Cellist Zoe Keating has posted her "Online Sales & Streaming" numbers

People use these services the same they would as if they owned the music. It is possible that total lifetime revenue from these services could be higher, but I doubt it.

It's antihistamine money because it's nothing to sneeze at

What algorithm do you use for your amazing extrapolation based on one data point?

I saw this 6 string violin player last weekend, doing rockier stuff with similar tools (looper and typical rock guitar pedalboard: wah, chorus, delay, reverb, envelope filter and Tube Screamer, I think

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHtdgz5Ioe0

> The internet and technology in general have done some great things for music but making money is harder than ever.

I think the amount you can make per listener has decreased but the amount of listeners and reach has increased exponentially. For evidence of this check out all the independent Youtube musicians, there are quite a few securing millions of video views per month, that alone is enough to fund a good life, then if you add in sales, streams (via Spotify etc) they make excellent incomes that they couldn't have got 10 years ago.

How many people listen to a song, how often, and at what licensing rate?

Clearchannel radio claims their network reaches 237 Million listeners a month [1]. If they managed to hit one play for every listener they reach at $132/32,000 that is $977,592 per month.

Yes, its hard to get between 'starting' and 'living large.' And no, not everyone will go there, but the numbers here aren't "really bad" they are in fact pretty good.

One business which is an analog to the current music 'label' business will be similar to what search engine optimizers do, they will contract with a promising artist and say "I'll pay you $x up front, and in exchange for that you will sign over all the income from this song for the next 'n' years to me." Then the muscian gets paid up front, the music distributor/marketer has a chance to make some money, and everyone 'wins.' Once the contract expires all the rights revert back to the artist.

The artist is making a bet that they will get more money for the first 'n' years of the song this way, and the distributor is betting they can make more than that on the song.

[1] http://www.clearchannel.com/Corporate/

Whatever deals they cut probably sap the lion's share of the profit, leaving a small pie for the indies to slice amongst themselves.

And of the share they get, I bet a large chunk stays with the label rather than passing through to Gaga and company.

I'd really like to see some numbers on that, but of course they'll never be made public. Which tells the tale on its own, really.

I don't think we can conclude that at all, especially in this case.

In the pre-Internet era, the niche for modernist cello music would have been an incredibly small set. If she were supremely lucky, she'd make it to Carnegie Hall every few years, and maybe sell a couple hundred CDs at a given performance there. Her radio airplay would have been limited to NPR, and perhaps a smattering of tiny classical stations. She'd have been touring pretty much 24/7, mostly to small venues, and basically hustling albums out of the back of her van.

The internet has expanded niches, blurred genre lines, eased access, increased distribution, and basically enlarged the footprint that someone like Zoe Keating can make on the world. She might be getting a smaller slice of the pie, but her pie is undoubtedly much, much bigger than it would have been 20 or 30 years ago.

If anyone opened this spreadsheet expecting to see a glamorous story about how Zoe made $3 million in 2 days, I would suggest they reexamine their expectations for the size of the experimental cello music market. She's doing respectably well, given her niche. I would also assume she has supplemental income streams from concert appearances, which have historically been the bread and butter of classical musicians. (Which is not a lot of bread and butter, to be clear, but it pays the bills).

A more interesting discussion, IMO, would be a breakdown of how Spotify, iTunes, et al. have had disparate impacts on different types, flavors, and "sizes" of musicians. For instance, how has the Internet treated the Zoe Keatings of the world, vs. the Beyonces of the world, vs. the Bjorks of the world, vs. the Lil' Waynes of the world, and so forth.

She's also posted some more stats here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkasqHkVRM1OdEJ...

Some people say that if I was on a record label, I'd have a larger reach and therefore would be making more money. To this I'd like to point out that I make instrumental cello music.

"I thought it might be helpful for interested parties to see what a DIY artist receives for plays of their music on Spotify and elsewhere."

and

"My financial picture would be worse if I was on a record label. Some people say that if I was on a record label, I'd have a larger reach and therefore would be making more money. To this I'd like to point out that I make instrumental cello music. There is about as much chance of my music becoming mainstream as there is of me being elected President of the USA (hint: not possible, I was born in Canada and there are naked pictures of me at Burning Man). While it is probably true that the right label could help with the reach part, I don't think they could help me enough to offset their cut, and you know what….no label has ever approached me and the ones I've approached said no, so I'm guessing they think the same thing."

As best I can tell, she is someone without a record deal who made it. And I don't think shes's even relatively big but she seems to do OK for herself.

We don't hold this same criticism to pure e-commerce startups. If an internet startup fails it's likely because they had a boring product and/or marketed themselves poorly, or some other reason.

The barrier to entry for someone to create music these days is very low. Software is cheap, talent is cheap, and distribution (digital) is very cheap. So why would an artist expect to make more money making a song that took maybe 100 hours to make than a person who works 40 hours a week every week?

My wife is a composer - currently attending UPenn getting her PhD in music composition. She does not typically perform her music herself. In 2009, her concert opera concerning the senate judiciary hearings on former attorney general Alberto Gonzales. We recorded a performance of "The Gonzales Cantata" and posted on Bandcamp, iTunes, and Amazon in anticipation of a series of live performances done at that year's Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

The recording earned a little over $1000 (half that from Bandcamp alone). The live performances earned several times that, enough that we could pay each of the over 30 performers involved at least three figures.

$1000 might not sound like much, but put it into perspective, it was her first recorded piece, and it's probably earned her more than what her professors have made with releases they've done. (Well, not necessarily her Penn professors) Had she released through a label? She was approached by one of the more well known 'classical' labels about doing a studio recording and 'label' release. The deal basically would have been that she'd have paid thousands of dollars, and gotten a box of CDs and miniscule residual income when all was said and done.. and this is how a lot of people in the classical world do things. The money may come from grants or patrons, but it's generally wasted.

