Answers from Professional Musicians Needed

[LydonB]

50,000 anywhere in the damn world actually. I don´t think Derek Riggs was "maybe" exaggerating, he was being a plain asshole hahaha


Good to hear real facts from people into the business, like Egan and James, clears things up

I completely agree.

It's a fair complaint to say that 10-15% isn't enough going to the artist, however it's impossible for me to follow the logic that would suggest that it's somehow more fair to give them 100% of $0 from a d/l album.

Also agree with this. I guess that 100% of zero sounds better to some people.

 

[Fox Mulder]

Yeah, Iron Maiden is a small band, right? A small band that sells out a 50,000 capacity venue in Sweden. That's fucking tiny, right?

20,000 in Mumbai, India

 

[TheDude]

the above are facts, not an opinion. anyone who thinks otherwise has not toured or dealt with labels over recording budgets.... so stfu.

that's the way it is.

Ah, being Swedish is such a bummer sometimes. Thank you James, for translating my ramble into plain English. Exactly what I wanted to say.

 

[Charlie E.]

sorry for the off-topic question man, but what did you have to do in the aghora debut? band member, producer or something?

Band member.

 

[DanLights]

Band member.

Checked you out on Metal-archives, actually had no idea Aghora ever had second guitarrists, always thought Santiago did everything. Pretty cool you played there though.

 

[nwright]

I think it really depends on the type of music you are playing, and what scene you are part of.

Bands like Bring me the Horizon will be making a shit load of money in publishing, and merchandise. We are talking about at least 300-600 kids a night buying a £10 shirt. That will work out at around £2000-3000 a night in merch sales, or more depending on the amount of shirts being sold. My old music teacher used to be in a band called Neds Atomic Dustin, quite well known indie band, and he said on a good night they could be making anywhere between £5000-10,000 a night from merch. You work out how many Cd's you need to sell. Obviously the downside is, you need to be constantly touring, so you can keep on releasing merch, and tour specific merch.

Bands like Hot Chip (dance orientated pop) will be making their money from publishing more than anything else. When your music is appearing constanlty on TV (like rap music on MTV) you will be earning money.

CD sales obviously come into this, and depending on your contract the label may not care as much about CD sales if merch sales are going well and they have a 360 deal.

Disclaimer - Not an expert, just saying what I know from people in bands.

I wonder what difference it makes now compared to when Ned's Atomic Dustbin was active in terms of his figures and/or mindset. I remember them from the 90's, back when people still bought music.

 

[James Murphy]

people still do buy music... if they weren't a LOT fewer albums would be coming out. however, budgets have been slashed and release schedules scaled back a bit... too many more people stop buying CDs and you can bet that it won't be long before the only albums being made are made by already wealthy acts, and self-recorded albums done on the super cheap...and most of them will sound like it too. hooray for dah interwebzz!! :smirk:

 

[DanLights]

people still do buy music... if they weren't a LOT fewer albums would be coming out. however, budgets have been slashed and release schedules scaled back a bit... too many more people stop buying CDs and you can bet that it won't be long before the only albums being made are made by already wealthy acts, and self-recorded albums done on the super cheap...and most of them will sound like it too. hooray for dah interwebzz!! :smirk:

what you say is saddening and true, and it seems there's not much bands or labels can do about it, you can convince some people on some message boards to keep buying but the mass downloading-instead-of-buying issue will not stop. We had this discussion with a dude from a Death metal label in another forum not long ago. Labels should try to find different ways to sell the music that either gives more value to the physical thing (some labels sell some very tastey combos which include the cd, a poster and a hoodie and stuff like that for like 75$ or something, I've been told that has worked pretty well) or absorbs the whole digital thing.

I'm not trying to tell labels what to do, Just a thought of mine. Right now Cds are a "product" and musicians in making music that people enjoy is more of a "service", they give you the service of entertaining you with the music they make. Turning the service of the music into the product of albums (Vinyl, cds, whatever) has proved a great business in past years, but doesn't seem to be doing well against the """free service""" (I know it's illegal and wrong, hence the superquoting) of downloading those albums. I heard a suggestion once from someone that maybe labels should turn the music into a service, as in maybe charging monthly fees to have the right to download certain albums/songs, or other privileges I couldn't think of or remember for the life of me.

Anyways, just a thought, not trying to tell anyone what to do about the situation

 

[LydonB]

I think if labels got rid of CD's, it would be a horrible decision on their part. I like to have an actual tangible product, not a bunch of 0's and 1's on my hard drive. I like the concept of being able to download an album off iTunes, but I hate the "product" that I get.

 

[Keessi]

afaik most of the money bands make is from the merch.
but I also think it depends a lot on how big the band is. I know some dudes in black tide, and I've never heard them talk about merch.. but they are famous as shit.
I know other dudes with a cd out on willowtip and they are far more worried about how many shirts they sell than cds

We're on willowtip with afgrund and we have shitloads more shirts than CD's with us for a 3 week tour that's starting next week. Small bands get money from merch a lot more than CD's.

 

[tearsofthedragon]

Riggs had a falling out with Maiden, so he's probably a bit bitter in that respect, but it wouldn't suprise me either if Maiden do make more of selling merch than album sales, plus Iron Maiden only started getting big again around 2003.