How does the music industry still make money when all music is available for free or almost for free online?

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It used to be you had to spend $20 on just one CD. People would spend thousands on CD collections.

These days you can access so much for free, and what isn’t free you can get for $10/month or less. Music piracy was rampant in the late 90s and 2000s with MP3s, these days no one even bothers with that because it’s all free anyway.

How do they still make money?

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8 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Some people still buy physical copies. I would buy a lot more vinyl if I had more money and space to buy something just for the sake of having it. But the majority of money in the music industry these days is through merchandising and live performance. Merchandise can mean a lot of stuff. Clothes, physical copies of albums, live DVDs, song books, picks, lighters, straps, and so much more since some bands also license out their logos for other companies to make merchandise for them. The Ramones do this, The Rolling Stones also do this. Fuck man, you can get The Rolling Stones lips as a cushion.

Then there are live performances, this works two ways. One they are paid by the promoter (either a cut of ticket sales or a flat fee, the bigger the band the more likely it is to be a flat fee regardless of how well the tickets sell) and two they get an opportunity to sell a lot of merchandise. They sell special tour shirts, hats, wristbands, whatever the fuck they want, and they also sell special editions of their albums. Sometimes a band or artist will book their own venue and do their own promotion leading to a much higher cut of the profits after paying the staff, venue, and insurance fees.

On top of that, streaming services _do_ provide income, I have had a Spotify cheque myself. It was about 40p for a whole year of streaming, but it was for a band that didn’t get very far. Bands that get millions of streams certainly see money, but record labels and the like get their share too and that definitely cuts into what they should be earning. There is also stuff like PRS (not sure what the US equivalent is), I make money from them by playing my own music I have registered with them at venues that have to pay them a fee for live music. I get paid by the venue or the promoter on top of that. The bands I cover also make money from my performances too. Licensing deals such as for advertising or TV/film soundtracks if you’re known enough is another ancillary means of making money off your music. Radio play pays too.

A modern musician needs their fingers in many pies. But it’s still possible to make more than a healthy living through music, even if you’re not famous. I am a professional musician myself. I make my living by teaching, performing, helping other local bands out with recording, and I even do a bit of promoting too. So even for someone like me who is far from famous, its still possible to make a living from music.

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