I've met a bunch of young independent artists recently. Something really demoralizing about talking to them is that, across the board, they just don't aspire to making a living as musicians. They don't see it as even a "dream." It is pretty much a given that a separate career is necessary in order to pay rent. I understand that this is in part because of the cost of living these days, especially housing. This got me thinking about how it was when I set out on my own career. When I started touring independently all of my expenses were paid by selling a thing called the compact disc (CD) at the shows. Literally. Even when I went to Europe or the West Coast, where I had to fly and rent a car, the merch sales paid my way. My production expenses were very low and in many cases when I released an album I could recoup those by mail-orders and a well-promoted CD Release Show or two, where I'd sell a hundred or so right out of the gate. The whole thing was a micro-economy, but it worked.
My last two B.M.I. statements (B.M.I. is my performing rights organization- they collect money owed to me for use of my music, for a fee) showed that my song "Birds" had recently gotten 26,000 streams. The first statement those were mostly on Spotify so I earned about $4, the second one they were mostly Apple so I earned $8. (Apple pays about double what Spotify does.) There's a bunch of stuff to unpack about this. One thing is I have absolutely no idea who listened to that song 26,000 times. When I used to sell CD's I met most of the people who bought them. I got a lot of mail and emails from people about the album. With streaming those numbers have seemingly no connection to any PEOPLE. Literally no one has told me at a show "I listen to your song Birds on Spotify." I used to hear from people all the time that they heard my song on the radio or listened to it on CD a lot. Now the music seems to go into a vacuum. Then there's the dollars...
In the album days 26,000 listens to a song likely meant 26,000 listens to the album. Let's say a person buys a CD and listens to it 10 times. To get to 26,000 listens that would be 2,600 CD sales, or about $26,000! Even for artists who do not have the ability to record themselves, this is a sustainable system. With a few grand towards promotion, it is still a profitable model, as long as you have your shit together when you go in the studio, and don't try to record at Abbey Road! For someone like me who self-produced, it was part of the basis for actually making a living.
It seems like culturally something beyond people liking the convenience of streaming (they do) or even corporations having manipulated the industry (they have) is going on. At this point everyone knows that artists, especially independent artists, are getting screwed by this model, while executives and stockholders get richer. Bjork was recently quoted as saying "Spotify is the worst thing that's ever happened to music." It seems like society is ok with being a musician, except for very famous musicians, no longer being a profession. I'm not necessarily against it being strictly a vocation. (I'm also grateful I got to do it for a while as a profession- I had a good run and it's kind of over now and I'm a semi-retired part-timer.) I just hope it isn't a really bad thing for creativity, innovation, etc... I can't help agreeing with Bjork, at least until I see evidence otherwise. I do know that in terms of my own career, Spotify has been worse than even the Pandemic, when I was not allowed to perform for 2 years. I listen to records and CD's- my old Corolla just died and I'm researching portable CD players for my new car, and I do use Apple Music, and of course Bandcamp to listen to music. We're all going to go wherever we need to to get music, and I hope these young artists can find a way to still make new music but also have decent balanced lives while juggling two or more careers. We'll see....

Sunday, February 23rd 2025