musicians have lost the plot
I was browsing the Discovery tab and came across a band called Deerhoof. They are indie/alternative/experimental rock, not really my style but it's worth a listen for sure.
I looked at their site and saw that they sell vinyl, CDs, digital MP3/WAV/AIFF, and CASETTES!!! So cool :)
I love CDs. But it’s a shame many indie artists don’t even sell MP3 files of their songs. We know Spotify pays them almost nothing. I’m sure artists make more money selling their MP3s for $2 to $5 per track or $13 per album, and you get 100% of the funds if you do it on your website and not Amazon.
I feel like 2016 was the last year of personal (physical) mixtapes. It wasn’t unusual for an aspiring rapper to sell hand-burned CDs of their music. I was too young to even have my own money to buy them, but I know it was still a thing. You don’t even need artwork, just get a stack of gold CD-Rs and write on them. Disc covers are like 10 cents now. Just stick them in there and you’re golden. $10 per CD, maybe $6 for veterans, and you make some money while promoting yourself. This is especially good if you’re really small.
On Spotify, tracks with less than 1,000 annual streams don’t even earn royalties anymore . 100,000 streams earn $300, but 70% goes to someone else. Only $90 profit, and that’s assuming most of their streamers have Spotify Premium. I doubt that’s the case for indie fans, which is a population that tends to pirate for fear that spotify will remove the music.
You’re leaving yourself vulnerable to high rates of piracy if you don’t sell at least MP3s. Then people get a shitty, compressed version of your song from Youtube and you don’t even see any profit because we all have ad blockers. Selling direct also gets around region restrictions. There are so many artists, especially Japanese and Chinese, whose stuff disappears from Spotify, Amazon Music, and YouTube due to region restrictions for whatever reason.
If 100,000 people bought one MP3 on Bandcamp for $5, that’s a lot more than $90, even with their 15% cut. Just sayin.