How do we create a healthier music ecosystem that empowers musicians financially?

[Guest]

Hey all!

We’re a team of musicians, DJs, writers, and independent music marketers building a community platform called Grey Matter. It’s a music community platform for human-to-human music discovery + meaningful engagement between listeners and artists.

We’re having conversations on how to better support artists and create a healthier music ecosystem. Musicians, curators, listeners, fans: would love to get your thoughts in our Music Costs/Revenue survey. The median artist is only earning $100/yr from streaming -- let’s help our artists get paid more. Let us know what you think!

Music Costs/Revenue Survey down here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd9DY456jaNmgGFe1R1zy1h1LF-AjRpPMrVKQdgSFNB5DJ50w/viewform

Love,
Grey Matter

[Martin Walker]

Hi greymatterfm, and welcome to the SOS Forums!

I've just repaired your link so it works properly

Martin

[The Red Bladder]

Now that's what I call a very poorly constructed survey.

The questions were leading and it makes all kinds of assumptions that do not apply in the real world. Nobody conquered the world from their bedroom.

1. Musicians earn their money from gigging and not from Spotify or the Apple Store.

2. Recorded music DOES pay and it pays well - for TV and film.

[Arpangel]

Now that's what I call a very poorly constructed survey.

The questions were leading and it makes all kinds of assumptions that do not apply in the real world. Nobody conquered the world from their bedroom.

1. Musicians earn their money from gigging and not from Spotify or the Apple Store.

2. Recorded music DOES pay and it pays well - for TV and film.

Unfortunately, the man sitting behind the corporate desk smoking the big cigar is still needed, as he will have a big roll of cash in his pocket, a PR department, a studio, and all sorts of marketing people to get back what he thinks is a good investment "YOU"
Your job is to go away like a good boy/girl and come back with lots of music for him to make money out of, plus, you get some too, not as much as he gets, but it’s more than enough to buy you a nice house, a decent car and loads of women, oh yes, and drugs.
That’s how it used to work, and it did "work" for most people, but, you had to have something that Mr Cigar thought he could make money out of, that was normally called "talent"
These days we’ve got IT experts, sites on Band Camp, and you have to be your own promoter, shlepping around doing all,sorts of stuff musicians don’t do because if they did they’d have no time to actually make music. That’s why the old system worked so well, they did all the boring stuff, and you did what you’re supposed to do, be a musician.
Not a lot of people made it it was tough, only the best musicians tended to get to the top, but those top 2% I can bet you had absolutely no interest in IT or PR, but they were good at making music, and that’s all they did, apart from throwing things out of hotel room windows and dumping cars in swimming pools.

[The Red Bladder]

Cue Mary Hopkin "Those were the days my friend, we thought they'd never end . . ."

Until we get a pukka all-singing, all-dancing vaccination for C19, live music is pretty much dead. Film making is dead, proper TV programmes are dead, recording music properly all together in a studio - it's all dead. The only people doing anything are in New Zealand.

[Hugh Robjohns]

I'm not convinced there will be a vaccination. There isn't for SARS.

I think we will simply have to rely on the infection rate dropping out to zero, and the authorities jumping on any localised outbreaks. But that will take something like another 6-12 months to achieve.... By which time a lot of existing venues will have gone bust.

Hopefully someone will buy them at rock bottom prices and relaunch them later, but it is looking like a very different world post-covid!

[Amusikaido]

Now that's what I call a very poorly constructed survey.

The questions were leading and it makes all kinds of assumptions that do not apply in the real world. Nobody conquered the world from their bedroom.

I agree. Looking at the survey questions it seems to mainly be an attempt to justify some kind of business model which asks fans to pitch in to music production costs for their favourite artists. They can already do that through merch.

I don't care what the average American artist earns, partly because I'm not an American and partly because the average includes all artists including the mainstream ones, which skews the figure so much as to be meaningless.

As a fan I don't care what the music production costs are either, any more than I care how much the tools my plumber uses cost him. Looking at YouTube and reading these forums it's obvious that the main requirement for good music is talent rather than production hardware anyway.

It is true that music has become a commodity but in some ways it always has been. The low cost of gear has brought the means to do productions to the masses but the average talent is probably about the same as it ever was and the ugly truth is that there is a lot more competition now, especially as there seems to be a market for mediocre, cliched music.

