How do artists make so much money when today there are so many streaming services and we pay a very small amount to have access to a huge amount of songs?
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Musicians don’t really make any money from album sales, we’re almost entirely dependant on gigs and merch sales.
Unless you’re independent, 90% of album sales will go to the platform your buying from and the company that owns the copyright. In most cases, the producer will receive more money to record the album than the musicians who wrote it.
Buying a T-shirt at a gig is the best way to support musicians. If you don’t like the merch but enjoy the music, give ’em $5 as a thank you – you’ll make their entire tour
Imagine if artists could record their own music and everyone didn’t feel like music should be free. You could go buy their music for like a $1 per track and support them and they could make some money. Even if you are going to stream it why not just give them a dollar.
They diversify a lot more for one. Two bands I was in both made most of our money from merch. I know big bands who are in the same boat but it differs from artist to artist on the percentages.
Most don’t make much. Your big name and pop it types can, but the days of becoming a millionaire as a one hit radio wonder are long gone.
The 2 sides of the coin- Artists can now easily get their music out there, even if they don’t have a label, contract or whatever. The garage band, or bedroom pop singer can be heard anywhere in the world now, and that used to be impossible. As fans, we can listen to literally almost anything we choose instantly.
The flip side for the artist is the music isn’t worth as much as it was when even big towns had maybe 2-3 radio stations per age group/music type that so much of the population listened to. That marketing time was super valuable then (not now), and if you could get into rotation on the radio, there was big money to be made. And because the fans loved your stuff, the only way for them to hear it on their own terms was to spend 15 or 20 bucks to buy your album. Easy money if you could be one of the very few people who had access to people on a large scale.
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