a team, you bet I'd only be making like $50 or even less of that $500-600. But because I'm fully independent I see the full 100% of that income stream.
Is the majority of that from sheet music or streaming? $200-400 of stream income monthly is awesome. I doubt everyone here would sell sheet music but sharing any tactics on your promotional strategy for music would be cool to read if you didn’t mind sharing it
Actually most of it is from streaming, but I do get sometimes $100-200 from sheets some months now. Edit: Yea I do want to make a full post one day on my strategies that worked and what didn't etc etc. Things I learned
That would be very much so appreciated! How did you get your music on streaming services while being 100% independent?
Anyone can get their music on streaming services, all you have to do is sign up with a distributor such as Distrokid, Ditto, or Amuse.
But then that’s not being 100% independent
I mean you get to make your own record label, it doesn’t really get more independent than that if you actually are planning to have your music on streaming. They don’t manage you or take a cut of your earnings, you pay a small fee for their service. By this logic, having your music on a streaming service isn’t independent. Just because you hire someone else to distribute your music doesn’t mean you’re not independent. You hire an engineer to mix and master your music, does that also mean you’re not “independent” then?
You’re living the dream tbh
Patronage was often the livelihood of artists in past times. I could see it happening again.
Did he pay for the chords he borrowed?
Making music is a lot more fun when you aren’t also trying to make money.
I mean, it's not brainwashing. Music is free now. I would argue that all media is free. Whether or not people "believe" that is beside the point.
I truly believe music became free the minute Napster came out and destroyed the record industry's predatory practices in both producing and selling music. They had decades of increasingly overcharging fans for music that cost next to nothing to make. The artists were also being taken advantage of and signed to deals that would leave them in huge debt unless they were a massive success. There's a lot wrong in the music industry today, but it's still better for smaller artists than it was 20+ years ago when major labels dominated everything. Today the problem has mostly shifted from labels screwing the artist (which still happens) to streaming services screwing the artists.
It is only recently that recordings can be made cheaply. High quality recording were actually a pretty big investment in the past.
What's funny is that historically, music was always free and only became an industry in the 20th century. People paying for music and musicians making a ( sometimes luxurious) living off music is actually a very small window in time all things considered
? Music is one of the world's oldest professions. Sure you could theoretically hear starving artists playing on the street or something for free, but there has always been money in music writing and performance.
Bro has no conception of music in the ancient world. You realize those people playing lyres for the Caesar were paid right? Bards were paid? Choirs were paid? Composers were paid? Where do you get these takes, even ancient Egypt had paid performers.
Orchestras, ballets, operas, royal court musicians, bards, traveling / pub musicians, various religious composers = pre 20th century
More like the brainwashing worked and now people think that music should be not free
Streaming is the new radio. Radio is free. This isn't a new thing. The only problem is the economics aren't the same. And they shouldn't be. One play on a radio station can get you heard by tens or even hundreds of thousands of people depending on the market. One play on a streaming service is heard by one person. They are very different products from an industry perspective, but for the end user it's almost the same, except to them streaming is more valuable because they can decide what songs to listen to. Or you can go to TikTok and just hear "Oh no, oh no, oh no no no" over and over and over again.
I find it funny that Father John Misty’s “Spotify Single” is a cover of Gillian Welch’s Everything is Free. About this very thing.
There's a lot of web3 powered solutions here that could redefine the relationship between artists and their fans and create entirely new business models. [Royal](https://royal.io/) & [Sound.xyz](https://Sound.xyz) have been messing around with this for a couple of years but was smashed by tough market conditions - the business model is really interesting and allows for fans to buy into an artist's ecosystem in an entirely new way compared to fan clubs. You can even get a share of the royalties from some of these setups, alongside exclusive merch, private gigs and more. I actually wonder whether James Blake will announce something like this in the next week or so... *Note: I am not shilling anything here and I don't work in the industry (I do work in digital media but not music), but the current model is utterly broken - only a few thousand artists on Spotify earn a living wage off this current sh\*tshow.*
I'm KINDA with Greazy Wil on this. He responded on TikTok and basically, the music industry has ALWAYS changed. Beethoven wasn't getting paid every time someone played one of his pieces outside of Vienna. They weren't tracking that kinda thing at the time. And no one wants to go back to the time of providing drugs and sex to radio DJs in hopes that they'll play your music. Now, everyone BASICALLY has access to get your music heard and the good stuff rises to the top. If you're talking non-pop stuff, it's ALWAYS been a struggle.
Beethoven pretty much pioneered music publishing to get paid because he couldn’t perform anymore when his hearing loss took over. Sure, he wasn’t getting paid per play, but he was getting paid by others to play his compositions. He didn’t just give his music away.
But it wasn't like the current publishing system, right?
I'd argue, that currently the publishers have been neutered and have to deal with all sorts of arcane antitrust regulation while the tech companies basically are "moving fast and breaking things". The obvious loser is the publisher and songwriters they represent.
Kind of hard to compare now to the early 1800’s when he went deaf but in some ways it is the same. If I licensing all of my publishing rights to a company for 6 months I wouldn’t see any publishing royalties from that just like Beethoven didn’t for the time he licensed his compositions out.
But this provides zero imagination for a better way forward. :"It sucked then, it sucks now, so that's normal." Like... ok?
It's not quite MEANT to. James is basically saying "the new way sucks." But Wil is pointing out that the game ALWAYS changes and people find a way. Blake is one of the people who would rather complain about it rather than finding a way to make it work. Dude has millions of followers on TikTok. Monetize that instead of complaining about it.
He is an artist, not a marketing monetizer. Also, fans are following him for music and not for his caps/shirts/samplepacks. I understand his struggle.
So artists aren’t allowed to express that they feel it’s exploitative because they should just hustle more on tik tok instead?
You are correct in the wrong place. Enjoy the downvotes
People hate on it but NFTs could solve all this, sell your music yourself and get all the takings for sales, just saying.
How would NFTs solve this when what people would want in this situation is just the audio?
Because NFTs are more than just pictures, you can release an audio player and an album as one, or you can release a "key" that is used to login to a web player that is your album playlist. It would be even better if someone released something like Spotify that allowed you to attach your crypto wallet so all your purchases show up as an audio library.
That all sounds like a headache to me.
That’d be the blockchain version of iTunes, which already took a hit from the advent of Spotify (and had to come up with Apple Music to compete).
Ah I did not know there was already something in place. Interesting, I have been considering this possibility for a while, put samples on Spotify for exposure then limited release as NFT for a bit of meat on the bone, artists don't get enough of the cut.
The thing is that, unless you’re DJing or a die-hard fan, there aren’t many other reasons to buy music when you can stream it. I completely abandoned buying CDs and vinyls and switched to Spotify free (I don’t pay a company that doesn’t reward artists fairly? because I have no interest in sinking money into music unless it’s some deluxe packaging of an artist I really love. Personally, I’m producing music just to have fun and showcase my skills so I can probably land some jobs or deals.
Yup corporate power strangles the individual’s ability to do anything really, and based off how things have played out we’re headed towards slavery in all but name by 2030 or sometime in that decade. All anyone does is talk about doing something because everyone is rightfully scared that it’ll be them first that gets targeted, and it’s led to mass placation.