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I know a couple musicians, some of them earn enough to survive thanks to their art, most don't.

I know that if I had talent I could create and distribute an album on my laptop and distribute it globally. We used to pay record labels for this. Now we pay them to stand in the way of artists and their fans.

Regardless, musicians don't really make money from people listening to their music and never really have - unless you're talking about A-listers, but since we're talking about starving artists we're probably not talking about Metallica and Katy Perry.

Musicians make money from playing live - even all electronic musicians like Deadmau5. Most electronic musicians give their music away on Soundcloud and then tour to make money.

This is the future of the industry. The problem is it just doesn't leave a lot of room for record labels. This is something that no one will miss...

"Musicians make money from playing live... This is the future of the industry."

I see this sentiment repeated often. I don't buy it. It seems like a better way to put it is that if musicians are going to make money at all, then it must come from live performance. It certainly won't come from recordings, because more and more consumers don't want to pay for recordings, regardless of the practices of major labels, who have always been irrelevant to the majority of practicing musicians anyway.

I have only anecdotal data to back myself up with, but of the independent musicians I know, most of them lose money or make trivial earnings from live performance. They do it because they find it rewarding, to be sure, but they're not doing it for money. And touring is usually mutually exclusive with a sustainable day job.

Remember - music existed before money. Selling recorded performances is relatively new - how long have records been around? I doubt the first users of the tech in the early 1900s spent enough on records to support any type of professional musician, let alone create Lady Gaga like stars.

Yet, somehow, there have been professional musicians for likely thousands of years.

Record companies solved the distribution problem. The Internet proved them obsolete and for the next few years they'll continue their death rattle until they blossom into something that looks like Spotify (which is replacing radio as well), or someone else will fill their shoes (as Spotify is doing today).

And then no one will care about programs designed to put lipstick on my 80gb mp3 pig as iTunes does... Unless they roll out their own all you can eat service :)

> music existed before money

?? Before money, artists still needed food and shelter...

> Yet, somehow, there have been professional musicians for likely thousands of years.

But does anyone really want to go back to the patronage system?

I want to go back to the system where musicians are not rock stars trying to sell you a product, they are ordinary people with a day job who enjoy making and sharing music for their own entertainment.

We don't demand this of any other profession yet musicians should have a day job and make music for the love of it? I want to go back to the system where musicians were rewarded with money to put invest into their next project. Maybe I'm old fashioned but I don't think Spotify nor Pandora are the answer. My musician friends feel like it's the new Payola. They don't like to be on there because the royalties on 1000 plays is not even worth the postage. Yet, they can't afford not to be there because so many other musicians and listeners are using it.

We don't demand this of any other profession yet musicians should have a day job and make music for the love of it?

Nobody is demanding anything of artists; it's artists (well, mostly labels, but also some artists) that are demanding monopolies from society.

¿Que? I'm not even sure how to interpret this statement. Monopolies of what exactly?

The ridiculous copyright extensions pushed for by the mafiAA? Ridiculous suits against network printers, computer illiterate grandmas, and children, sometimes for more than the GDP of the entire world?

Monopolies over the creations.

Thomas Jefferson's proposal for the Amendment that granted copyright and patents was:

  Art. 9. Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions
  in literature and their own inventions in the arts for a term
  not exceeding — years but for no longer term and no other purpose.

Madison, on the other hand, wrote:

  Monopolies, though in certain cases useful, ought to be granted with caution,
  and guarded with strictness against abuse. The Constitution of the United
  States has limited them to two cases--the authors of books, and of useful
  inventions (...)

Your favourite authors and artists have day jobs.

Why should musicians be any different?

> "I want to go back to the system where [musicians] are ordinary people with a day job who enjoy making and sharing music for their own entertainment"

I am not sure this system ever existed, and I would be sad if it did. People have been writing music as their 'day job' since the 16th Century - the difference was their salaries were being paid by patrons rather than the general public.

A system where musicians have to spend 8 hours a day on a 'day job' rather than spending time improving their craft, composing, and playing doesn't sound like a very good system to me.

I don't care if they have a day job or not; but I don't want rock stars selling a product either, which is why I don't think artists making money only through concerts/t-shirts/crowdfunding is a good idea. iTunes and Spotify don't care if an artist is introverted or not.

    >Remember - music existed before money. Selling recorded performances is relatively new

You're conflating two different phenomenon here. Music may have existed before money, however, RECORDED distributable music did not. If you had to pay the opportunity cost associated with seeing a live performance every time you wanted to listen to music your argument would hold water.

Right now, with the social media and all this stuff, I find myself buying more music than ever. I never liked physical formats, I remember having MP2 audio files of all my favorite music and hating tapes and then CDs.

Last month I drop almost 40$ on a digital music compilation from an artist I like. He was selling it directly from his Facebook. It's not the first time and it wont be the last. He's selling some vinyls right now and just released the test presses on eBay. I don't even know if this guy has a record label or not, but he tours and probably edits all by himself.

I don't think playing live will be the only way musicians can make money (and a lot of them make dimes playing live as the promoters -usually the labels!- take all the money too).

You don't need to drop 10K month on studio anymore, you only need some equipment (that can be rented) and a computer to edit your music. Even some big bands are doing it this way nowadays.

