Copying your CDs to MP3 is illegal again in Britain

[Syt]

But which artists are these? Are these really struggling artists or the likes of Madonna, who just fight tooth and nail for another million? I have an impression that artists who start to publish these days have already moved to an entirely different business model and offer "vanilla" music for free, and instead earn money from concerts, appearances, special editions and paraphernalia - it is the dinosaurs who cling to an outdated model.

In the case of Germany/Austria it would be the authors of the works. So if an artist is only performing songs someone else composed and wrote for him/her, they wouldn't get anything out of this. Similar with record labels.

[celedhring]

In my humble opinion, the economic realities of the modern music business make it impossible for the current value chain to stay in place. In order to keep people paying for music, the industry has lowered their margins considerably. Pay 10 bucks a month for Spotify and you have unlimited music, pay 1 buck to Apple and you get your hit song instead of wasting 10 bucks on a CD that's got a lot of filler.

The margins are way too low nowadays to have distributors, publishers and artists take all a piece of the pie and still make enough money. Somebody has to go, and it's not gonna be the dudes who actually make the music.

[Josephus]

Actually unless you have any clout, like that cute American country singer what's her name, Taylor Swift, most artists are at the bottom of the royalties pecking order.

[Syt]

Actually unless you have any clout, like that cute American country singer what's her name, Taylor Swift, most artists are at the bottom of the royalties pecking order.

Don't most smaller acts use streaming as advertising for their concerts and merchandise?

[Martinus]

I think it is also about supply which has to squeeze the margins.

In the golden age of music industry, a handful of publishers were acting as de facto gate keepers for the artists, publishing only so many albums each year and charging what they thought was the appropriate price. Today the number of albums being produced has increased tenfold or more, yet the distributors expect to bring in the same kind of profits per album by charging the same amount as they used to in the old days - this is just impossible, as consumers just do not have ten times or more money to spend on music.

And who said that artists are to make millions, in the first place? Their business viability is just not the same any more. They remind me of luddites.

[dps]

I think it is also about supply which has to squeeze the margins.

In the golden age of music industry, a handful of publishers were acting as de facto gate keepers for the artists, publishing only so many albums each year and charging what they thought was the appropriate price. Today the number of albums being produced has increased tenfold or more, yet the distributors expect to bring in the same kind of profits per album by charging the same amount as they used to in the old days - this is just impossible, as consumers just do not have ten times or more money to spend on music.

And who said that artists are to make millions, in the first place? Their business viability is just not the same any more. They remind me of luddites.

Is that actually true?  I know that back in his heyday, Stevie Wonder had a new album or 2 coming out every year, and while few other artists were as prolific, his output wasn't an outlier, either.  Now, it seems like very few artists release an album more frequently than once every 3 years, and 5 years between albums is more the norm.  Of course, that might be offset by more artists actually releasing albums, but I kind of doubt there are that many more people making albums.  I could be wrong, though.

[Martinus]

Hmm, I thought it is pretty much a given that many more artists produce albums today.

[Richard Hakluyt]

This blog post more or less covers what is happening :

https://musicindustryblog.wordpress.com/2014/06/04/the-great-music-industry-power-shift/

With 2/3 coming from live performances, if I was an artist I'd be tempted to use the recorded stuff essentially as a promotion for the gigs.

[Martinus]

dps, I couldn't find the data in google, but this graph is telling, imo:



Given that massive piracy is going on today and people buy many more singles, the only way to explain why the sales of albums per capita now are the same as they were in the 1970s likely means that there just weren't as many albums available in the 1970s.

[Martinus]

This blog post more or less covers what is happening :

https://musicindustryblog.wordpress.com/2014/06/04/the-great-music-industry-power-shift/

With 2/3 coming from live performances, if I was an artist I'd be tempted to use the recorded stuff essentially as a promotion for the gigs.

I think it is a sensible shift.

[Monoriu]

I've never heard of 8-tracks before.

[Duque de Bragança]

Don't worry Mono, it's obsolete. I doubt it's going to experience a revival such as vinyl (not shown on the outdated graph).

[Warspite]

I think it is also about supply which has to squeeze the margins.

In the golden age of music industry, a handful of publishers were acting as de facto gate keepers for the artists, publishing only so many albums each year and charging what they thought was the appropriate price. Today the number of albums being produced has increased tenfold or more, yet the distributors expect to bring in the same kind of profits per album by charging the same amount as they used to in the old days - this is just impossible, as consumers just do not have ten times or more money to spend on music.

And who said that artists are to make millions, in the first place? Their business viability is just not the same any more. They remind me of luddites.

The price of an album, at least in the UK, and just like computer games, has remained roughly constant in nominal terms since the mid-1990s - £12 to £16 for an album. In real terms that is a substantial fall in price for music.