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Comment by Symbiote | Hacker News Reader

The music industry saw this renaissance, but did the musicians?

Except for the most popular artists, they seem to make very little from streaming.

Before streaming the vast majority of music artists never made a dime, and was never able to actually release content on previous media (vinyl LPs, printed CDs, etc.), most were able to record some cassette tapes and distribute around a town square, bars they had a gig, etc.

As fucked as royalties from streaming is, mostly also due to the Big-3 music labels royally fucking artists on the way and blocking streaming services to actually pay the artists more, at least now there's a way for the vast majority of artists to release their works to the world.

So in a sense the music industry hasn't changed: a few artists still make the bulk of money, but it gave a much larger avenue for upcoming artists to find an audience.

Living off record sales was never an option for the vast majority of musicians either.

The record sales were the ad, money was in touring and merchandising. It's the exact same today.

This isn't so for every kind of music. Folk musicians, who mainly play small venues and even house concerts, would make $100 to $300 per show from selling CDs. The merch table at a Jazz club would mostly sell CDs and depending on the size of the club could pull in $500 or more in CD sales. Small classical groups like quartets and chamber music would play salons and again, CDs would be a big factor. This income would often double or more the artist's take from door sales (if any) and make the gigs viable at all.

There used to be space for these musicians to eke out a modest but sustainable living touring a circuit of these types of gigs and festivals, but streaming really has killed most of it off. They could record a CD for a few thousand dollars and print maybe 5,000 copies, knowing that would turn into $50,000 - $75,000 of revenue at $10 to $15 per CD that they would mostly keep.

But the crowd just don't buy CDs at anything near the rate that they used to. Now most of those musicians make most of their living by some other means and the music has become the side. It's very unfortunate.

I work in the touring industry as a tech and its often the case that a production makes enough money for all the crew salaries and hotels from merch alone. And the crew on these tours are well paid.

This fact is often repeated by the PM at 1am when they are loading box after box of merch onto the truck.

How big is the band?

I saw a band recently in a 600 capacity venue. It was probably 70-80% full. Near the end the singer said the tour was losing money so please buy something.

Of the metal bands I usually see, I assume the majority have other jobs.

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