- cross-posted to:
- music@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- music@beehaw.org
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I was under the impression that while streaming was garbage for money that touring was the cash cow. Apparently it’s a loss for these artists. It makes me sad that all the profits get vacuumed up by everybody but the artist.
Those days are over sadly. Ticketing and venues are largely consolidated now.
It’s got to be the ticketing taking too much vig, right? I hear these stories about $300 tickets, I haven’t been to a concert in years but in the 2000’s touring was where the money came from. With $45+ticketmaster tickets.
They have to be sucking all the money out at point of sale
Just look at ticket prices on ticketmaster for a US show and compare it to the cost of an international venue.
When I was pricing David Gilmour it was literally cheaper to buy a plane ticket and fly from NY to Rome and go to the show there than get the worst seats in Madison Square Garden.
Because Ticketmaster and it’s venues are a monopoly. Pearl Jam tried to warn us 30 years ago.
The ticketing company owns all the venues now and they own the secondhand scalper sites so they allocate a bunch of tickets to the secondhand site and mark them way up plus they can charge whatever they want for the venue and only pay the artist what they were contracted for
It’s also probably one of the few ways for artists to have an income that their lable/manager/publisher/whoever the fuck else doesn’t take a huge cut of. Add in ticket master and company and they’re fucked.
Those contracts they sign can be fucking brutal. I’m not familiar with either of those artists but it’s a common enough problem in that industry.
Was ever thus, init.
The options are 1) Charge less and sell more, or 2) Charge much more and sell less, but make up more than the difference in how much more they charge.
They always, always take option 2 because they’re shitheads who feel like they have a legal duty to put the shareholders above the customers.
You can still make great money if you’re packing out big venues. I don’t know who either of these people are so I wouldn’t be surprised if they aren’t able to sell out big amphitheaters or stadiums. Small venue shows are great but they aren’t buying you multiple houses.
It makes me sad that all the profits get vacuumed up by everybody but the artist.
The average worker experience
Touring has always been a boondoggle. Artists could make bank if they were selling out shows, but the baseline venue prices have skyrocketed out of reach for most fans. The producers, promoters, engineers, technicians, roadies, not to mention lodging, travel, and food, a lot of people expect to be paid before the artist makes a dime.
Ticketmaster and LiveNation (also Ticketmaster) expect to be paid most of all. The own so many venues it’s incredible.
And the scalping sites.
They’re totally a monopoly but the government won’t do anything because they only hurt normal people.
Musk needs to start a ticketing agency so somebody rich has a stake and watch congress do something.
It’s why I make it a point to buy merch when I see a band I like on tour. They probably earn more from it than the actual tour itself.
Venues are taking a cut of that as well now in some cases. It’s disgusting honestly.
I went with a date to see Tori Amos last year and the merch was stupidly expensive (even for concert merch) and the woman told us to order online because the venue was taking ½ of merch so everything was double
I’ve played many shows for free after several hours driving (with gas I paid for), US’s music scene is set up to fail
I was under the impression that while streaming was garbage for money that touring was the cash cow. Apparently it’s a loss for these artists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJSp-yRMrsY
why you do this - a self documentary from car bomb on why people still make music/tour despite monetary hardship.
There are tech death musicians out there that give some classical composers a run for their money that still have day jobs, mostly in computer programming of some kind.
(side note : turns out that technical death metal appeals to the same kind of people that enjoy working on applied mathematics. who could have guessed)
For anyone unaware, the “music industry” had a brief period around 1960-1978 where they led youth culture and brought some decent artists to the fore, including [everyone]. Which was ironic as they started mostly as a goof by rich people or a front by the mafia.
A “record deal” was always a sucker’s deal because they’d loan you $300,000 or whatever and then decide how much you’d paid them back over however many years you made them money. The companies didn’t buy videos or tour buses or billboards or anything -they fronted the money and the artist paid for that, usually without knowing it.
Around 1980, in a coke-fueled bender that lasted over a decade, they decided “fuck it” and just screwed everyone they could for every dollar they could. Fortunately, they were so stupid and up their own asses that mp3s destroyed them after a decade of them trying to decide who was going to get fucked more than who else. (Anyone remember the DAT wars?)