$1000 for a single recording is not enough to live off, but $1000 for your first release, particularly a fairly obscure release, is incredibly encouraging. As a composer, she has other sources of income to chase down, whether it's commissions, or sheet music, performances, licensing, etc. I would not be surprised if after graduating, she is able to sustain a living composing music. If that doesn't work out, she can make plenty of money in private lessons.

We haven't done any 'big' recordings since then. Last year we recorded a piano-vocal piece, "Tesla's Pigeon", and commissioned a visual artist to do the cover art. We Kickstarted asking for $550 and raised $787, and while it's up on Bandcamp and iTunes, we haven't gone promotion crazy about it like we did for The Gonzales Cantata, so it's only made a couple hundred dollars, mostly through physical sales at concert performances - which themselves have brought in enough money that again, we were able to pay the performers well and have a nice amount leftover for ourselves.

I think it's a good start, and I think it's far better than she would have been able to do if she were born twenty years sooner than she had been.

Hard for me to summarize the meaning of all this, the comprative values, unexpected results, and so on, but I think the other comments here cover that.

   These Here is her summary on the final sheet. I will try to format it as much as possible:

This accounting data is payment for plays of my "One Cello x 16" recordings from Spotify. The payments are minus the 9% taken off the top by CDBaby.

Why did I post it?

You've probably heard a lot of discussion on how musicians should be compensated for their work: There have been numerous articles on the subject; We know how the big players in the industry: - labels, digital retailers, streaming companies, etc -  make money; We get reports on the industry-wide sales figures. But all the way at the bottom of the food-chain, how does a recording artist make a living? How much cold cash does an unsigned DIY artist make from a stream or a sale? These figures are surprisingly hard to come by, which is why the Future of Music Coalition has been surveying musicians on how they make a living (really worth reading: http://money.futureofmusic.org/).

I thought it might be helpful for interested parties to see what a DIY artist receives for plays of their music on Spotify. But I admit I have grander designs: if we are going to discuss the ideal structure of the new music industry, we need to know how recording artists make a living today or we're just spouting hyperbole. So, in the interest of evolving the discussion, I am making myself into a data point. I encourage other artists, if they are able, to do the same. 

What is in the data?

Again, this is what I received from Spotify for plays of a portion of my catalog. One of my albums is not on Spotify however because I don't have a digital distributor for it (I sell it on my own website, on Bandcamp and through my own label account with iTunes)

Since I posted this info I've gotten a lot of questions about my music sales income for comparison, so I added a snapshot of iTunes, Bandcamp and Amazon and accounting from Soundexchange (i.e. Pandora) and ASCAP (i.e. Radio)

Why aren't all my albums on Spotify?

When I started releasing music in 2005 I used CDBaby since at the time it was the only way into iTunes for DIY'er. Years later, I got a label account with iTunes so I could release "Into The Trees" to them directly, without a service in the middle. This year I took my "One Cello x 16" recordings out of CDBaby and re-uploaded them into iTunes through my label account (losing all my rankings and reviews in the process, which is why I put if off for so long).

Spotify does not work directly with artists, so to get my music in there I have to use an aggregator like CDBaby, TuneCore or Orchard. I've yet to find a digital distributor who will take my recordings without also having a piece of iTunes....and so that is why "Into The Trees" is not on Spotify yet.

Bonus, Deep Thoughts!

I think Spotify is awesome as a listening platform. In my opinion artists should view it as a discovery service rather than a source of income.

The income of a non-mainstream artist like me is a patchwork quilt and streaming is currently one tiny square in that quilt. Streaming is not yet a replacement for digital sales, and to conflate the two is a mistake.   I do not see streaming as a threat to my income, just like I've never regarded file-sharing as a threat but as a convenient way to hear music. If people really like my music, I still believe they'll support it somewhere, somehow. Casual listeners won't, but they never did anyway. I don't buy ALL the music I listen to either, I never did, so why should I expect every single listener to make a purchase? I think that a subset of my listeners pay for my music, and that is a-ok because...and this is the key.....there are few middlemen between us.

My financial picture would be worse if I was on a record label. Some people say that if I was on a record label, I'd have a larger reach and therefore would be making more money. To this I'd like to point out that I make instrumental cello music. There is about as much chance of my music becoming mainstream as there is of me being elected President of the USA (hint: not possible, I was born in Canada and there are naked pictures of me at Burning Man). While it is probably true that the right label could help with the reach part, I don't think they could help me enough to offset their cut, and you know what….no label has ever approached me and the ones I've approached said no, so I'm guessing they think the same thing.

I've said multiple times what my issue with Spotify is: fairness. I care about making the playing field level for all recording artists: signed or unsigned. Let it be a meritocracy. Also, I wish Spotify would do more to facilitate the connection between listeners and artists - i.e show that the artist is playing nearby, or add links to buy music. It's early days, so maybe this will happen eventually.

p.s. What did I make on iTunes during the same period? I also sell digital and physical copies on iTunes, Bandcamp, Amazon and at concerts.

It's comparing apple to oranges, but I for the same time period (Oct 2011 to March 2012), I received, net (i.e. after fees):

- $46477.77 from iTunes

- $25,000 from Bandcamp

- $8352.45 for physical sales on Amazon

- $2821 from Amazon MP3

p.p.s. I'd like to be known for my music more than my tendency to stir up controversy, so I probably won't say much more on the subject because I have some music to make….;-)