How Artists REALLY Make Money These Days

My Big Bro Plot Mhako posed a question yesterday for everyone , but I'm only getting free now.

He said, "Why Do you Give Your Music For Free?"

Here is my answer (To all who have that question to artistes):

Because if people have never heard you anywhere before they cannot part with money to buy your song when they can stream more established artistes like Rick Ross and Eminem absolutely free on Youtube.

It's basic economics brought forth by the digital age where the cost of replication became virtually $0.

In other words if Bread too were easy to replicate digitally at virtually $0 bakeries would be out of business.

Hence even the music industry in America had to change its models to cater for that dynamic.

1. Advertising and Marketing Models!

They started making money from Ad Placements endorsements and promotions. Most MTV Cribs cribs were not artist cribs but certain people were selling products by putting furniture in hired houses.

(See this link for more info: https://youtu.be/xZ-Z7aFgDPk)

Rick Ross doesnt sell music. He uses music as a Prop to sell his Wine, Bellair Rose & his food outlet. Wingstop.

Khaled is a Ciroc ambassador. Kanye West sells shoes.

2. Enter Streaming, Exeunt MP3 Sales

Streaming acknowledged that the price of a singular album went down to $0. So Spotify and others made the music available with adverts around it.

TIDAL made u access many albums for a small fee a month. No Ads.

It's no longer music being sold. Its advertising or bribing a platform $14 a month to remove ads.

Tidal works there because people have credit cards, we have debit cards and USD is hard to come by.

So essentially Netflix, Spotify, Amazon MP# and so forth do not sell one artists media. They sell subscriptions. They win no matter how it goes because you may put your product on their platforms and their subscribers may not click it. Whoever gets clicked they still get paid

Hurts?

Yes it is no wonder The Game bragged about smashing Kanye's wife in a snippet of an upcoming song right? He is baiting us to stream it just to hear the full lines (at the expense of straining his relationship with the guy who gave him his first hit record)

3. Performances will never die!

The only un-bootleg-able (if that's even a word)  thing is a performance. So people still pay for that because watching a recording doesn't give you the experience.

The logic of free music is therefore to reach a critical mass from which one may get enough people to know who they are if they have a show (or when they sell merchandise).

Selling music when no one knows you is adding a barrier to its accessibility & since artistes are as many as there are Pastors.... if people cant get your music they will just move on to whoever us making theirs easier to access.

Remember music is not the commodity, entertainment is.

So when a person decides to consume music, they had many other entertainment options including movies and sport to watch all of which are part of the Market Place for the commodity which is entertainment.

Where the intent is to eliminate boredom as opposed to listening to a specific artist. I mean if I'm bored coming from work and then Asaph sends me a link to his album and I get there and I am now being asked to enter credit card details.

I may simply click back, go to Youtube and watch J.Cole for free right?

I'd compare it to food... If you can't find burgers at OK you can settle for a pie.

Take Aways:

1. Music is virtually $0 digitally

2. Show experience is un-replicatable (not a word) so it's sell-able for money than an mp3.

3. Popularity that comes from sharing music free may get artists the critical mass they need to attend shows, to get endorsements or to sell their own products.

4. Foreign artistes make their least money from sales. 50 Cent in an old Whoo Kidd interview alleged that Def Jam was buying Jay Z's albums to make the stats less embarrassing.

Here is the 50 Cent interview where he accuses Jay Z of Buying his own albums 

Here is the evidence that MTV Cribs was staged

Hope I did not mess up the glory you give American artists. Please follow me on @Mcpotar on twitter to get more of my perspective.