Billions were made but the artist usually only saw a small fraction of that because record companies were “riding the gravy train” and living fat off all the money. Nothing has changed. No one is going to wake up. It was always this bad. It’s just that being a touring musician used to be at least a job and a career and now it’s pretty rare.
If it helps, think of it like this - there’s no one in any seat of real power in the “music industry” who is a musician. They don’t give a shit about what they’re selling, it could be cow pies for all they care - they’d look and act exactly like they do now because it has 100% nothing to do with music. It’s just marketing a persona and bilking them for all they can.
And it’s been that way the entire time. Yes, there are exceptions, but not many.
Back during the Napster days, Howard Stern had the Foo Fighters on. He asked them what their thought of the whole Napster vs. Metallica legal debate.
Dave Grohl told him he was 100 percent for Napster, explaining that they barely made a dime from record sales, and instead made the bulk of their money from touring and t-shirt sales. And that very few musicians were in the same boat as Metallica, actually making money from their album sales.
So from that point of view, the more people who were exposed to their music meant the more folks who might want to go see them in concert.
I spent more money on music during the Napster days than any other time in my life. I discovered so much that I otherwise never would have been exposed to. I bought CDs, I went to concerts, I bought the T-shirts of bands I only listen to because of Napster.
The best argument I ever heard in favor of Napster was that songs were already being given out for free all the time on the radio. What’s the difference if they’re being given out for free online?
I was made aware of the fact that touring and merch is the bulk of how bands make money by the documentary The Other F Word. It followed around a bunch of aging punk rockers from Rancid and Goldfinger and other bands.
And the irony was that Metallica got their big break because people were trading bootlegs of their tapes around.
Movie industry as well. People with the money don’t care about the product as long as it makes them more money.
Or if they do care, they interfere with the artist’s vision to put in their own thoughts when they have no education or experience in filmmaking.
Then we end up getting the Emoji movie in theaters.
Right before MP3’s, record labels treated a lot of their albums as products to sell. This required a marketing budget to go along with it including a lot of promotional material like music videos and concert tours for promotional purposes. The drop in revenue due to MP3’s killed that model and it never returned.
Concert tickets are so expensive because record labels took control of that part of the revenue stream to find their promotion/marketing business. And promotion is no longer a small activity run by a band’s groupies. The reason that Trent Reznor signed with a new label after he went independent was because he wasn’t able to compete with the marketing arms of these companies.
I fear this is happening to every industry
🌈 E N S H I T T I F I C A T I O N ✨
That “fuck it” era is Reaganism. Every industry did the exact same thing at that time.
Ouch, just like video game industry :-/
Any “industry” that doesn’t sell a physical product and many who do.
Ouch, just like video game industry :-/
A fair amount of the money still goes back to the studios. It’s way more expensive than it used to be, both in time and money, to create what we consider a state-of-the-art video game. The goalposts for quality and realism have moved so far.
Well, I prefer say Commandos by Eidos to some super graphic expensive “triple A” game, but that’s just me it feels like.
I too have tastes for well put together titles, but we don’t make them enough money :)
Any “industry” that doesn’t sell a physical product and many who do.
there’s no one in any seat of real power in the “music industry” who is a musician.
That’s not strictly true. A number of popular musicians started their own labels and cultivated their own talent. Dr. Dre, Hay-Z and Beyonce, Snoop Dog, NIN, The Beetles and Rolling Stones, Eminem, Madonna, Mackelmoore…
What’s really changed over time is distribution. Digital music has huge margins, but prying them out of the near monopoly of Spotify and YouTube is much harder than simply selling CD/Vinyl copies of your songs at your shows
Who could forget the infamous rapper, Hay-Z. Creater of classic albums such as “The FarmPrint, and The Dirt Album”.
Huh, coulda sworn that was Alice in chains
Your thinking of another barn yard hit “The Rooster” by Alice in Overalls.