I gave up 3/4 of the way through the questions, sorry.

[CS70]

It is true that music has become a commodity but in some ways it always has been. The low cost of gear has brought the means to do productions to the masses but the average talent is probably about the same as it ever was and the ugly truth is that there is a lot more competition now, especially as there seems to be a market for mediocre, cliched music.

Talent - whatever that means - is a dime a dozen (at least art-related talent. It's not with more difficult stuff). It's so common that its economic value is zero. If you are in a building city, you can open the window, look down and you will see several dozens talented people walking in front of you.

Economic value is about scarcity. And in our sheltered society, most often about its cousin - the perception of scarcity. The music business is not about music - it's about artificially creating scarcity.

So financial empowerment for musicians (like anyone else) is about them creating sufficient perception of scarcity, in whatever way possible. If that's mediocre, cliched music (to you) it will work just the same.

[Drew Stephenson]

Economics 101: no-one cares about your sunk costs.

But on the more positive side, Techdirt have been suggesting an equation for quite a while that seems to have a reasonable set of legs:
CwF + RtB = $
Connection with Fans (which seems to be the bit the OP is focusing on) + Reason to Buy (CS70's scarcity comment is generally key here) = a bit of cash to the creator.

None of which addresses the largest problem in my experience, which is getting access to a large enough pool of listeners for the tiny percentage of people interested in your music to be a large enough number to make it remotely profitable.

[EDIT] Oh yes, and unless you're young and good looking you're going to be starting with a considerable disadvantage.

[Sam Spoons]

Oh yes, and unless you're young and good looking you're going to be starting with a considerable disadvantage.

One out of two helps, nearly all of those old, successful, musos/bands* started climbing the ladder of success when they were young music/bands.

* I can only think of Seasick Steve, and I have heard it suggested that he is the made up persona of an experienced studio musician....

[Watchmaker]

Rather a discouraging lot of feedback, though I feel spared from the survey. Worse than phone calls usually.

Music, art in general really, isn't about money anyway. The creative process and the marketable outputs of that process require the skills of many people, many of whom never meet. I got an accounting degree, own a studio and more gear than I can use at one time, none of which is worth a farthing because I have zero interest in forcing uninterested masses of people to listen to what interests me. I do it because I like it with no hope or expectation of reward.

If only we could define the ineffable, then we could bottle it and make a million. I'd rather ponder a mystery and have a laugh over a botched chord with my friends.

[Arpangel]

It is true that music has become a commodity but in some ways it always has been. The low cost of gear has brought the means to do productions to the masses but the average talent is probably about the same as it ever was and the ugly truth is that there is a lot more competition now, especially as there seems to be a market for mediocre, cliched music.

Talent - whatever that means - is a dime a dozen (at least art-related talent. It's not with more difficult stuff). It's so common that its economic value is zero. If you are in a building city, you can open the window, look down and you will see several dozens talented people walking in front of you.

Economic value is about scarcity. And in our sheltered society, most often about its cousin - the perception of scarcity. The music business is not about music - it's about artificially creating scarcity.

So financial empowerment for musicians (like anyone else) is about them creating sufficient perception of scarcity, in whatever way possible. If that's mediocre, cliched music (to you) it will work just the same.

There are a lot of what I would call "capable" or average artists out there, but real talent? I'm not sure about that.
This whole thing is very difficult to define, and I don’t like using words like genius, or talented, but sometimes there isn’t anything else left to describe some people.
John Ogden, Vladimir Ashkenazi, Glenn Gould, Jimi Hendrix, Paul McCartney, Lou Reed, Joe Zawinul, Lightning Hopkins, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, how many of those types are walking by your window? Forget personal likes and dislikes, I’m talking about real universally acknowledged no bullshit full on talent, it’s very very scarce.
Average people are all over the place, you meet them all the time, I say "yes, very good, interesting" and immediately forget them. That’s not to devalue what they do (I do?) but it’s not what I would call geniusville.

[CS70]

There are a lot of what I would call "capable" or average artists out there, but real talent? I'm not sure about that.
This whole thing is very difficult to define

That's exactly what should give you pause.

"Talent" is taken to be either the facility with which you master a certain thing, or the degree to which you master it already.

