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Comment by burrokeet | Hacker News Reader

If the band members are also the authors/composers of their recorded material, they will receive slightly more than what is suggested here, since they will also be due mechanical and/or performance royalties from various services.

That being said, it's the best/worst time to be a musical artist - you can distribute yourself online (the biggest music marketplace) and receive a MUCH larger chunk of the revenue than ever before. At the same time, you are only going to sell 24 albums, because it takes a label or label-like organization to sell records, and because of the former point, you are now participating in a marketplace with a selection of products an order of magnitude greater than a decade ago.

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It's a fantastic time to be an entrepreneurial, forward-thinking, business-oriented musician.

But that is a fairly small subset of people with the talent set necessary to stand out musically.

The security of the previous set-up is gone but the opportunities are endless.

Does this sound familiar yet?

A generation ago many of the people reading this would be lifers for HP, IBM...now look what you're doing instead?

OK, so you're lifers for Google and Facebook.

You get the point, though.

Don't forget the cost of making music is much less than 10 years ago. Virtual samplers, synths, mixers, etc. This means far more people making music.

>>it takes a label or label-like organization to sell records

with the new digital distribution methods and physical media almost on the decline, record labels hardly 'sell records' any more. They just do a huge marketing push for the artist.

If indie musicians can figure out a way to market themselves, they really wouldnt need a record label.

sorry but i disagree - that huge marketing push is what sells the records - that is what labels do, whether they are majors or one-person indie labels.

"marketing themselves" is a pipe dream that has only worked for a tiny percentage of indie artists - a huge industry has built up around this effort, and just like the major labels made lots of money off of their artists, this industry is making lots of money off these indie artists, just exploiting economies of scale of artists instead of consumers.

No question that this is true.

And there are a lot of people making a lot of money on selling 'self-marketing opportunities' to independent musicians.

But to compare that industry ('huge'?), in terms of revenue, to what the majors did in their hey-day is an exaggeration.

The model of selling services to indie musicians has not yet surpassed the model of selling music to customers.

But perhaps that's where we're headed? That's a depressing thought.

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