Yes, but can a small time musician make a fortune giving their album away? Timberlake had prior fame and considerable marketing resources (including dollars) at his disposal to get the business model right. That makes a world of difference.
I've found that the most vocal proponents of copyright crackdowns and DRM are small-time musicians, authors, etc. Piracy won't affect Lady Gaga's sales, but for that indie band from JP you love so much, it could mean the difference between being able to feed their families with their music, and having to work a shit job and therefore play less, perhaps not playing at all, to make ends meet.
"Unknown" musician Alex Day released his album on the same day as Timberlake and one day in, was ahead on the iTunes sales Chart. I'm sure that didn't last, but the guy reports making more than $5K/month on youtube and $15K/month from music and merchandise sales. That's not a Timberlake-sized fortune, but it is really quite decent money. He has not signed with a label and does not tour either.
True, but it's a double edged sword.
Before the internet and napster, were small-time musicians any better off? I still remember the market being dominated by big players with loads of commercial backing.
The tech makes music production much easier/cheaper and publicity/distribution trivial. The flipside of that technology is that it makes mass piracy much easier.
There are probably a lot of people willing to listen to obscure small time musicians for free, but how many of them would be willing to stump out $15 for a cd?
The major labels worked somewhat like venture capital firms. They funded lots and lots of small artists with advances that few artists were ever successful enough to pay back, with the ultimate effect of subsidizing a middle class lifestyle for them while on contract.
Artists today far more dependent on touring and merch revenue (fun fact: artists sold merch in the 1980s too!). There seem to be a lot of misconceptions about touring revenue. Justin Timberlake might pull in 6 figures from a show. Most indie acts can count on something more like $50 per band member per night.
I wonder how much that changes if you manage to take piracy out of the equation?
In other words, are less artists funded through A&R because there is a higher risk from piracy that previously, or is there also a factor that A&R becomes less important if musicians are able to self finance music production and distribution therefore allowing the masses to do talent discovery on their behalf?
I know a few independent small time artists and their plan seems to work on the basis of "do enough shows and get enough youtube hits & twitter followers and someone will offer us a contract".
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.
Interesting, but it's hard to know how much impact streaming had on sales vs. other factors. For example, Justin Timberlake e also appeared on Saturday Night Live and then appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon every night of the following week, both as sketch artist and musical guest. 6 nights of appearances on a broadcast network in a single week is an unusually high degree of promotion; I've never seen as much for any other album launch.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/arts/music/justin-timberla... The amount of publicity for this album is mind boggling and it's disturbing how willing people are to be swept away by it. I hope at least when Universal's done paying for all the fake hype they won't have made much profit.
The key to proper analyst of data is deciphering what is correlation and what is causation. The article mentions that in Spotify’s home of origin Sweden, where it is extremely popular, majority of people stream music, and do not pay for individual albums sales. Easy to argue his album popularity on streaming only services was mere correlation and did not lead to increase album sales. If you follow the industry closely, you’ll notice the article left out the well known sales boost Grammys performers get. This post Grammy Awards sales boost is a know fact. Justin Timberlake had an advantage, he was the only popular performer at the Grammys releasing something new after the Grammy Awards. The other performers albums were already out for a year a more. We can also argue that the free streaming on iTunes also help lead to sales. The streaming on iTunes is ideal, it is only temporary, so if you really like the album you’ll have to buy it. Another important data point that was left out of the article was Justin Timberlake's album was heavily promoted on the new Myspace. Despite Myspace seemingly zombie status it still has millions of users, many of whom still go to myspace for music.
The $32000 for 7.7 million plays might be pocket money for Timberlake, but it's still a pretty good payday compared with the £17.68 per minute he'd have earned being played to (coincidentally) ~7.7 million listeners on BBC Radio One[1]
Justin Timberlake is also an outlier: he has a huge existing fanbase, had positive reviews for the album and received an avalanche of conventional publicity, including a systematic Clear Channel[2] campaign. It stretches credulity to suggest his popularity on streaming services was more a cause of than an effect of the demand to buy his album
32K which was merely the predecessor to that album's sale is icing on the cake. Sure they could negotiate more for per play of each song but to me its sounding like advertising that pays you back.
Drug dealers have a ploy: "The first one's free, the rest you pay for". Always seemed to work out well for them financially (I'm obviously ignoring the other aspects of the ploy here).
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 not sure what the royalties are for radio play in the US, but I imagine it's nothing to be sniffed at.
