Do music artists fare better in a world with illegal file-sharing?
This is the graph the record industry doesn’t want you to see.
It shows the fate of the three main pillars of music industry revenue - recorded music, live music, and PRS revenues (royalties collected on behalf of artists when their music is played in public) over the last 5 years.
We’ve broken each category into two sub-categories so that, for any chunk of revenue - recorded music sales, for instance - you can see the percentage that goes to the artist, and the percentage that goes elsewhere. (In the case of recorded music, the lion’s share of revenue goes to the record label; in the case of live, the promoter takes a cut etc.)
Hopefully, this analysis - and there’s more on the nuts and bolts of our method below - sheds some factual light on the claims and counter-claims that are paranoically sweeping across the music industry establishment, not least that put forward by the singer Lily Allen in this paper recently - and the BPI - that artists are losing out as a result of the fall in sales of recorded of music.
The most immediate revelation, of course, is that at some point next year revenues from gigs payable to artists will for the first time overtake revenues accrued by labels from sales of recorded music.
Why live revenues have grown so stridently is beyond the scope of this article, but our data - compiled from a PRS for Music report and the BPI - make two things clear: one, that the growth in live revenue shows no signs of slowing and two, that live is by far and away the most lucrative section of industry revenue for artists themselves, because they retain such a big percentage of the money from ticket sales.
(It’s often claimed that live revenues are only/mostly benefitting so-called ‘heritage acts’. Unfortunately, the data doesn’t shed any light on this because live revenues are not broken down by type of act, gig size or ticket price.)
An even more striking thing, perhaps, emerges in this second graph, namely that revenues accrued by artists themselves have in fact risen over the past 5 years, despite the fall in record sales. (All the blue bars in the chart above represent revenues that go directly to artists. As you can see, the ‘blue total’ has risen noticeably.) This is mostly because of live revenues, but also because of the growing amount collected by the PRS on behalf of artists, which accounts for a much bigger chunk of industry revenues than most people realise.
(PRS revenues in fact break down into 4 categories - Broadcast and Online, Public Performance, Mechanical, International. You can explore this in more detail in this spreadsheet, which contains all our data.)
It’s interesting too that, overall, industry revenues have grown in the period - though admittedly not by much - which arguably adds strength to the notion that, when the BPI releases its annual report claiming how much ‘the music industry’ has suffered from the growth in illegal file-sharing, what it perhaps should be saying is how much the record labels have suffered.
For other people in the industry, not least artists, the future arguably holds more promise.
A couple of notes about our methods: the data, as pointed out, comes from the PRS and the BPI. We are grateful to the PRS in particular for helping us with a model to work out what percentage of a particular chunk of industry revenue was likely to be returned to artists. In the case of recorded music, we used an average 90/10 per cent split between labels/artists. In the case of live we used a 90/10 split between artists/promoters.
We hit one major snag. The PRS report gives a figure for annual live music revenues but it does not indicate what percentage of that goes to venues. (Before doing the split for live music revenues between artist and promoter, you first need to take out the percentage that goes to the venue.) We asked several big concert promoters and venue managers - AEG Europe, Carling Academy, and the PRS itself - what percentage of gig revenue one could reasonably assume, on average, went to the venue, and none would make an estimate. The closest we came to an answer was a remark from a senior industry source said ‘only a small percentage of live goes to venues’. That’s the best we had to work with.
We’ve therefore done the above calculations on the assumption that 10 per cent of live revenues go to the venue, but in these two graphs, we show how the situation would change if that figure rose to 20 per cent.
We would welcome any feedback on a more accurate figure to use for the venue’s share of live revenues, and any more general feedback on our methods.
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73 Responses to “Do music artists fare better in a world with illegal file-sharing?”
Very interesting piece. It seems that people have a set budget constraint (that’s growing YOY) for music, and when the parts of it that can be captured in a file-format fall in price, it simply diverts that savings into other forms of music spending.
Keep up the good work!
While your stats look basically sound, just two points to make.
1. The main reason why record companies take a much bigger cut of record sales than gig promoters take from live revenues is because it is the record companies who traditionally make the initial investment in new talent - allowing new bands to give up the day job, funding the development and recording of their music, and marketing the bands.
While gig promoters do take some financial risk when they sign up to promote a band’s tour, it is generally nothing like the risk a record company takes. And both artist and promoter benefits greatly from the marketing activity entirely funded by the record company.
2. While the live sector is doing very well, it is worth looking at where the serious money is being made - you’ll find it is the likes of Madonna, Paul McCartney, Elton John, Bon Jovi, The Rolling Stones etc who both generate the most live revenues and who command the serious fees. Grass roots musicians often barely cover their costs when they play live.
Therefore telling new musicians that they no longer need a record deal, and should just give away their recordings and rely on their live revenue isn’t very helpful. Most bands need someone to write them a large(ish) cheque in order to properly launch their careers, and whoever writes that cheque will want a sizable cut of their future revenues.
The recordings-to-live trend you outline has been obvious for over a decade, and the record companies really should have faced up to the fact they were securing their investments on the declining revenue stream ten years ago. Then they should have diversified their operations, rather then relying on DRM and litigation to stem the decline of record sales.
