51–60 of 70 posts
All up, it looks like she made about $85,000 from October of 2011 to March of 2012. That's antihistamine money, especially for someone not making pop music. This appears to be unambiguously good news for independent artists.
It's antihistamine money because it's nothing to sneeze at
32,000 plays and only $132. That seems really bad, if music does start to move more towards streaming than purchasing artists are screwed. It would take nearly 300,000 plays at this rate for someone living in an average city apartment to make rent. The internet and technology in general have done some great things for music but making money is harder than ever.
I strongly suspect the record labels are still siphoning off most the revenue for Spotify et al. Whatever deals they cut probably sap the lion's share of the profit, leaving a small pie for the indies to slice amongst themselves. And of the share they get, I bet a large chunk stays with the label rather than passing through to Gaga and company. I'd really like to see some numbers on that, but of course they'll never…
http://www.noisemademedoit.com/how-to-earn-money-with-music/...
Just wanted to say thanks for this link - I'm not interested in her numbers, but to stumble across this on HN, and head off and listen to her music, awesome. I really love the sound of the cello, and discovered another cellist, Philip Sheppard, in a similar way. And her album is only 8 bucks! in FLAC format!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I strongly suspect the record labels are still siphoning off most the revenue for Spotify et al. Whatever deals they cut probably sap the lion's share of the profit, leaving a small pie for the indies to slice amongst themselves. And of the share they get, I bet a large chunk stays with the label rather than passing through to Gaga and company. I'd really like to see some numbers on that, but of course they'll never…
Heres one perspective on how artists might choose channels http://www.noisemademedoit.com/how-to-earn-money-with-music/...
Just wanted to say thanks for this link - I'm not interested in her numbers, but to stumble across this on HN, and head off and listen to her music, awesome. I really love the sound of the cello, and discovered another cellist, Philip Sheppard, in a similar way. And her album is only 8 bucks! in FLAC format!
I saw this 6 string violin player last weekend, doing rockier stuff with similar tools (looper and typical rock guitar pedalboard: wah, chorus, delay, reverb, envelope filter and Tube Screamer, I think
Watch this blurb from Wired. So much win.
This is nice, but I'd still like to see a complete nobody, without previous record deals start out on the internet and "make it". So far all the examples of internet distribution "working" have been from big (or relatively big) artists.
All up, it looks like she made about $85,000 from October of 2011 to March of 2012. That's antihistamine money, especially for someone not making pop music. This appears to be unambiguously good news for independent artists.
What algorithm do you use for your amazing extrapolation based on one data point?
32,000 plays and only $132. That seems really bad, if music does start to move more towards streaming than purchasing artists are screwed. It would take nearly 300,000 plays at this rate for someone living in an average city apartment to make rent. The internet and technology in general have done some great things for music but making money is harder than ever.
I don't think we can conclude that at all, especially in this case.
In the pre-Internet era, the niche for modernist cello music would have been an incredibly small set. If she were supremely lucky, she'd make it to Carnegie Hall every few years, and maybe sell a couple hundred CDs at a given performance there. Her radio airplay would have been limited to NPR, and perhaps a smattering of tiny classical stations. She'd have been touring pretty much 24/7, mostly to small venues, and basically hustling albums out of the back of her van.
The internet has expanded niches, blurred genre lines, eased access, increased distribution, and basically enlarged the footprint that someone like Zoe Keating can make on the world. She might be getting a smaller slice of the pie, but her pie is undoubtedly much, much bigger than it would have been 20 or 30 years ago.
If anyone opened this spreadsheet expecting to see a glamorous story about how Zoe made $3 million in 2 days, I would suggest they reexamine their expectations for the size of the experimental cello music market. She's doing respectably well, given her niche. I would also assume she has supplemental income streams from concert appearances, which have historically been the bread and butter of classical musicians. (Which is not a lot of bread and butter, to be clear, but it pays the bills).
A more interesting discussion, IMO, would be a breakdown of how Spotify, iTunes, et al. have had disparate impacts on different types, flavors, and "sizes" of musicians. For instance, how has the Internet treated the Zoe Keatings of the world, vs. the Beyonces of the world, vs. the Bjorks of the world, vs. the Lil' Waynes of the world, and so forth.
32,000 plays and only $132. That seems really bad, if music does start to move more towards streaming than purchasing artists are screwed. It would take nearly 300,000 plays at this rate for someone living in an average city apartment to make rent. The internet and technology in general have done some great things for music but making money is harder than ever.
"The internet and technology in general have done some great things for music but making money is harder than ever." I don't think we can conclude that at all, especially in this case. In the pre-Internet era, the niche for modernist cello music would have been an incredibly small set. If she were supremely lucky, she'd make it to Carnegie Hall every few years, and maybe sell a couple hundred CDs at a given performan…
I've listened to a couple of pieces and while, nice, they sound pretty conventional tonally, rhythmically and structurally. I was expecting something a bit more unconventional.