For the former - everybody masters far harder things than say singing or playing an instrument (yeah, even at Glenn Gould's level).. that is to say walking, talking and generally coordinate in real time thousands of individual inputs without breaking a sweat. We all start practicing daily right after birth and never stop. So it's like air, or water to fishes, nobody thinks about it but it requires enormous virtuosity. There's a little range in which people fall, and yeah some may get it a little earlier than others but with enough practice (which we all continuously do) there's a hell of a lot of people who can do these things very, very well.

Singing, dancing, playing - they're all similar (and easier) to these, and all about the time and effort you're willing to put into practice. If you do, you will fall into your point of ability... and there will be lots of people who can potentially do it very, very well. The people who can't are actually in the minority.

Stuff like singing is actually favored by the fact that we practice control of our vocal cords daily.

About the second meaning of "talent" - the shown ability to actually do something... due to the first, it's only about how much you practice.

John Ogden, Vladimir Ashkenazi, Glenn Gould, Jimi Hendrix, Paul McCartney, Lou Reed, Joe Zawinul, Lightning Hopkins, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, how many of those types are walking by your window?

A lot have the potential. Being one of these is about realizing that potential (and in commercial, notoriety sense) which is a different ball game - and "talent" in any sense has a fairly small part in it. It's a given.

[CS70]

Rather a discouraging lot of feedback, though I feel spared from the survey. Worse than phone calls usually.

Music, art in general really, isn't about money anyway. The creative process and the marketable outputs of that process require the skills of many people, many of whom never meet. I got an accounting degree, own a studio and more gear than I can use at one time, none of which is worth a farthing because I have zero interest in forcing uninterested masses of people to listen to what interests me. I do it because I like it with no hope or expectation of reward.

If only we could define the ineffable, then we could bottle it and make a million. I'd rather ponder a mystery and have a laugh over a botched chord with my friends.

Well as I wrote music business is not necessarily about music, most of it anyways. There's nothing depressive in that - music (as a business) is a trigger to create a commercial venture to reap profits, or at least a living.

As an art, money is of course never involved.

Still (and I do not speak of you specifically), I think very few artists are totally uninterested in their work been seen/heard (if not appreciated). Imho it's often posturing - even unconscious one. Nobody's listening, so I convince myself that I don't care about anybody listening.

Because as social animals, it's always a bit disappointing to put your heart into something and get no social feedback at all. So it's better to remove the (little) pain altogether.

Of course there is the pleasure of creating - not a small thing by itself - but the social aspect tends to be important, and that implies people. Doesn't need to be big numbers, doesn't need to make a lot of money, but for me - as much as I love just making the stuff - when someone comes up and says "hey, I've heard your song, I loved it" it does feel dangerously good.

Only my $.10 of course, I may be wrong.

[ManFromGlass]

To answer the original question -

- make it illegal for any music to be free
- make it illegal for anybody except the original creator to own their music and all rights thereof
- ensure the streaming services pay the same rates as broadcasters to performing rights organizations.
- put a mechanism in place to monitor streaming and number of plays accurately for all streamed formats that have music in them

[Drew Stephenson]

To answer the original question -

- make it illegal for any music to be free
- make it illegal for anybody except the original creator to own their music and all rights thereof
- ensure the streaming services pay the same rates as broadcasters to performing rights organizations.
- put a mechanism in place to monitor streaming and number of plays accurately for all streamed formats that have music in them

But what if I want to give away my music for free? Or if I want to share ownership with my music for a service rendered in its creation even if it wasn't the actual writing?
I suspect your third point would just bring down the rates paid by broadcasters.
But there's no reason why the fourth couldn't be done!

[awjoe]

I'm not convinced there will be a vaccination. There isn't for SARS.

I think we will simply have to rely on the infection rate dropping out to zero, and the authorities jumping on any localised outbreaks. But that will take something like another 6-12 months to achieve.... By which time a lot of existing venues will have gone bust.

I don't know what's going on your side of the A.O. but over here this week I heard, for the first time, a medical professional on the national broadcaster opine that maybe covid isn't going away. In other words, how do we live with this? The panic reaction of shut it all down obviously isn't going to work long-term. Okay, I'm happy to wear a mask if I can go to live concerts and bump elbows with my fellow afficionados. How about you? In the meantime, I've bought a Zoom Q2n 4K to go online with. Next best thing to live? Well, maybe, but *so* second best.

