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not that 32,000 is anything to sneeze at but it appears he actually made a fortune selling his album. EDIT: which is to say the actual headline is: "Spotify probably better hypemachine than Clear Channel, at the moment"
There are broader lessons in marketing here beyond just the streaming. The streaming is one element.
A recent Billboard interview with JT's manager, Johnny Wright, sort of underscores this: http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/branding/1552474/...
My question: How much of this is Timberlake leveraging his success in careful, well-calculated ways—and winning big, and how much is it the streaming? The scarcity of new Timberlake material for seven years probably created an atmosphere where fans were super-curious. There are broader lessons in marketing here beyond just the streaming. The streaming is one element. A recent Billboard interview with JT's manager, Jo…
I wonder how many people out there, like me, were converted from hater, to fan.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I can tell, and the model I would advocate, is that recorded music is advertising for a live tour, which does make the money. And, IMHO, that is how it should be. A recording, to my mind, is faked music, produced to an inch of its like. Its like air brushing. A real artist, or musician, can perform live, and that is where they should make their money, performing their art. That is the artist. Buy a MP3 or C…
which is why all electronic music is fake and not real art!!
It seems like music is the loss leader these days, I'm curious to know the pay day from touring.
From what I can tell, and the model I would advocate, is that recorded music is advertising for a live tour, which does make the money. And, IMHO, that is how it should be. A recording, to my mind, is faked music, produced to an inch of its like. Its like air brushing. A real artist, or musician, can perform live, and that is where they should make their money, performing their art. That is the artist. Buy a MP3 or C…
Also, producers, engineers, etc. that enable recorded music to be fine tuned to perfection deserved to be paid. They won't go on tours.
The real question is: are labels/distributors paid too much? In this day and age, I think so, and that's why services like Bandcamp deserve to be supported.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A fortune? A million CDs at ~$10 a pop minus apple's cut (digital) and multiple expenses/middle man cuts for physical it probably made 5 to 7 million dollars. Given the number of people involved in the creation of a CD that's pretty good but not exactly a fortune. Many fortunes will be made from this endeavor, and they'll be from things other than direct sales of music content to consumers
Timberlake is such a successful artist it is beyond reasonable doubt that all deals he has are on favoured nations terms so what he actually made is likely at least on the high end of your estimate, and circa $7MM in a WEEK is a fortune whichever way you slice it. Also, Suit & Tie had 9,394 radio spins in it's first week, which is the most in the chart's history, that's a first week audience of 93.4MM people [1]. I'm…
Frankly I never cease to be amazed at what a great deal that is compared to how Spotify / Pandora / etc are getting screwed big time on licensing fees.
Traditional radio was / sometimes still is an extremely profitable business. Once you exceed basic costs, it's all gravy minus sales commissions and some production costs on commercials etc. Radio is basically one giant sales business.
It seems as though for radio, from day one, it was heavily a promotional medium for selling physical records, with the added bonus of a sales cut for the music industry. With the move to digital music, I think they stopped looking at it as a means of promotion so much and wanted to own the whole channel (as much as possible). Short sightedness, spurred on by a mixture of fear (eg Napster) and greed (opportunity to rewrite the distribution rules).
It seems like music is the loss leader these days, I'm curious to know the pay day from touring.
http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/1481408/top-25-tours-...
eg Roger Waters' tour grossed $186 million on 72 shows. Madonna did $228 million.
They obviously don't get to keep that, but they get a very healthy cut.
I'm wondering if there is a mistake in the numbers. The album has 12 tracks, so if the whole album was streamed 7.7m times at $0.005 per track streamed, the royalty payment would be closer to $400,000
I'd assume that's 7.7 million track plays. 7.7 million * $0.005 = $38,500, which is the right order of magnitude. Then note that it says " less then [sic] half a cent per listen".