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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.

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.

November 12, 2009 • Posted in: Uncategorized

50 Responses to “Do music artists fare better in a world with illegal file-sharing?”

1. Nolan - November 13, 2009

   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!

2. Chris Cooke, Business Editor, CMU - November 13, 2009

   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.

3. Mat M - November 13, 2009

   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.

4. Kevin Parks - November 13, 2009

   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.

5. Henrik Holst - November 13, 2009

   >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…

6. since - November 13, 2009

   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.

7. Vic - November 13, 2009

   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.

8. Damon - November 13, 2009

   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.

9. Damon - November 13, 2009

   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.

10. Anonymous - November 13, 2009

    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?

11. Chris Cooke, Business Editor, CMU - November 13, 2009

    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.

12. stretta - November 13, 2009

    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.

13. HugoB - November 13, 2009

    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)!

14. kl - November 13, 2009

    Please use HTML5 for charts, and not flash. I can’t read flash, redirecting me to adobes site doesn’t help.

15. Blain - November 13, 2009

    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.

16. Henrik Holst - November 13, 2009

    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.

17. 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. [...]

18. Jon H - November 14, 2009

    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.)

19. Os resultados factuais da pirataria na indústria musical « Episema - November 14, 2009

    [...] mais informações, remeto para a fonte. « Indeed yes, we [...]

20. 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, [...]

21. Jagath - November 14, 2009

    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.

22. gurdonark - November 14, 2009

    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.

23. Tim Ottinger - November 14, 2009

    I might suggest that various shades of blue make the key very hard to correlate with the line graphs.

24. Wilhelm Reuch - November 14, 2009

    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.

25. r4 dsi - November 14, 2009

    Hi,
    I am such a big fan of music when ever i free i turn on my i pod and listen music from it whole day…
    I also searching for music info like lyrics albums singers and much more….
    My favorite music types are sad songs , Fast Rock and Roll type songs and some really Hip Hop…
    So this article will make me more better in music knowledge and also some kind of fun…..
    Thanks for sharing some valuable info…

26. 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) [...]

27. Bill P - November 14, 2009

    It would be interesting to see this on a per capita (per artist) basis.

28. Esteban - November 14, 2009

    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!

29. Chris Bennell - November 14, 2009

    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.

30. Dan - November 14, 2009

    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.

31. sally - November 14, 2009

    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

32. Sean - November 14, 2009

    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.

33. Malcolm Forrester (music publisher) - November 14, 2009

    The PRS collects on behalf of the songwriters/music publishers that is not always the artist as your article implies…

34. Ryan - November 14, 2009

    “#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.

35. Jacob - November 14, 2009

    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.

36. Laurance Bridge - November 14, 2009

    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?)

37. Philip LeAnza - November 15, 2009

    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.

38. dthree - November 15, 2009

    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.

39. Hopper Toad - November 15, 2009

    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.

40. gate valve - November 15, 2009

    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.

41. jon king - November 15, 2009

    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.

42. Darren - November 15, 2009

    @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.

43. A Promoter - November 15, 2009

    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.

44. Will - November 15, 2009

    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

45. Links 15/11/2009: CrunchPad Coming, Negroponte Speaks About OLPC | Boycott Novell - November 16, 2009

    [...] 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. [...]

46. Stefan Herwig - November 16, 2009

    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.)

47. Tashmoo - November 16, 2009

    @ 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.

48. 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... [...]

49. Andrew K - November 16, 2009

    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.

50. Barry D Fraser - November 16, 2009

    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.

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I think this makes it quite clear why we have been getting so much heat and noise from the major record labels and their willing minions recently about "illegal filesharing". The labels are losing share of increasing revenues from music in general.

It also makes it clear why the major labels are waging such a largely clandestine but equally vociferous struggle against any free distribution of recorded music under legal terms (such as Creative Commons licenses) as the money thus saved by fans is spent on live concerts of which revenue the labels see nothing and the artists see a majority. This would seem to give the lie to the frequent assertion of the major labels and their artist mouthpieces that free music is harming the development of new talent - if there is an increasing pot of cash going to artists then an increasing number of musicians will be able to thrive without having any involvement whatsoever with the major labels.

In short, as I have said elsewhere before, the music "business" is in rude health - it's just the major record labels are suffering an appropriate re-adjustment of the balance of power.

Sandra Burt was told she needed a licence to sing in the store

A shop assistant who was told she could not sing while she stacked shelves without a performance licence has been given an apology.

Sandra Burt, 56, who works at A&T Food store in Clackmannanshire, was warned she could be fined for her singing by the Performing Right Society (PRS).

However the organisation that collects royalties on behalf of the music industry has now reversed its stance.

They have sent Mrs Burt a bouquet of flowers and letter of apology.

Mrs Burt, who describes herself as a Rolling Stones fan, said that despite the initial warning from the PRS, she had been unable to stop herself singing at work.

They would need to put a plaster over my mouth to get me to stop, I can't help it Sandra Burt Singing shop worker

The village store where Mrs Burt works was contacted by the PRS earlier this year to warn them that a licence was needed to play a radio within earshot of customers.

When the shop owner decided to get rid of the radio as a result, Mrs Burt said she began singing as she worked.

She told the BBC news website: "I would start to sing to myself when I was stacking the shelves just to keep me happy because it was very quiet without the radio.

"When I heard that the PRS said I would be prosecuted for not having a performance licence, I thought it was a joke and started laughing.

"I was then told I could be fined thousands of pounds. But I couldn't stop myself singing.

"They would need to put a plaster over my mouth to get me to stop, I can't help it."

In response to the furore created by their initial hardline, the PRS contacted Mrs Burt to apologise.

In a note attached to a large bouquet of flowers they said: "We're very sorry we made a big mistake.

"We hear you have a lovely singing voice and we wish you good luck."

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The end of free lyrics? | Macworld

Lyrics, like music and movies, are intellectual property. They are copyrighted and those who create them are often paid for doing so. The fact that they were (and remain) freely available on the Internet doesn’t mean that the owners have abrogated their right to them, only that they haven’t been particularly concerned about enforcing that right.

I don't think the trends here indicate the end of all free access to lyrics -- but that may apply more so to big hits in the future.

It seems inevitable that the use of lyrics will move to a Creative Commons-like approach. Major publishers may want to tightly control access to their lyrics (for better or for worse), while smaller players may be happy to allow free usage given proper attribution.