[awjoe]

None of which addresses the largest problem in my experience, which is getting access to a large enough pool of listeners for the tiny percentage of people interested in your music to be a large enough number to make it remotely profitable.

You have to be able to generate interest. Whether you do that via your talent, the size of your equipment or the psychological projections of your audience doesn't matter.

See, all along I thought the package was: write, perform, record, mix, distribute. Take care of quality in each of those areas, and the rest is up to God. But nowadays, I'd add one more element to the list: generate interest.

[merlyn]

Talent - whatever that means - is a dime a dozen (at least art-related talent. It's not with more difficult stuff) It's so common that its economic value is zero. .

I'm kind of stunned that you would say that. Is this not the attitude that leads to musicians getting $0.001 per stream? "It's worth nothing, so pay them nothing."

Is this not the attitude that means when musicians approach venues looking for a gig the response is "come in and do a gig for free, then if we like you we''ll give you a gig" to which the correct response is "tell you what, give me a pint of beer for free and if I like it I might buy another one."

Are you basing this statement that "anyone can do art related activities" on data, or is this your impression? It isn't mine.

What are the activities that you do consider difficult and therefore suitable to make money out of?

[Drew Stephenson]

It's supply and demand. For most people music is a commodity, and a background one at that. The cost of entry is tiny, and there are bucket loads of talented people producing it. With digital distribution the unit cost is effectively zero.
It's not about attitude, it's about abundance vs scarcity.

[merlyn]

It's supply and demand.

There's a shortage of nurses and nurses' wages don't track the gap between supply and demand. I haven't heard about a shortage of stockbrokers but their wages are high, even when they drop the ball.

I've looked into economics and it's not a science. I'm not sure it's even a subject -- it's political.

[MOF]

I'd add one more element to the list: generate interest.

Yes that’s where the PR/Marketing comes into play, then once a big enough fan base is created the value of that artist/group rises.

CS70 wrote:
Talent - whatever that means - is a dime a dozen (at least art-related talent. It's not with more difficult stuff) It's so common that its economic value is zero. .

I'm kind of stunned that you would say that. Is this not the attitude that leads to musicians getting $0.001 per stream? "It's worth nothing, so pay them nothing."

Not true CS70, once popularity is established (read ‘talent’, even if you disagree with that term for artists you don’t like) different deals are done. I don’t think for a minute that The Beatles get the same streaming rate on Apple Music etc as Joe Soap who’s just starting out, and in the Live music scene payment is proportional to the artist’s ability to sell all the tickets the moment they go on sale.

[Drew Stephenson]

There's a shortage of nurses and nurses' wages don't track the gap between supply and demand. I haven't heard about a shortage of stockbrokers but their wages are high, even when they drop the ball.

I've looked into economics and it's not a science. I'm not sure it's even a subject -- it's political.

On your last point; absolutely. There's a reason that they teach politics and economics together.
But let's look at the nurses case. Nursing is, predominantly, a calling. People get into it, and stay in it, because they care about people. No-one becomes a nurse for the money. It's long hours, it's difficult and frequently unpleasant work, and it can carry a huge physical and emotional toll.
So why doesn't it command a higher wage? Well, aside from the fact that the people who want to do it will continue to do despite several years of pay freezes, there are also a bunch of hidden costs in play. Agency fees is a big one, staffing shortages are frequently covered by agencies, these cost waaay more than regular staffing but only pay a little (if anything) more than regular wages. The cost is there, it's just not showing up in salaries. Or at least, not in the nurses' salaries. Another signifcant player is the use of imported labour. This obviously hugely skews the demand/salary equation because it's generally coming from countries with much lower pay rates. It's much harder to truly quantify this cost obviously, not least because trying to evaluate the secondary costs of depriving these countries of skilled labour is not a quick thing to calculate.
Stock-broking is actually a pretty crummy job, one of my team at work is an ex-stockbroker who quit because of the effects on her health. Again, long hours, high stress, toxic culture all contributes to an environment that demands a higher than average level of compensation. The difference between this and nursing (or teaching for example) is that there's no calling involved. No-one (ok, very few people) grow up actually wanting to be stock-brokers.
But we're also getting into the field of crony-capitalism here, the City (and most big business actually) is pretty full of this on various levels. The most obvious for this conversation being that everyone sits on everyone else's remuneration committees. They might not be directly voting for their own payrises, but they sure as hell are indirectly.