At this point, there’s no one at the wheel at all. It’s all algorithms.
Why would this be a wake up call for the music industry? This shows they are operating at peak efficiency!
Ya. They don’t care.
And now they got a permission to not do anything at all as artists can make money from side hustles.We as a alsociety failing to fight the predatory business models.
I have no idea who these women are but the music industry knows what it is. And it’s gotten worse. And it doesn’t care. The industry needs to die and art profits should go to the artist.
It needs to be illegal for record companies to get rights for anything other than distribution.
If your band is signed with Polygram you can’t even record a duet with an artist on another label without paying Polygram royalties for a song that is not your band’s and has nothing to do with them.
I think adults should be able to sign whatever contract they want.
But then you have to remove ALL consumer protections on contracts. Payday loans can start charging 20,000% interest and make you sign a line that uses fancy language to put your car up for collateral. You could prohibit people of a specific race from renting or buying property.
So go that way, but also disband every government agency because if we’re sovereign then that’s it. Every man is his own government.
Or maybe we could just keep the protections we have and expand them to cover an industry that’s thrived on screwing over artists it’s whole existence.
good answer :)
I also think people should be free to sign contracts to become lifelong slaves of other people.
After all everyone’s circumstances are identical, same genetic lottery and are born with equal opportunity of money, mind, health, physical ability, family and geography.
Exploitation? Sign away.
Hidden terms in obscure language? Sign away
Forced circumstances? Sign away
Asymmetric power imbalance? Sign away.
Debt slavery? Sign away.
Selling your children? Sign away.
That’s true freedom.
/s
Good thing adults can never be coerced.
And that they all have a law degree with a specialty in contract law
contracts should be standardized unless both parties have a lawyer otherwise you’re pitting lawyers against teenagers
So the fact that most adults read at a 6th grade level is not a problem in your world?
That’s their problem. Literally.
Also, what kind of people do you surround yourself with? I don’t know a single person with the reading skills of a sixth grader.
Ah, so if you’re stupid enough you deserve to get swindled. Got it.
And if someone smarter than you swindled you I bet you’d be like “You got me! No harm, bro.”
Also, it’s a statistical truth 54% of Americans read below a sixth grade level, regardless of who I associate with.
The complexity of the world is spiraling upward at an exponential rate. A 6th grade reading level was just fine and normal when my grandfather was a young man. Today, if you’re struggling that much then you’re lucky if you can keep a roof over your head.
A lot of people now say this is proof that we need universal basic income, free education, health care, public housing for all. I live in Canada where we have some of these things. One of our biggest ongoing political fights is over the issue of how to pay for these things. Tons of people fight against pay raises for teachers and blame teachers for all our problems. Teachers are actually pretty well paid here in Canada, compared to the US.
The other issue is immigration. The more services you get provided by the government, the more of a strain you put on the immigration system because everyone wants to move to your country so they can take advantage of those benefits. On the other hand, the way the US used to be (prior to the 20th century), there were no real social benefits to speak of and so everyone who immigrated had to work and benefit the economy. The US had no restrictions on immigration back then.
The thing I fear most with what has been called The Great Decoupling and the rise of a basic income state is this: the resource curse. Some of the most regressive, brutal, backward countries in the world are also those with the largest decoupling between workers and wealth. Historically these have been resource exporters such as oil and gas and mineral countries.
It’s a tragic reality of life that if people are deemed unnecessary for the productive functioning of the economy then they will come to be seen as politically and socially unnecessary. Then these people are extremely vulnerable to domination by a brutal elite.
If our society goes that way and we end up with a two class system with a small number of vastly wealthy capital owners and a vast number of unproductive basic income recipients then I can’t see that situation remaining stable without some brutal repression.
I’m not American. Neither are ~96% of the world population, so please don’t extrapolate based on a flawed sample.
Huh. Based on your screw-you, got-mine attitude, I did guess you were American. But I guess selfishness exists pretty much everywhere.
If I ever get swindled you can bet I’ll blame myself, that’s the only way to learn to protect myself better so I don’t get swindled again.
