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Comment by InfinityX0 | Hacker News Reader

Can someone explain, then, how the transient scale period happens where an artist goes from not being able to eat to being worth 400 million dollars, like 50 Cent? Is that when they suddenly become successful enough to create demand -- that it creates some kind of wealth atom bomb? Or is it not that simple?

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Endorsements. He made a big chunk of that from getting a share of Vitamin Water when they were trying to appeal to more men. Ironically, he probably made more from that than any of his records.

Ironically? Have you actually heard his "music"?

no, I haven't heard it.

However what is "music" for you might be The Music for many other people.

Taste is subjective, sure. But he just talks. No emotion or interesting tempos like other rappers. Even the music is like a 30 second sample repeated for 3 minutes. Painful to listen to.

The other big earner which wasn't mentioned here is publishing income. Now this only works if you're the songwriter but having an enduringly popular back catalogue can be worth a lot of money. David Bowie famously sold bonds on a ten year income that was worth $55 Million.

On a smaller scale, I can't find a source right now, but I remember the NME carrying an article about Lee Mavers who wrote 'There She Goes' and that single song earned him yearly royalties of around $50,000.

So you can imagine, all you need is a small back catalogue of well known and well played songs and the residual income can be pretty good.

You have to hope you can become popular enough that when your initial deal runs out you can dictate terms to the record company and not the other way around. Or that you can use fame to generate revenue from other sources.

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