But let's get back to music.
An unfortunate side effect of a system that values everything in cash means that vocations can be exploited. Everybody I know who lives off their music makes less money than I do, works longer hours, and generally makes society a better place than I do. But if they stopped doing it, there's a whole queue of people ready to step in and replace them. Some of them might not be quite as talented, but some of them will be, some of them even more so, but the average punter isn't going to notice. We are all interchangeable and instantly replaceable.

So unless we're going to completely rip up the capitalist system, then whenever you have a situation with people doing something for love, then you will end up with prices trending to zero. Especially when there's an additional aspirational drive of a constant promise of a luxurious nirvana, which is really only available to a tiny percentage of people.

[CS70]

Talent - whatever that means - is a dime a dozen (at least art-related talent. It's not with more difficult stuff) It's so common that its economic value is zero. .

I'm kind of stunned that you would say that. Is this not the attitude that leads to musicians getting $0.001 per stream? "It's worth nothing, so pay them nothing."

Is this not the attitude that means when musicians approach venues looking for a gig the response is "come in and do a gig for free, then if we like you we''ll give you a gig" to which the correct response is "tell you what, give me a pint of beer for free and if I like it I might buy another one."

Not at all. But we are in the "music business" forum and not in the "pander to your illusions" forum.

To recognize that there's abundance of talent does not mean it's not important or even critical - only that its economic value is so low that it's basically zero. Think of it like air: it is very important, even absolutely critical, but you can hardly sell it. Or water: good old H2O is the same everywhere, and yet you pay $.0001 for your tap water, and $10 for a bottle of Voss water (I've been in Voss, it's not far and I guarantee you: it's plain old water).

What is worth something is scarcity.

Scarcity can be real - there's not enough of something to go around - or artificial - like in Voss' water case... water is not scarce, but water coming from Voss is (to a degree) and the marketers have managed to create enough buzz about it to ensure people want that, and not other, to the degree that many are willing to pay 10.000 times more for it.
Because scarcity, of course, depends on demand.

As a musician, you are paid 0.0001 not because your music is bad or not important, but because you haven't yet made it scarce.

Are you basing this statement that "anyone can do art related activities" on data, or is this your impression? It isn't mine.

Data. Talent accrues. 40K sumbissions on Spotify weekly (or monthly, don't remember and doesnt matter). Spotify alone contains now around 35 million tracks. Apple Music, 45 million. If you listened to 10 Spotify tracks a day every day, you would need to live around ten thousand years to go thru the catalogue once.

Musical talent is like air, or water. Important, perhaps even critical, but not economically valuable per se.

And yeah, anyone can do art related activities, btw. There is no licensing.

When there is (for example to become employed in a classical symphonic orchestra of some reputation) you do need qualifications.. but even then the qualified people vastly outstrip the available positions, so it's middle-paid job.

As the saying goes, there's plenty of quantum physicists that can play piano, but there's very few pianists that can do quantum physics.

What are the activities that you do consider difficult and therefore suitable to make money out of?

It's not about difficult. It's about scarce.

Bar artificial regulations, any activity for which there is real scarcity, or artificial scarcity will allow you to make money. In other words, anything where the ratio between supply and demand is small.

As a musician, should you want to build a business out of your talent (which you certainly have, as a shitload of other people), you need to focus on creating scarcity: which is done by branding and marketing specifically your name, since people singing and playing exceedingly well, there's a dime a dozen (especially nowadays with YouTube). You need to become (and stay) the Voss water of music, or as near as you can get.

That is, of course, difficult - but because it requires financial muscle, good management of it and a degree of luck.

[CS70]

CS70 wrote:
Talent - whatever that means - is a dime a dozen (at least art-related talent. It's not with more difficult stuff) It's so common that its economic value is zero. .

I'm kind of stunned that you would say that. Is this not the attitude that leads to musicians getting $0.001 per stream? "It's worth nothing, so pay them nothing."

Not true CS70

Not sure what you are replying to. The first sentence is mine, the second isn't.