Let’s hope it happens when you’re really old and are starting to lose your mental faculties so you end up living on the street.
It’ll be like the ancap version of a Christmas Carol but even funnier.
Hehe, I see you’re the ultra-kind type of person - Hoping that elderly gets swindled. Funny? Sure, whatever floats your boat.
Also, elderly who’ve lost their mental faculties to the point where they’re a danger to themselves should be put under care. Some of my grandparents were, I hope I will if the situation arises. But then again, unlike you I don’t want elderly to be swindled or robbed.
Absolutely!
That’s why we need to regulate what is allowed in contracts because there are things that are just so wrong and predatory we as society should not find that acceptable. We do this all the time, its long overdue to extend this to the music industry.
Also please understand… individual that just started out vs multi billion dollar record label with decades of institutional knowledge is not a level playing field.
Sure. But they ought not all be enforceable.
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Hold on, Lily Allen is on OnlyFans? That’s wild, lol, I guess a big part of her brand of feminism is embracing sexuality or something.
Power to em, idgaf.
Lily Allen, who started selling pictures of her feet on OnlyFans over summer. She had the idea after seeing that her feet had a perfect five star rating on WikiFeet, a photo-sharing foot fetish website. Subscribers pay £8 a month to access her posts. In October, Allen claimed that shots of her well-pedicured trotters were earning her more money than Spotify streams – and that’s saying something, considering Allen has over 7 million monthly listeners and more than a billion streams on her top three songs.
Feet pics apparently.
In another thread someone said Spotify is paying out 17k per month for her streams. And that’s only Spotify. If she’s making more on OF, that means there are a lot of foot people and the music royalty situation is completely fucked up, because I don’t think the money ends up with her.
I remember reading that Spotify pays out around 4k per day (~120k per month) for her streams but the majority of that payout goes to the rights holder and Allen gets pennies. I think Spotify is paying a reasonable amount (at least in my opinion but I’m far from an expert on the matter) and the music industry is the one screwing her over.
Wow, that is a shitton of money. Yeah, it really sounds like the music industry is shit and broken like everything else.
Spotify pays artists less than any major streaming platform (Apple music, tidal, etc.)
Do they actually pay less or do they pay less per stream? Because those two things are not the same.
Good question. I’m speaking per stream, not sure overall.
Per stream can be very misleading because if Apple pays double per stream but the song gets double the streams on Spotify the payout is exactly the same. There’s an argument to be made that if you got as many streams on Apple as you do on Spotify you’d make more money but let’s be real, if Apple got as many streams as Spotify their per stream price would also be closer to what Spotify pays. These companies aren’t paying extra out of kindness. Their per stream pricing is higher because they know they (on average) won’t get Spotify number of streams. They can undercut Spotify to make themselves look better while most likely paying out roughly as much (or maybe even less than) what Spotify pays out.
I’m not saying that’s wrong, because I don’t have the information, but I have repeatedly read on different news articles that Spotify pays peanuts: way less than that to big artists. I will have to check for updated and reliable sources.
They don’t pay as well as Apple and Tidal but they pay much better than YouTube
When you’re indy you don’t make money from streaming. When you’re actually popular you do, but the record company gets it. It’s like when hard partying rockstars used to all go broke. It’s because they made millions but the corporations took it all and made them pay back the recording and partying costs out of their meager earnings. Then if the band was bust the company would write off the expenses as a loss while still collecting from the artists’ share.
For Taylor Swift’s 1999 album, there was an article that showed Spotify had paid millions to the record company and Swift got about $200. That’s why she’s re-recording everything as “Taylor’s version.” So she can get the revenue.
The singer of Cracker showed his earnings from streaming the song Low one month and TouTube had way more views than any streamer and had paid pennies. Seriously it was like .32.
My last check from streaming was $12 and that was only split two ways.
Others might pay more, but the point is, that Spotify pays so much more than what ends up with the artists.
Thank you, I didn’t know that. I know that record labels have been screwing artists for decades… but I didn’t know that Spotify was actually paying good money for the listens, it just doesn’t reach the artist.