But what I would say is that if the trends you outline continue, those who invest in music will start to secure their investment on live revenues, so the percentage of that money going to artists will decline.
This is fantastic. However, my one challenge would be that these figures include heritage artists who have benefited from having their profile raised by multi-million £ record company marketing campaign to get their profile where it is today.
It’s just a suggestion, but my view is that you’d need to look at artists who began after X date to really assess the situation.
Cracking stuff though.
Very intereseting analysis, but I question the use of PRS revenues, which go to songwriters and publishers, as opposed to PPL revenues, which go to recording artists.
>Most bands need someone to write them a large(ish) cheque in order to properly launch their careers, and whoever writes that cheque will want a sizable cut of their future revenues.
And you mean that recordlabels do that? AFAIK new bands live like slaves until their records sell beyond the recording costs which they owe to the recordlabel or until the contract is up and they can jump ship. No wonder every sucessfull artist starts their own label…
the above post is correct…publishers receive 50% of PRS money taken in. though sometimes the artist can act as their own publisher, most of the time it is a third party.
also, a good portion of PRS revenues are derived from use of licensed music in television, advertising, and film. this licensing is done in lieu of paying a composer to create original music. so, when looking at the industry as whole, the PRS revenues are increasing at the expense of paid composers who would have received a larger sum for their work.
Do the recording industry figures include music DVD sales I wonder? If not, how much do they contribute? All the industry figures I have seen quoted seem to be CD/download sales.
These stats are so stupid.
As a musician, do you realise how stupid it is to make such broad generalisations? Do you really think that artists revenues can be put into one overall statistic, when there are jazz bands, britney spears, punk bands, singer songwriters.. etc. etc. all getting vastl different incomes. You can’t compare things on an ‘industry’ wide level. Even a teenager would know that, as there’s so many completely different and unreleated areas of the ‘industry’ - even within ‘live’ or ‘recorded music’.
As for other flaws, i could sit here pointing them out all day. For example how can you talk about live revenue without talking about costs?!?!?! If you’re a solo musician you may have to pay session players 100-200 a day, plus for their days off on tour, time in rehearsal etc. but if you\re a band.. you don’t… again figures are incomparable. If you’re a pop act and have 20 dancers, make up, costumes.. how can you compare that to being 4 indie kids in scruffy t-shirts who just need a driver. It’s like comparing ‘UK Manufacturing’ - clearly, the success of manufacturing coats and manufacturing chocolate is different. To put this point generally, you really have to be an idiot to think a graph of overall live revenue means anything.
And then to record label revenues.. you include here that a label makes about 6 times more revenues than the artists do.. but do you really think this is the same on warner brothers as it is on an indie label…
This whole thing makes me angry because once again it’s people in well paid technology jobs, and the media, with no experience of anything they’re talking about other than a few totally generalised stats, making massive, completely inaccurate generalisations that have absolutely nothing to do with the reality of being a working musician in the UK.
More annoying than even my points before is that these stats completely fail to represent how lobsided the music industry is. In this country, you have literally a handful of acts that are MASSIVE. So Oasis, Snow Patrol, Leona Lewis, you get the idea. These acts can make a million pounds playing the right show, say at Wembley. So if all of them go on tour, they may generate 100 million. These ridiculous stats completely fail to point out that the total amount of money is so completely out of balance, and that the incomes of a tiny minute number of groups represents the total ‘live’ revenues. When in reality, there are hundreds and hundreds of groups of people going around making £50 or a loss every single night. Yet if you look at the stats, ‘oh look, live incomes are rising’ - for who? You haven’t considered this question at all.
This is so infuriating.
The colors are not really well chosen and make it hard to distinguish which line or area is which, could you differentiate the blue color tone more with more hue changes?
To clarify my point to Henrik Holst
When I say write a large cheque, I mean pay for studio time, mastering of tracks, marketing and PR, and, if you do a CD release, the cost of pressing and distributing the disks. This is what the label covers the costs of - in addition to paying the band a lump cash sum, which, as you say, can be negligible depending on the deal.
Whatever route an artist takes, most need investment from somewhere to get started, and whoever makes the investment will want to secure it on some future revenue stream.
Until recently successful artists setting up their own labels still required a lot of upfront cash, which is why most did so in partnership with an existing major record company. It’s true that as it becomes easier and cheaper for big acts to reach their fans, it is increasingly viable for those acts to go it completely alone (normally with the support of their managers). Which is cool (Trent Reznor is sort of writing the text book on such things). Though even those acts are really cashing in on initial marketing work funded by a traditional record company.
Listen to Chris Cooke, he speaks the truth.
My fear from this graph is everyone will point to it as evidence that musicians make all their money from touring, therefore it is acceptable to treat recorded music as a free advertisement.
The problem I have with this is live music and recorded music are separate art forms. One isn’t better or more noble than another, they’re just DIFFERENT. There are forms of recorded music that can’t exist outside of the studio. Exhibit A: Sgt. Peppers. Exhibit B: Switched On Bach. Some recordings just don’t stand up to the experience of seeing the band live. We’re conditioned to treat recorded music and live music as the same. After all, the same people who made the record are playing up on stage… aren’t they? Actually… no, and in many cases, they’re not playing at all.
