How much money does musicians earn by selling online??
Quite an interesting article on how much money you can gain by selling your music via the Internet. I published a similar story some time back so you can view this as an update
Abstract below:
You may have gotten the impression that I don’t like the Internet. Some people certainly have. Some are convinced that the reason for it is my ignorance of how it works.
The truth is I am deeply disillusioned about how it turned out and I’ll take this opportunity to tell you why.
The Internet should have been a godsend to musicians and creators of replicable works in general, for two reasons:
- The two biggest problems an independent creator faces are distribution and promotion, which in the past meant the need to deal with publishers (and all associated creative and financial trade-offs). The Internet has enabled even the smallest business to reach a potentially global consumer base.
- Creative works such as books, movies and music are pretty much the only products (others include software and news) that can be delivered on-line and as such seem custom-fitted to e-commerce.
Looking at the two points above, we see that the Internet should have opened wide new vistas for the creative sector and enabled thousands of independent creators to flourish without the need to court big business. So why didn’t it pan out that way?
Or did it? Some would say it did. However, looking at matters realistically, the amounts earned from creative output delivered through the Net verge on the laughable.
It so happens that I write this from a position of someone who makes money from making music available through the Internet, so let’s take a look at some numbers. Just how much can we make from this new method of distributing our work that should have been our paradise?
he numbers on how much music you need to sell, in various formats, in order to make as much as you would working a minimum-wage job (in the US).
The numbers aren’t pretty:
- In the case of Amazon and iTunes single-track downloads, 1,813 units must be sold monthly; 21,750 units a year.
- For CD Baby full album downloads, the numbers are: 155 units a month; 1,859 units a year
- For eMusic single-track downloads: 3,392 downloads a month; 40,941 a year.
- With Rhapsody streams, you’ll need 127,473 streams a month; 1,529,670 a year.
- Finally, Last.fm rates mean you’ll need 7,733,333 plays monthly; 92,800,000 plays a year.
These numbers assume that you’re not in a band. If you’re in a four-piece band, the numbers are higher:
- Amazon and iTunes, single-track downloads: 7,250 a month; 87,000 a year.
- CD Baby full-album downloads: 619 a month; 7,433 a year.
- eMusic single-track downloads: 13,567 a month; 162,807 a year.
- Rhapsody streams: 509,890 a month; 6,118,681 a year.
- Last.fm plays: 30,933,333 a month; 371,200,000 a year.
Wiszniewski’s numbers suggest that musicians’s shouldn’t expect music sales to be a large part of their income and not expect Internet radio to be part of it at all.
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