Recently, I’ve had a lot of long talks with other small musicians about selling music (and the state of the music industry, and the future of the industry, and business models for musicians, and…everything else you’re already imagining). The thing that has impressed me the most has been how few of them actually look at the numbers before making their claims. They all have had a reason for this and all of those reasons are valid. But it got me thinking…
This post is the first in [what I hope will be] a series of posts using real-world data (mine) to examine the practicality of being a musician in our current cultural and social climate. If nothing else, I hope a few hopeful musicians glance at these numbers and end up with a better understanding of what they are getting into.
Let’s kick it off with the biggest, baddest beast that exists: iTunes.
Getting music into iTunes is ridiculously easy…not at all a bragging point anymore. There are countless options for distribution and almost all of them get your music into every imaginable major retailer. Personally, I use RouteNote. They have a great model for low-selling artists and excellent options as one expands, but that’s a discussion for another day.
As it stands, I make $0.63 per sale (1 track). For this example, we’ll use a 5 song EP (plug: there’s a new one coming from me soon). At $0.99 per track, that is $4.95 for the sale. Once the money filters through iTunes and distribution, we are looking at $3.15 (0.63 x 5) in the pocket. Here are a few relevant benchmarks:
To break the $1000 mark:
- Sell 318 EPs -> 318 x $3.15 = $1,001.70
- Sell 1590 singles -> 1590 x $0.63 = $1,001.70
To break the $10,000 mark:
- Sell 3175 EPs -> 3175 x $3.15 = $10,001.25
- Sell 15,875 singles -> 15,875 x $0.63 = $10,001.25
To break the $20,000 mark:
- Sell 6350 EPs -> 6350 x $3.15 = $20,002.50
- Sell 31,750 singles -> 31,750 x $0.63 = $20,002.50
To break the $30,000 mark:
- Sell 9524 EPs -> 9524 x $3.15 = $30,000.60
- Sell 47,620 singles -> 47,620 x $0.63 = $30,000.60
There you go. Please, remember that iTunes is not ever the only source of revenue for an artist. There are, obviously, many variables that I am [intentionally] not accounting for in this post. We’ll cover those later (merchandise, non-digital music sales, expenses, exponential growth, live shows, etc…).
hmm…i think i will be referring to this quite often. maybe you should design a cool poster w/ this info. then i would print it out and put it in my studio.
Funny you should suggest that as this series of posts was originally inspired by this infographic that I ran into earlier this year: http://mashable.com/2010/04/15/music-artists-earn-online-infographic/ I feel like they missed a few critical distinctions and factors (which I am intending to cover) Stay tuned. All in all, somebody should make a poster with all the info at the end of the series…if nothing else.