Then there is the fact that the type of music that tours and gets played in clubs doesn’t come close to representing the the totality of music. So, unless you’re the kind of outfit that drives beer sales, you’re not going to be playing live. So, where does that leave everyone else?
I’m all for the democratization of the music industry and putting power in the hands of artists, but I’m growing weary of the demonization of record labels. No one was morally outraged about the treatment of recording artists before it became possible to download music. For every artist that breaks even, there are 99 others, supported by a record label, that failed (lost money). Artists WILLINGLY signed these contracts. No one put a gun to their head. They KNEW they’d have to recoup their advance, recording costs, promotion expenses, EVERYTHING before they’d see a nickel. Why? Because a record company can break an artist nationally. I have yet to see a truly independent artist springboard to worldwide success without bootstrapping themselves up with the help of a record label.
Chris, Nice (and correct) old school analysis…but the ‘most bands’ you write about don’t actually get major label deals. The point today is that while it may be harder to get off the ground, the dynamic now is to build a fan-base by being ‘attractive’ - good music, good shows, , not being being lucky enough to win the minimal ‘lottery’ of a label deal….when most acts who do even score such a deal will never recoup anyway. And even the ones that ’succeed’ will never sell as much as we were all used to seeing. Great recordings do not all need scads of money spent on studio time, and the marketing and promotion doors that the lables used to have the only keys to….have been blown open to all who have a computer and a clue. Major media means NOTHING to new acts today.
Meet the new Boss(es - the artists)…NOT the same as the old Boss(es)!
Please use HTML5 for charts, and not flash. I can’t read flash, redirecting me to adobes site doesn’t help.
It makes me wonder how much of that risk is self-imposed. For example, a good studio and mastering helps, what a company uses (and charges) is probably overkill for a starting band, where a smaller studio or even a laptop with a decent setup is sufficient at much less risk.
Hollywood Accounting is rampant in the film industry, and I wouldn’t be surprised if probably happens in music. (Hollywood Accounting is the practice of the production company owning the studio, marketing, production, etc, and therefore ‘charges’ itself huge sums to drive down the net profit reported and therefore, reduce the money paid in royalties.
I think that we are close to (if not right on) the same page Chris.
Of course you are correct in that labels provide:
1. studio
2. mastering
3. marketing & PR
4. pressing and distributing CDs
What file-sharing to some extent “promises” is to remove the costs from #3 and #4. Which honestly is not always the 100% truth. For example #3 can be managed with “bad” music sucessfully by a label, and probably not at all by the community.
#2 is something that various “golden ears” groups have been fighting to stop for quite some time. Mastering in many cases means compress the audio so you get highest possible volume and completely removing volume differences in the tracks leaving a track without any form of dynamic.
Fildelning skapar zombiegeneration « Badlands Hyena - November 14, 2009
[...] kommer nya uppgifter om att artisterna faktiskt inte förlorar på grund fildelningen. Times Online Labs* har sammanställt uppgifter som visar att musikernas inkomster ökat under de senaste fem åren. [...]
I agree that this apparent increase in live revenue is likely due to consolidation in the promotion industry, and the resulting enormous ticket prices for top-line mid- and late-career acts.
It’s been my experience that smaller venues, small clubs and auditoriums, haven’t seen their ticket prices rise in any way resembling the rise for stadium act tickets. Which leads me to think that demand doesn’t support raising prices, so their concerts probably aren’t selling out more frequently these days.
If ticket prices are about the same, and attendance is about the same, then in order for acts across the board to have experienced significantly increased live performance revenue, there would either have to be many more venues opening up, or existing venues would have to be hosting shows more often.
I’m not aware of this happening, at least not in Boston in the US where I am.
I suspect that if one could find a list of top-earning UK artists’ tours of 2008, the sum of their earnings would be pretty close to the 732 million UKP in the above chart. The difference would be ‘everyone else’. Do the same for 2007. I bet the “everyone else” portion would be about the same between the two years, with the top earners accounting for the increase.
I would also note the trend of house concerts, where an artist will perform in a person’s home for a bunch of fans. I suspect that wouldn’t show up in these numbers, but is precisely the kind of development that one would expect if traditional live performances are insufficiently profitable, or if acts are having a hard time getting booked into venues (possibly because the big promotion outfits control access.)
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[...] mais informações, remeto para a fonte. « Indeed yes, we [...]
Links for 11.11.09: Donuts, cassette tapes, Beard Rock and Alaska « the listenerd - November 14, 2009
[...] Examine this visualization of UK music revenue, broken down by subcategories such as recorded revenue, live revenue, [...]
The Grateful Dead model proven once again. The Dead encouraged free music swapping. They also welcomed and supported concert goers to record the shows and distribute their copies freely. They made their money on tickets / merchandise.
Chris:
You are correct that labels front a lot of money for recordings. I do not support unauthorized file sharing. I strongly support artists who more liberally license their work through Creative Commons, free art and other liberal licenses.