There’s been years of anti Spotify propaganda. It’s not surprising that it sticks.
Wow, what a strange world, she have any photos where she grips stuff with her feet?
Damn, I’ve had so many friends and coworkers joke about selling feet pics and here she is actually doing it and making bank! That’s utterly crazy that she makes more from OF than Spotify. I’m surprised Spotify/streaming subscriptions hasn’t just been killed off by artists/studios if the revenue stream is that awful.
Oh, the studios are making enough money. It’s just the artists who get fucked.
In fact, the studios are probably making as much of the money as Spotify itself, if not more. While the artists get like 0.003 of a penny per stream. That’s fucking ridiculous!
For all the celebrity status and glamour, their labor and creative output is still being exploited almost as badly as that of “regular” workers.
I just had a look and her feet do look incredibly nice. If I were so inclined, subscribing to her account might feel worth it.
I’m guessing, just because she’s famous, her feet could be ugly as fuck and there would still be a big enough market for her to make a decent living.
I can’t believe I just searched up lily Allen’s feet. But what was most shocking is how much her looks have changed. I didn’t even recognize her.
It looks like it’s just crazy foot people and she’s not actually exposing anything lol.
It looks like it’s just crazy foot people and she’s not actually exposing anything lol.
She’s just dipping her toes in first.
There’s a youtuber who posted completely dressed feet pics - shoes and stockinged ankles peeking out of full skirts on only fan for a parody video on her channel and was surprised by how much it was making her instead.
It’s an awareness stunt. I get the point - but its also hard to feel bad for very successful music superstars who are having a few down years. That being said these music industry shills running ticketing, touring etc. Are awful so bringing that to attention is a worthwhile cause.
But who else is going to make people aware of the issue but a successful music superstar?
If me, Joe Musician who tours the regional small clubs, puts my feet on OnlyFans, no one gives a shit. Lily Allen has charted multiple times (although she’s nowhere near as popular in the U.S. as she is in other countries).
Yes that’s what I was trying to say. It’s an awareness stunt more so than I woe is me type of complaint.
To be fair, artists are one of the original intended uses for OnlyFans. While it is sexually focused now, that’s more a side effect of it being one of the very few creators subscription sites at the time it started up.
I can’t comment on these specific individuals, but a situation like that is gutwrenching. Absolutely nothing against OnlyFans and other adult entertainment, there are tons of people who genuinely enjoy and take pride in the work, but if there’s even a slight hesitancy or feeling of pressure to do it just to support their real careers, the notion seems deeply awful and psychologically damaging.
Kinda sounds like a reason some people might try to preserve or widen a gender pay gap. If they can’t keep women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, this is their next best thing.
I’m sorry to be the asshole here but … She hasn’t been on the charts for nearly 10 years… She probably amassed more wealth than most of us will in a lifetime. If she’s unable to work a regular job now to keep up the lifestyle and has to sell feet pics… Sorry but boohoo
Her 2018 album hit #8 in 3 different countries 🤷♂️ that’s neither a decade nor anything remotely akin to failure.
Which countries?
I don’t even know who she is lol
It’s the smaller artists I feel for.
The ones with small feet?
Some people are in to that.
I don’t really think she “has” to, at all. I think she saw an opportunity to make extra money and took it.
And publicity
Ah they posting adult content? I didn’t read the article and I thought they were using OF for their music.
Feet pics apparently
And there are no album or CD sales any more.
A paltry few millions in networth. Please think of these starving artists
Lily Allen is not doing it to talk about how bad it is for her, she’s doing it to show how bad it is for musicians in general. No one is going to even pay attention unless a successful musician does this.
I think she’s just doing it to make more money and get more fame. This is completely irrelevant to other musicians situations.
Most of them make no money whatsoever.
… Them making no money whatsoever is the whole point.
Theyre not taking on side hustles, theyre working full on jobs. This story reads like them almost making enough to survive, they just need a little help. At this point the only way they can be full time musicians and make enough to live is UBI.
We need to subsidize UBI for artists to live with dignity.
