Release day economics

> But that is expensive to market.

Exactly - the estimate above just counts the time to make the album towards the cost, but there are many additional costs to add to that: from a financial perspective, the cost of pressing CDs, making sleeves, any marketing costs (making posters, paying for designers, buying ad space, perhaps hiring a marketing person), hiring a plugger (someone who plugs your record to radio stations, magazines, etc. for plays or reviews). For someone self-releasing, the time to do all that themselves (plus some minimal fixed costs, e.g. printing, pressing CDs for sales at gigs, etc.) would need to be accounted for.

Finally, there would still need to be some minimal admin around the publishing to make sure the author rights are protected. I'm not sure there's a DIY route for this other than setting up your own publishing company and getting someone to administer it (but there may be.) This would also take time and/or reduce earnings.

> To anyone who had a computer in the past 5 years, recorded music is not worth anything. Sorry, but that's just the way it is.

It wasn't always that way, and it doesn't need stay that way either. If no-one values the music, then maybe it will; if people do value music, then maybe it won't.

> I also don't understand the undertone of righteous indignation at Spotify's existence. I can listen to the radio, where songs are played gratis

The difference is that radio play was used to promote albums, which people then bought. Recording a song on the radio came with many disadvantages: DJ interruptions, missing the start/end of the song, lower sound quality, no album art etc.

With Spotify, there's no need to purchase the album, as there are no such disadvantages, the whole album is usually online, and you can play songs whenever you want to listen to them, not when the DJ feels like playing them. This makes in less economically interesting to be an artist. The righteous indignation against spotify is probably due to the fact that artists actually make very little money out of their content, whereas the spotify owners are probably going to make a lot of money out of the artists' content.

A few months ago we launched a service called http://Songtrust.com, we are helping bring music publishing to songwriters of all levels. Our aim is to be as songwriter friendly as possible, we only charge a subscription and we do not take any % of royalties. We also let our songwriters opt out of the 'deal' with us at any time. That way if a traditional publisher comes knocking with a big advance check(which often is just a really bad bank loan at usurious rates - another one of the reasons publishing gets such a bad rap) or if a publisher with Sync expertise in your genre offers to better exploit (which is the technical term) your music. We also offer sync opportunities through a partnership with dms.fm on a non-exclusive basis (meaning our customers can go shop their syncs other places)

We help songwriters get affiliated with a PRO(like ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC), register all their songs and help them collect their royalties just like any other publisher. We also register their songs with The Harry Fox Agency(HFA) which will be collecting mechanicals from record sales and also from Youtube and Spotify. All of this you could do yourself but it's a huge pain in the neck involving a lot of paperwork and a ton of time. We like to think of it like having a professional do your taxes for you.

Soon we will be coming out with a product aimed at Bands instead of individual songwriters, which we hope will be a huge hit for the giant group of indie bands who will never get a publishing deal but will be owed publishing monies.We were spun out of a traditional publishing company called Downtown Music Publishing, we are well funded, have paying customers, and since this is HN I can’t help but plug that we are hiring folks who want to come help change get songwriters paid: (http://blog.songtrust.com/jobs/front-end-developer-ux-design...)