Yet the PR problem the record companies have is not with the idea that they should get heightened return for the risk in funding an act. People are fine with entertainment companies making a profit. The PR problem that the record companies have is two generations of poor treatments of artists, ranging from adhesive contracts, to the plagarism of intellectual property in the early 1960s, to poor royalty/accounting practices, to payola, to distribution hegemony, and so forth. There is also the little matter of artificially inflated CD prices.
I think you make a very good point that a record company takes huge financial risk–but in fairness, the argument about the RIAA is not to deny them a chance to make a profit, but to seek a music culture freed of the problems of the past.
I might suggest that various shades of blue make the key very hard to correlate with the line graphs.
No, “golden ears” groups have not been trying to stop mastering. Mastering is the process of making the music sound right through various distribution formats. What there is opposition against the the over-use of compression which most mastering enginers will agree with and advice against.
In fact most of the worst cases of ovr-use of compression I’ve hard has been when a copetent mastering engineer has been replaced and soemone just slapped a multiband compressor and brickwall limiter over the tracks.
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Notional Slurry » links for 2009-11-13 - November 14, 2009
[...] Do music artists fare better in a world with illegal file-sharing? — Times Labs Blog "An even more striking thing, perhaps, emerges in this second graph, namely that revenues accrued by artists themselves have in fact risen over the past 5 years, despite the fall in record sales. (All the blue bars in the chart above represent revenues that go directly to artists. As you can see, the ‘blue total’ has risen noticeably.) This is mostly because of live revenues, but also because of the growing amount collected by the PRS on behalf of artists, which accounts for a much bigger chunk of industry revenues than most people realise." (tags: music recording-industry RIAA intellectual-property culture-war cultural-assumptions disintermediation-in-action middleman-be-gone) [...]
It would be interesting to see this on a per capita (per artist) basis.
Could you show us what is to the left side (years 1984-2004), too, please? I feel like I don’t get the whole picture…
You know, “Do not trust any statistics you did not fake yourself”…
Thanks!
There is no argument that artists still need a record label to make it “BIG” But the whole issue about how the internet and digital technology has change the music business is the fact where before the record labels had total control they have now lost that.
Now an artist with new digital technology that is out there can produce there own music to quite a high standard and get it out there on sites like “my space” & “Jamendo” etc.
Also the way that some labels have treated the music buy public has been insulting. They have talked down to them like there are idiots.
They do not seem to realise that the public now can make
there own CD’s and now how cheaply and quickly it can be done.
Again with the internet the public can see what other countries pay for there music to what we pay in the UK.
One of the points made is the cost to recorded companies of producing the and distribution of the CD. But too download the MP3 version of the same CD which is not of a lesser quality than the CD cost nearly and sometime’s more than the CD?
The record labels just sat there looking at ways how to stop the digital revolution, instead of looking at ways to embraces it.
So they lost the chance to make money for themselves and the artists that they say they care about so much.
Henrik: That’s a misrepresentation of mastering - the mastering process is neccessary to produce a good-quality finished result. The ‘loudness wars’/compression issue is a part of what happens in mastering but there’s much more to it than that, and we can’t simply delete it from the process of record production.
I manage a band and run their record company. They are self-published. Despite the fact that they would be described as a successful band they do not make a profit on live gigs due primarily to travel, accommodation and crew costs. Merchandise income is crucial in order to ensure that they can tour. Record sales fall within merchandise. They tour to promote sales of their records; they sell their records in order to be able to afford to tour. There are no middle men, there is no external record company.
We have seen no evidence that illegal downloading of tracks has brought new fans to the table. Despite the fact that stats suggest their recent record has had in excess of 5000 illegal downloads there has been no increase in traffic to their website, no increase in email contact to the band, and no increase in sales of legitimate downloads or physical product and no increased attendance at gigs
In order to continue writing and recording music and touring this band needs at least a status quo in their earning potential and not a reduc
tion. If they cannot earn from their touring and their record sales they could cease to exist and music would be poorer for it
I’ve written a response to this here http://seaninsound.blogspot.com/2009/11/live-is-not-that-alive-few-gut.html - be curious of people’s feedback as I’m planning to investigate many of the points further.
The PRS collects on behalf of the songwriters/music publishers that is not always the artist as your article implies…
“#2 is something that various “golden ears” groups have been fighting to stop for quite some time. Mastering in many cases means compress the audio so you get highest possible volume and completely removing volume differences in the tracks leaving a track without any form of dynamic.”
Mastering, when done properly, is not about destroying the dynamic range of the recording. In many cases, the tracks that comprise an album were recorded or mixed in various places with various engineers. Part of mastering is to bring a semblance of continuity to an album, so that the difference is not as obvious when skipping from track to track. It can be considered as a final quality control measure before it is released to the public.
Of course, there are “mastering engineers” out there who do exactly what you are describing here, and that is an entire issue on its own. Thankfully it seems to be a trend that is on the downswing after the Metallica incident. But by and large, mastering is a very necessary part of the process.
I don’t understand the relationship between the two diagrams.
The first one shows a drop in revenues from 1.1 billion to 700 millions from 2004 to 2008. The second one indicates 2.3 billion pounds with a slight increase. What are they measuring? It can’t be the same thing, because the scales differ so widely.