> Musicians make money from playing live

It might be good advice economically, but IMHO it is also a tendency worth fighting, because it is so obviously unfair and limiting. What about artists (or genres!) that suck at giving live concerts? How do I vote with my wallet if I have no time for concerts - but listen to music all day?

Bizarrely, soundtracks seem to have come to my rescue (for some genres) - where artists receive a one-time payment to make solid music, but then slap it onto iTunes where I can throw in a few extra $$$.

>How do I vote with my wallet if I have no time for concerts - but listen to music all day?

Buy t-shirts, etc

Who the fuck would wear a Cecillia Bartoli or Yo-Yo Ma t-shirt?

Market it right and a Cecillia Bartoli t-shirt will become the must have hipster fashion item for spring 2013.

But most people have no need for dozens of over priced low quality t-shirt with some amateur graphic design scrawled all over it. Sure I could buy them to throw away simply as a round about way to donate money, but there must be a better business model out there.

How about artists with a following ask for crowdfunding for their next project.

Puts a lot of burden on the consumer. Background checks; does this artist the potential to deliver good music again? Does the album's concept sound good? Which of the dozens of artists I know are asking for funding? (Not even to think about discovery) Also brings us back to the model of paying for a whole album rather than just the good parts of it.

I have backed exactly one kickstarter project (I think $50) and it was more email friction than all my iTunes purchases combined (maybe $1000?).

I hate this line of thought with a passion. So if your talent happens to be musical you're only hope for a remotely related career is to be a loss leader for niche retail?

Plus if you're just taking stock shirt and putting your bands name on them then you're little better than a pan handler begging for money. People are only buying your outrageously priced shirts to keep you playing music. Why can't we just pay artists for their contribution to society instead of "pretend buying" their overpriced t-shirts?

There are lots of ways that artists could hypothetically be compensated and things will probably change a lot over the next 5-10 years. Right now, though, pretend buying overpriced t-shirts is one way to get money to musicians without going to concerts. Free idea for musicians: I'd pay to subscribe to webcasts of practice sessions.

> I'd pay to subscribe to webcasts of practice sessions.

...which people will then rip and upload (just like the music itself)? That sounds like a very circular model.

I know that if I had talent I could create and distribute an album on my laptop and distribute it globally. We used to pay record labels for this. Now we pay them to stand in the way of artists and their fans.

Not just that, though. They also do promotion. How am I going to find out about your album?

YouTube, Soundcloud, activity sharing on streaming services, live shows, music blogs, your friends.

Do you really decide what bands you like from ads and the radio?

You talk as if your way is fundamentally different. In both cases someone is curating what kind of music you hear for you because there are far too many bands to hear them all. The question is just who is making the selection for you.

I found that a lot of punk bands will just put their music on bandcamp or release it for free with the message to buy if you enjoy. Since it's released digitally they aren't losing money on distribution, but only on time spent.

According to Spotify, they are cutting a fair deal with labels, who are then screwing over the artists. But the full numbers are not available, so it is tough to say. I think the idea that streaming music will destroy the music industry is a bit extreme.

http://paidcontent.org/2012/12/10/interview-spotify-exec-on-...

Screwing over the artists is absolutely nothing new for the music industry. I wonder what percentage of musicians made minimum wage or above under the old model?

If I consider myself, I've never spent even half of the 120€ a year on music as I now do with Spotify. I'm fairly sure that my case isn't that uncommon with others of my generation, born in 80s or later. A big part of this generation has never gotten into buying music and it seems Spotify is a way to get at least some revenue from us. Nobody outside Spotify and the labels owning it knows the exact details of their finances, but I doubt they're going to disappear, at least not the business model. Otherwise our generation just goes back to pirating.

Exactly. With music you pay for distribution. $10 to stream me a large catalog for a month is good. $10 for 14 tracks is not good.

I don't think anyone (with the possible exception of the Spotify marketing department) thinks that Spotify will be the savior of the music industry. Most popular artists know this. Popular artists like Radiohead, Taylor Swift, or Arcade Fire either distribute only a portion of their work on Spotify, or distribute it with a delay.

And Spotify is better than piracy for record labels. (i) Spotify provides useful data for labels (at least those that have an ownership stake in Spotify), (ii) the revenue, in aggregate, is not insignificant and certainly better than revenue from piracy (again this benefits the labels with ownership stakes), and (iii) gives them a measure of messaging control.

Essentially, Spotify is marketing channel for major labels.

A lot of the trash talking about Spotify is poorly researched.

See: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4834767

What I don't get though is why doesn't spotify pick a more sustainable subscription price. I guess there is the issue of less sustainable competitors. I would be happy to pay at least double, that would be a vast collection of music vs 2 albums a month.

I would assume because their goal is not to create a sustainable business model but to grow a massive user base and sell/IPO for >$1 billion.

Spotify is good for popular music. But try being classical/opera fan and using Spotify. Though I hear it's getting better.

I have a 120GB music library in iTunes. And most of it was ripped from CD's. I'm not happy about iTunes 11 due to Cover Flow an DJ being dropped (I liked both) and - I don't know, maybe I'll give Spotify another go.

To be fair, classical music suffers in general when it comes to availability.

For two months I was looking for 8 CD box set of 'The Budapest String Quartet Plays Beethoven' to be available anywhere as a download. I had to resort to buying the box set, ripping it and fixing the tags myself. I paid far less than I would have but I paid it back in hours of getting everything right.