By Charlotta Hedman
According to the music industry piracy could cause a potential of 30 000 job losses in the UK this year and about 250 000 jobs by 2015. That sounds pretty dire. But maybe there wasn’t that much money to be made in the first place. Especially not if you’re an artist sticking to the industry standard business model of the last 60-years or so.
In an excellent article from the Root, the revenues are broken down into a pie chart. And it’s not happy reading for aspiring artists. There are a lot of people who need to get paid before the band sees any of the money. Unless you sell millions and millions of records, the future wont be full of bling.
But even bigger acts are struggling. American rockers 30 Seconds to Mars sold 2 million records and didn’t make any money at all. Which makes some argue that record deals are just an elaborate scam. Others go even further. Like Courtney Love, who in 2000 argued that the record labels are the real pirates out there.
According to the latest Nielsen research only two percent of all the records released in 2009 sold more than 5000 copies. And when it comes to actually breaking it down into cash the average musician gets about $25 for every $1000 sold. I doubt that that a world without piracy would have made much of a difference there.
But sadly the overall effect of piracy (or technological change) is having an impact on the industry. The artists are just the tip of the iceberg. They will keep going, because they’re artists after all. Sound engineers, studios and producers might not be as lucky or as resilient.
At least the music industry has someone to blame. The media industry is also suffering, newspapers are dying, new business models are failing, but the only scapegoat for them is simply the internet. Information is free. Music however isn’t.
Audio engineer Jon Sheldrick argues in a post for Music Think Tank that “many people just don’t value music in a meaningful way… they don’t value it in the sense that they will willingly fork over $1 for a song, thus helping the artist who made it continue to produce awesome music. If I’m going to convince you to buy your next record, it’s not going to happen by scaring you with abstract arguments about copyright law“.
Record labels and the regulatory industry could be alienating some fans by threatening legal action and lobbying for stricter laws against piracy. Kids who’ve grown up sharing music freely will start to resent this and feel even less inclined to give their money to what they see as greedy corporations. The musicians get lost somewhere on the battlefield.
Even major industry players have argued against stricter legislation. During the Westminster eForum Peter Jenner compared legislating against piracty to the prohibition in America in the 1930s.
In the end it’s up to the artists to take matters into their own hands. They’re the ones with the creative power, they’re the ones people want to hear. If they can find different ways of monetizing their product, they’ll grow stronger than ever. But it’s never been easy.
Andrew Dubber argues the point in a comment on Music Think Tank. According to him “History is littered with musicians who are disillusioned, embittered and broke. This was true before the internet just as it’s true now. The internet is neither your saviour, nor your enemy.
Let me make that bit clear: prior to the internet, most people spent NO money on music. If they bought a record in a year, it was a gift for a nephew (and it was usually rubbish). Some people spent a lot of money on music, because it was tied up with cultural things like identity that they were really invested in.
Making music is not (usually) a job of work. It is a creative act. You don’t have the RIGHT to make money from your music. You only have the opportunity. If you make music speculatively—that is, you create it in the hopes of making money from it, then you are a music entrepreneur. As such, entrepreneurship rules apply.”
Artists should in other words become entrepreneurs if they’re aiming for the jackpot, because the traditional way of making it big isn’t your ticket to a castle and a Ferrari. It seems like the way to make money as an artist is to focus on monetizing everything else than the product.
To find out more about entrepreneurship, licensing and the regulatory industry, check out the next Music 4.5 event.
Thanks for the post. This sentence: “It seems like the way to make money as an artist is to focus on monetizing everything else [other than] the product.” Brilliant insight. A sad truth, perhaps, but a truism indeed. Something makes me wish I’d learned this a long, long time ago. . . . Justin