Keep in mind, this is the first week; Timberlake is absolutely going to make a complete killing from this album and all the related opportunities that arise from it, e.g. touring.
I own a group of radio stations. We pay about 5% of our sales to music licensing costs.
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).
Labels were dependent on radio to sell albums but things like Rdio completely replace buying music. I've been using it for a couple months and already I can't imagine buying music on iTunes or anywhere else. It really is a game changer.
Justin Timberlake is a cool guy that makes great music.
And.. he shares his fun times with everyone, SNL, dick in a box, motherlover, 3somes with lady gaga, jizz in my pants etc, he even made the five timers club. Then he hangs out with Jimmy Fallon for 4 days, does a new tune every day and the absurdly funny suit and tie sketch. He tops it all with his medley.
Not to mention his acting career , guesting several big hits during the time he didn't make music himself.
He might have been gone for 7 years, but he really was here all the time building his street cred to unseen heights and backing it up with an album that is worth owning, just like the previous 2.
Musicians never make money from record sales unless they have multiple releases like JT. The studio eats almost all the revenue of the first couple of albums and the vast majority of artist income has always been merch, advertising and live shows. Thats why its important to just give away your music so you create a large fanbase that sells out tours.
Bloodhound gang is a good example. They record everything on a laptop, give all the tracks away and sell out a tour for $3million plus a few mln in merch, which is pretty good when theres less middlemen to siphon the income.
U2 made 700million last yr touring. None of their albums come close to that sales figure so they also give away songs to promote the real income of live shows
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 CD and you are buying 5% artist, 95% corporate skimmed off "tax".
Granted a lot of pop act's tours are fairly faked up, but at least you see the buggers put in the effort!!!
A recording is fake music as much as cinema is faked theatre. They're two different expressions, and both can be amazing. I don't understand why artists that adjust to one form deserve to be paid while the others don't...
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.
>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.
Actually, from thousands of interviews I've read from artists, live tours are always a losing proposition money-wise.
Except for big bands (from Rolling Stones down to Kings of Leon or White Stripes levels of big) for any alternative artist, much less a group, it's bleeding money. And, no, merchandise doesn't do it, either.
>A real artist, or musician, can perform live, and that is where they should make their money, performing their art. That is the artist.
So those post 1965 Beatles albums, when they stopped performing live, are not real art. You know, like Abbey Road, Sgt Pepper, Revolver et al.
That's ridiculous - a musician that writes/records and doesn't perform is just as valid as a musician that performs and doesn't write/record. People that say otherwise are usually the same people that feel entitled in not paying for recorded music.
Have you ever heard Dark Side of the Moon live? Pink Floyd basically try to recreate the album note for note onstage, including playing tapes of the famous effects. The production was timeless, an integral part of the music. They have probably played it hundreds of times cover to cover over the years.
Or you can take, in contrast, Like Spinning Plates by Radiohead. The music was recorded backwards, then run forwards. Thom Yorke learned the backwards melody, which gives the lyrics a clipped, alien quality. When they perform this song live, they use significantly different instrumentation.
Is the album performance fake? No, it's impossible to do in any other way.
There are many more examples I know, including bands that aren't worth a D live and bands that just record their live performances in the studio and call it a record. For me, hearing an album that is hard to perform live is a thrill, can't wait to hear what the band does with it.
Wow, what gives you the right to define what sort of musical activities are valid? You come off as someone who resents artists and think they should only be allowed to make a living on your terms.
Maybe you haven't watched the last few Superbowl halftime shows, but live performances can (and often are) produced to within an inch of their lives, too.
I believe touring and merchandising have always been where bands/artists can make the most money. If you have not read it, Courtney Love's essay from more than a decade ago that coevered how bands get paid for albums might be eye opening http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/
I toured with noname punk and electro bands all over europe. They def make more money on tour than anything else and all of them have a network of free places to crash run by local artists, they borrow local gear so you dont have to pay for logistics, and the venues feed you on top of payout end of the night.
Never did any come back broke a typical tour youd make $1-6k per show, plus around $1200 in merch, then do 20 shows while partying for free everyday at crash pads. Split that 4 ppl you go on a 3mos vacation to europe and return with $9-15k each which is pretty good income for a college band thats going back to school in sept.
I've found that the most vocal proponents of copyright crackdowns and DRM are small-time musicians, authors, etc. Piracy won't affect Lady Gaga's sales, but for that indie band from JP you love so much, it could mean the difference between being able to feed their families with their music, and having to work a shit job and therefore play less, perhaps not playing at all, to make ends meet.