I’d really like to know, because this is really interesting news.
Great article but It may be overly optimistic.
The answer to question ‘Do music artists fare better in a world with illegal file-sharing? is no. Perhaps with a more standardized way of file sharing (legal) then yes there would be a benefit? But as it stands services like Spotify and Rhapsody only provide artists with fractions of pence for streams and therefore cannot form a main source of income from recording. And I’m curious how can illegal file-sharing which pays no one support a artist?
Yes the live industry is booming but as mentioned for a grass-root artist it still isn’t enough to survive.And Yes it is possible for the artist to have more control of there career. And I believe that the rise of recording revenue is due to artists going at it on there own.Radioheads ‘In Rainbows’ for example.
But why is there stagnation in the industry if the artists are making more revenue? Just look at sound scans charts from 09 and its easy to see the lack of diversity!! (maybe I’m elitist?)
Chris Cooke sounds like he is being paid by the big labels to talk a good game. New artists today no longer need corporate record label executives, they can be successful on their own and be happy without dealing with record executives who only care about their shareholders bottom line. The artist is just a number to them.
Label’s risk is tempered by making many expenses recoupable in the contract. Advances, studio time, mastering, and marketing (including music video production costs) are almost always paid back out of the crappy royalty rate that the labels offer the artist. So the label does incur risk and will lose money if the album tanks, but it really does need to be a tremendous hit or else the band won’t see much income at all. Concerts may or may not be a better source of income depending if the band is splitting the door or playing for a flat fee.
It would indeed be interesting to see where the serious money is being made from Gigs. But the complaint ‘but that’s mostly
spent on established acts’ seems very odd to me. That’s where most of the money that is spent on CDs goes as well, no?
There’s another graphic that the record industry doesn’t want you to see. That’s the ‘what percentage of artists make money on their record deal, as opposed to ending up still in debt to the record company’. We ought to be able to get the figures for that, broken down by type of music, because I doubt the financing of classical symphony music looks much like that for rap artists. That would make
interesting reading.
Do the recording industry figures include music DVD sales I wonder? If not, how much do they contribute? All the industry figures I have seen quoted seem to be CD/download sales.
This is a deeply flawed case.
First , the argument is based on PRS figures which tells us nothing about the impact of illegal filesharing on recording artists. Songwriters are rewarded differently to performing musicians and often don’t play at all; Cathy Dennis , as just one example, who’s written massive hits for Kylie, Katy Perry and Britney et al, isn’t an act at all. It would be more useful to look at PPL fees.
Second, The reasons why live incomes are growing are complex and likely to have little to do with illegal filesharing. The absence of any data on how live fees are distributed tells us nothing about the relative health of the music business as it affects musicians. As a member of a so-called “heritage act” , Gang of Four, I know that live fees are healthier now than they were in absolute terms back in the day. You can break even these days or even make a profit. But what if you don’t want to, or can’t perform anymore? You’ll get zip. Why can’t muso’s just get paid like anyone else for their work?
Third, we don’t know from this graph how recorded music biz revenues are derived, and the relative percentage of income from new or heritage acts. Illegal downloads are likely to be done significantly more by than younger audiences than older music buyers, which will inevitably disadvantage newer acts. I agree with Lilly.
Creative artists should not uniquely be disallowed from earning money from what they produce and shouldn’t be treated any differently to any other occupation. The author’s muddled case confuses PRS with Live income, Live income with recorded income and sums it up under an apology for the mass theft which is illegal filesharing. It doesn’t stack up at all.
Young or lesser known bands suffer the most from Illegal filesharing. They need both to make their names and to live off what they do. Maybe sometime they may bust into a reasonably paid live music scene. It’s never been harder to make a living as a young band. Thye need investment , not robbery.
This neo-liberal argument springs from a narrow worldview where musicians are treated like they’re luddites fighting progress, as if they’re software.
Where , rather than support talented people trying to make a living , we hear tech-heads and rich musicians talk about distribution methodologies as if musicians interests were co-terminus with soft and hardware developers. They’re not. Musicians must get paid. Illegal fiesharing is the enemy of music.
@Henrick, your comment on point 2 in your post about mastering. It depends on how the track is mastered to be honest, the mainstay of modern mastering is to simply provide a signal boost and remove any trace of dynamic as you state. However mastering is still important, since if done right will mean the audio will sound at its best for the media it being mastered to. Look at the early days of CD’s when a lot of the older recordings were just literally ‘dumped’ on the disc, the sound was appalling because the engineers at the time weren’t aware of how vastly different as a medium CD is to vinyl.
Mastering, when done right is a necessary stage in the recording process, sadly as you correctly state the de-rigour these days is just to compress the audio to hell to increase the overall volume at the sacrifice of the actual dynamic and quality.
With regards to the “percentage” that a venue will take from a live gig. The reason that you find it difficult to get an estimate from anyone is that venues will charge a flat fee and will (generally) not work on a percentage. In fact it’s very rare for anyone in the gig game to be working on a percentage, everyone wants a guaranteed amount and not expose themselves to any financial risk.
Whilst the article has been written with good intentions, I don’t think this article is helpful to artists.
