Deconstructing: How Can Indie Musicians Break Even?
Deconstructing: How Can Indie Musicians Break Even?
Author: Doug Moore (Stereogum’s page byline shows Michael Nelson) · Published: Stereogum, December 12, 2012 · URL: https://stereogum.com/1218552/deconstructing-how-can-indie-musicians-break-even/top-stories/lead-story
One-line: For small rock bands, no single tactic replaces the old physical-sales-plus-touring model. The goal is to break even on recording costs by stacking several partial fixes.
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Summary
Moore opens with Pere Ubu’s David Thomas: “Rock music is mostly about moving big black boxes from one side of town to the other in the back of your car.” Rock is time- and capital-intensive. The old ways of paying for it (quitting the day job, touring nonstop, recouping through CD and T-shirt sales) have become close to futile. Gas prices are up, merch revenue is down, and venue payouts haven’t kept up with inflation. His own band recorded a “reasonably pro-sounding” first album for under $5,000, which he calls “a shitload of dough for twentysomethings.” He sets the bar at breaking even on recording costs, because bands that keep paying out of pocket break up.
His toolkit, with the drawbacks of each:
- Bandcamp. Pay-what-you-want sales, streaming, merch, and high-def art and lyrics. Bandcamp and PayPal each take a cut. Zoë Keating’s Into the Trees debuted at No. 7 on Billboard’s classical chart on Bandcamp sales alone. The big drawback is that Bandcamp distributes music but brings no audience.
- Kickstarter. Fans fund recording before it happens. Kickstarter takes 10% off the top, fulfilling rewards eats into the rest, and success can backfire (he cites Amanda Palmer’s $1.2 million campaign and a Wired piece on overfunded projects that collapsed). A band can run its own PayPal donation drive instead.
- Streaming (Spotify, Pandora, Rdio). Good for listeners, barely any money for most artists. Keating earned under $300 from about 73,000 Spotify plays, and Galaxie 500’s Damon Krukowski reported $0.21 for almost 8,000. Streaming still offers exposure, and there’s weak evidence it reduces piracy.
- Make weirder merch. CDs aren’t coming back, but vinyl sales have grown for five years and were projected up 16% that year. His examples are unusual packaging: the Extraordinaires’ hardback books, COIL’s limited vinyl, Jack White.
- Tour wisely. Touring can “maul the hand of an inexperienced or inept user.” Start with weekend mini-tours, open for bigger bands, and don’t book shows 500 miles apart on consecutive nights.
- What else. Arts grants outside the US, licensing to film, TV and ads, and the idea of a musicians’ strike.
His conclusion is that the new model, “to the extent that one exists, is a modular one.” Music is heading back from vocation toward avocation. “It’s a marginal existence, but it’s a lot better than nothing.”
Full text
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Connections
- Spotify: the per-play numbers here (Keating’s under $300 for about 73,000 plays, Krukowski’s $0.21 for almost 8,000) are the 2012 artist-side view of streaming economics.
- Creator Economy: Bandcamp plus Kickstarter plus merch plus touring is the “modular” stack that later writing calls the creator economy. Moore describes it in 2012, before the term existed, from the artist’s balance sheet.