It’s a nice portrayls of overall headline trends but uses asssumptions galore to make some mixed messages. However, there is little which can be trasnferred to a band who’s playing for a share of the £5 door in Camden tonight.
Three points:
1. Record companies pay ‘advances’. That word doesnt appear once in your text, yet its that word which helps drives a band from zero to ‘hero’ …or at least to performing in the sort of venues where your live assumptions would apply.
2. Another word you fail to mention is ‘costs’. The cost of going it alone is similar to any other make or buy outsourcing decision. Bands who *go it alone* need more management, who’ll need even more commission.
3. Finally, one more word missing from your article is “PPL”. To state that “the growing amount collected by the PRS on behalf of artists” reveals a mis-understanding of musical copyright, and an ignorance of how the artists you refer to actually get paid.
The title of this piece is “Do music artists fare better in a world with illegal file-sharing?” This is surley a questionable leap from observation to causation, no?
Here’s the deal: artits generally need some form of initial “advance”, have to cover their own “costs” and their only source of direct downstream income is “PPL” revenues.
Your article mentions none of these three concepts so it would *therefore* be very misleadign for any artist reading this to think they could fare better or worse, surely?
Will
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[...] Do music artists fare better in a world with illegal file-sharing? This is the graph the record industry doesn’t want you to see. [...]
In order to make the whole data add up, would you please be so kind to compare the growth in income from live erformances to the concert ticket prices.
In the end we might find out that ticket prices have risen by a much higher factor than the live music income.
Apart from that i second everything that Chris Cooke says. Most of the Live income is being generated by bys like U2, Barbara Streisand or Rammstein, while younger acts are rarely able to tap into those kind of earingings.
And the demise of the income of the recorded music business (which is in fact NOT an industry, btw.) means much harder times for newcomer acts.
Actually, I find this analysis to be a pretty piss-poor “research”. Next time have someone analyse this who has at least a basic knowledge about how the music business works.
Stefan
(Professional music management since 1993.)
@ Henrik Holst
Mastering is essential to create a professional sounding recording.
“Mastering in many cases means compress the audio so you get highest possible volume and completely removing volume differences in the tracks leaving a track without any form of dynamic.”
My mastering engineer doesn’t do any of these things.
If your’s does, fire him, because he’s not doing a very good job.
Roy Schestowitz (schestowitz) 's status on Monday, 16-Nov-09 02:12:11 UTC - Identi.ca - November 16, 2009
[...] http://labs.timesonline.co.uk/blog/2009/11/12/do-music-artists-do-better-in-a-world-with-illegal-fi... [...]
As both an independent musician and the co-owner of a new indie record label, I’m always amazed at what I see as the simplicity of the solution to the “problem” of the decline of the value of recorded music.
I’m not denying that money is required to produce art of a reasonable quality, nor that artists can survive on air alone; the question is how much money is needed to produce and how much is needed to survive.
If the value of the recorded product is falling, then it seems to go without saying that the investment in that product must also fall.
I’m reasonably convinced that the quality of an artist’s output has no direct relationship to how much money they have in the bank; it is related to how hard they are working at their craft.
To suggest that a drop in the value of recorded music will lead to a drop in investment resulting in the eventual non-existence of the product (music) is laughable.
A brilliant record made on a $2,000 budget is still a brilliant record.
Much of the cost associated with the production of music is based around an entrenched culture of fear, whereby an artist is told that their record will fail unless they record the songs the label dictates, hire Producer X at a cost of $1,500 per day and get Mastering Engineer Y at a cost of $2,000 per session and have a promotional budget of $50,000.
If, after all that, the record fails anyway - who takes the hit? The artist.
Simply put …
Artists need to retain control over the costs and content of their recordings, they need to hold onto their publishing rights and they need to focus on producing great art, no matter what their financial circumstances. In this way, they can make more from less.
Record labels, on the other hand, need to actually assist and foster artists based on a belief in the artistic value, not the commercial value, of their work. Record companies need to establish themselves not merely as the sellers of recorded music, but also as licensing and publishing companies, touring companies, promotions and publicity outlets etc.
And once again, as in the recording of music, this does not require large sums of money to bring into being.
It simply requires intelligence, adaptability and passion - traits which have been sorely lacking in the music industry for years.
I suspect that the industry part of the pie also reflects the fact that pricing of the product was at one point pretty unrealistic and this has been addressed largely by a much fairer pricing model. Look at the rip off that CD’s were, along with the claims that they were indestructible. Electronic formats were also supposed to be “not as good quality and could damage your hearing” or so the industry would claim. I suspect the electronic delivery has somewhat evened out the playing field as far as the same piece of regurgitated rubbish now costing pretty much the same on both sides of the pond.
The artists that do make it are hardly poor and seem to be getting richer. As the industry likes to associate so called “piracy” with organised crime, perhaps they need to look into the mirror. It’s a given fact that quite a few artists and mega rich industry moguls consume copious quantities of illicit drugs, if that’s not supporting organised crime, I don’t know what is.
Thank you for providing the charts; Having them adds a lot of value to the debate. The live and PRS revenue increases make a lot of sense because more listeners are exposed to music if it’s free. Listeners who want to support the artist will buy songs/albums or at least go to live shows.
Philip LeAnza makes a great point that artists don’t need labels. They are able to record songs on their own and all profits can go directly to them.
The whole landscape of music has changed so dramatically in the past 10 years that the whole concept of a ‘record label’ as it used to be is now badly out of date. The big-money now is either in large multi-ents set-ups like the Simon Cowell X-Factor circus or well-established acts doing huge money tours.
It is totally disingenious to claim that file-sharing is ruining record label revenues or stopping bands making it big - record sales were in free-fall long before the digital age, and bands find it harder to make it big because, quite frankly, there are just so many bands nowadays. Everyone can play guitar, everyone can be in a band, everyone can buy cheap recording software for their PC and make pro-sounding recordings.
What ‘the industry’ doesn’t like is that the old hierarchies in music, the fact that a small number of musicians could make huge amounts of money if given the right publishing, PR and distribution support, are being eroded by factors that go way beyond file-sharing. On the one hand, the popularity of participation in music questions a need for an industry at all - I am actively involved in the writing, recording, distribution and performing of music, it couldn’t be easier, it’s done for pleasure not profit, and there are hundreds of thousands of people worldwide who share this spproach - why should we be denied the opportunities offered by the interner to distribute what we do? On the other hand, this interest, with more people involved in gigs etc than ever before, creates huge opportunities to make money for those who can play it right. You’ve just got to think beyond the record sales = profit paradigm, which is long since outdated. Blaming filesharing is an lazy excuse for bone-idle executives who don’t deserve to make money from music anyway.
Independence for Bands: 101 Part 2 — Echoes - Insight for Independent Artists - November 18, 2009
[...] graph from The Times labs shows that both The Performing Rights Society and The British Phonographic Industry found that [...]
as a artist myself i seem to have a completely unique view to everyone in here.
i don’t produce music for the money i produce it because its what i love doing
ive always loved doing it
you can bicker all you want about the record companies going down the tubes
fact is they are not evolving with the market
as a teenager i couldnt afford 30 dollars an album
as a working adult i cant afford 30 dollars an album
the whole controversy around the record companies losing money is irrelevant they are probably the most extortionate businesses on the face of the planet who cares about them
a major act can quite easily self produce an album and sell it for what ever they want “in rainbows” for example you could pay what you want the average price being around 5 dollars in the first two days of availability they made a absolute fortune upward of 10 million dollars
they blatantly didnt need a label
if a minor act were to do the same no doubt they wouldnt recieve anything like that money but slowly and surely they will be building a fan base which after all is the most important thing when your struggling
anyone can record in their home with a macbook these days
ladyhawke is an example that suits this very well
she worked with other bands while working on her solo career in her bedroom after gigs
shes now one of the biggest things to come out of new zealand in 10 years
the internet is about the free exchange of data
im sorry but “theft” doesnt apply in that realm
and if your the voice of a generation maybe youll be playing Knebworth some time soon
Leif Erikson
That first graph might be slightly more striking if some contrasting colours were used; I had to read further down the article to deduce which of the middle 3 lines were which.
@Damon objects that the figures and graphs are stupid, generated by:
> people in well paid technology jobs, and the media,
> with no experience of anything they’re talking about
Actually Damon, that’s not true. Long before anyone started copying music over the internet, people used to copy other things. One of the most commonly copied things has always been computer programs. Pretty much everything I’ve created professionally has appeared online shortly afterwards, to download for free. That’s my livelyhood. My rent.
We’re all in exactly the same situation - we’re all in it together. Pretty much the only difference between us is that whereas the music indsutry is only just starting to be affected, I’ve been there for decades already. Overcoming the problems and learning how to exploit the massive opportunities. That, and oh - I don’t recall us whining about it quite so much.
Just like me, your work is now instantly and mediumly meritocritously available to a billion people around the planet. If you can’t figure out how to monetize that, you don’t deserve to be a musician. Grow a pair.
having read it, all I can say is - that’s only half the story.
while it may be true with relation to bigger artists/performers it’s the complete opposite for the smaller labels, artist and most electronic artists (who mostly don’t perform)
I get sick of seeing these ‘facts’ wheeled out over and over because they don’t actually relate to how much money ends up in the artists pocket.
Over the last 3 years I’ve never seen so many labels fold or producers/writers quit. Income is probably about 1/10th what it was 5 years ago and that’s if the distributer or retailer hasn’t gone bust.
File sharers don’t differentiate between big or small acts and take anything they can find.
1000 tracks stolen from a major will hardly impact. 1000 tracks stolen from an indie, well - that may be all they would have sold…
djehuti.com – The Armory » Do Music Artists Fare Better in a World With Illegal File-Sharing? - November 20, 2009
[...] the linked article and its associated chart, it does seem that this would be true, as nearly all of the revenue [...]
ipony » Blog Archiv » Krise der Musikindustrie? Nein, Krise der Labels! - November 20, 2009
[...] Die zu Grunde gelegten Daten sind in dieser Tabelle zu finden, zur Methodik steht mehr Times Online. [...]
While music labels’ profits continue to fall, Artists continue to climb… « Gadgetsteria - November 20, 2009
[...] Times Labs report showing labels are no longer relavent.. [...]
Twitternytta (vecka 47) | The Brand-Man - November 20, 2009
[...] här och här): “This is the graph the record industry doesn’t want you to see.” http://bit.ly/2geRqZ (via @erikstarck, [...]
So much fear about the times to come.
Artists that doesn’t make any money from live acts are the same that didn’t made any from cd sells (though some time a go, the industry could spend some $ making cds of those artists). Although many artists now have to pay to record their first project, god knows how much has the recording process price fallen over these years. And you can post it on myspace and “happen”. Or not.
It’s not anymore up to the industry to spend millions on marketing to “make you happen” even if you are not worth it. Of course, many will be up there in the skies, and won’t deserve it. Many will be paying to play, and would deserva a place on musicians heaven. But… Isn’t it like it always have been? As unfair as? I see less labels investing on new talents, but I don’t see less new music coming up. To be honest I have to say the opposite is happening. And everyday there’s a self-called artist to complain “everyone can make music nowadays with this non-expensive technology”.
Make a choice. Either less peole can make music due to lables investing less, or everyone can make music nowadays.
And if the TOTAL profit made on music on the past 5 years was pretty much the same, well, then I’d preffer it going to the hands of the artists. Don’t you all?
And yes, I’ve been the artist, the label, the producer. I’m not talking on a subject I know nothing about.
Typical Neo-Libral “It’s not my fault, it’s the system” rationalization for doing something illegal.
Jon King, I agree with you and Chris.
All a moot point really if the infrastructure of the music industry disappears and we continue the move from 100 artists selling a million to a million artists selling 100. Most “indie” artists who have made any impact have along the way been financed by an arm of this capitalistic infrastructure. (If you would like a socialistic one, you’re probably plying your trade on the wrong continent.)
The only upside of the anarchy of P2P and the hypothetical disappearance of copyright is that the government, using the same logic and to be fair and equitable, would then move to apply this abolition of copyrights and trademarks for all intangible properties like drug patents, the formula for Coca-Cola etc. Not gonna happen? Right, not gonna happen!
God damned, change the colors for the graphs!
Not very professional!
Länkar, v47 « Leonard Abrahamssons blogg. - November 21, 2009
[...] Do music artists fare better in a world with illegal file-sharing? – (via jardenberg unedited) Väldigt intressant om skivbolagens och artisternas intäkter de senaste åren. Det går stick i stäv med den allmänna uppfattningen(?) [...]
Musings on Politics & Life - November 21, 2009
[...] November 21 tags: economics, music by watchingout A recent blog on the Times website shows an interesting chart on music revenues in the UK. It turns out that the record labels are [...]
Stuff I’ve seen November 15th through to November 23rd | Podnosh - November 23, 2009
[...] Do music artists fare better in a world with illegal file-sharing? — Times Labs Blog – "This is the graph the record industry doesn’t want you to see. It shows the fate of the three main pillars of music industry revenue – recorded music, live music, and PRS revenues (royalties collected on behalf of artists when their music is played in public) over the last 5 years." [...]
“File sharers don’t differentiate between big or small acts and take anything they can find.
1000 tracks stolen from a major will hardly impact. 1000 tracks stolen from an indie, well - that may be all they would have sold…”
What absolute rubbish. Every illegal download does not represent loss of revenue. That idea presumes that the down-loader would have actually paid for it in the first place and also suggests that they have the money to pay for it. At the moment a 14 year old who gets 5 pounds pocket money a week could go and download a hundred albums tomorrow. Has the industry just lost a hundred albums? NO. Would that 14 year old have bough a hundred albums if they were not available via file sharing? NO
Bono Bashes File-Sharing: Learning from China’s Online Censorship? « - January 5, 2010
[...] it really true that the biggest losers of file-sharing are the creators? Bloggers at the UK Times come to different conclusions in their recent analysis, presenting the following “graph the [...]
Hello all,
As a home producer and audio-visual artist, I have been watch all this wash about ‘free distribution of music’ with great interest. I give my music away for free, but sell the DVDs…
FYI this is my take on it:
Both arguements are correct, depends on your point of view.
- In the past mass advertising was only possible via an international company (largely due to the ability to source the media easily). These ppl are glorified accountants, knowing the cost of everything, value of nothing. BUT they are clearly effective.
- On the other hand professional quality mastering cannot truely be done in a typical home studio environment (the bass and treble cannot be truely articulated at low volume) so cash injection IS handy. Especially if you live for the music and are not greed-driven.
However, different strokes, different folks!
The questions are: IS the internet so crammed with shit already that self-advertising will eventually slide backwards unless you are on the telly? (hence the global corps ‘get their way’ and all we are seeing is a trend blip)
OR
Are the muso’s FINALLY able to capitilise on their own inspiration? But then again, how many are capable of doing both shmoozing and art concurrently?
Colours in infographics « info design notes - January 27, 2010
[...] choices, for example. This graphic from the London Times is in many ways a good one: it presents provocative data in an [...]
I don’t think they will fare better - although if it pushes musicians to become more proactive in music publishing then it might all work out
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