Kingsnake wrote:
Yeah, and Metallica killed napster. But that's besides the point.
Let's say I release a single via Bandcamp. It'll cost you 1 dollar. And you upload it on YouTube, so you can make money with advertisements. Then I made a total of 1 dollar and you'd make (let's assume it's a good song) dozens of dollars. How is that fair? And why do people support that?
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Okay, fair point.
Here's a fun fact - to date more musicians have posted replies in this thread than non musicians.
Considering that (like me) you have "officially" uploaded a track to Bandcamp and to YouTube.... how much money do you really make from each in relative terms? (not actual revenue perhaps but equivalent effective earnings based upon number of YouTube views per year multiplied by a typical YouTube CPM rate). Do you make (the equivalent of) dozens of dollars more from YouTube than Bandcamp?
I suspect not.
To earn a dollar from YouTube Ad revenue a person needs to exceed several thousand views on a regular basis. If you earn $1 from Bandcamp (which you can't actually do if your download price is $1, to earn $1 per download the download price has to be $1.18) then that "illegal" someone needs to earn $12 from pirating your track to YouTube, which means they'll have to exceed tens of thousands of views of your track. Similarly if you sell ten downloads then they'll have to achieve hundreds of thousands of views.
Calculating exact YouTube earnings isn't easy as how much YouTube pay out is dependant upon a lot of different factors, but it can be as low as 25¢ per thousand views. [so to earn $1 that's 4,000 views and to earn $12 that's 48,000 views]. This means that the 1:12 ratio doesn't really stack up given that your "popularity" on YouTube should be commensurate with your entire internet streaming profile (Bandcamp, Spotify and iTunes) including your "official" YouTube channel and therefore will be proportional to your track sales on CDBaby, Bandcamp and iTunes.
I recon that the truth is the other way around - if you earn $12 from Bandcamp someone pirating your stuff on YouTube will think themselves incredibly fortunate if they manage to earn $1 from your track.
Now, I'm going to guess that unless you are really a secretly successful Bandcamp artist then you are not making a vast amount of money there either. The maths of Bandcamp [the total amount of cash paid to artists ÷ total number of tracks available] simply does not allow every Bandcamp artist to be recouping their production costs, let alone making a profit.
It is actually far worse than that in real terms so here's a reality check: based upon every music revenue business model known to man is very likely that over 90% of Bandcamp revenue is paid to less than 2% of Bandcamp artists. Every sales channel follows a Pareto distribution and music sales are a very extreme form of that regardless of whether you are selling through a record label, a print-on-demand vanity service like CreateSpace or CDBaby, or an online retailer. The rule of 90%/2% didn't magically change when Bandcamp came on the scene. This means the remaining 10% of the money is divided among the other 98% of the artists. Of those 98% the top 2% again earn 90% of what's left and which leaves another 98% squabbling over the remaining 10%, of which the top 2% again reap 90% of that. Because this progression rapidly runs out of money it more or less ends there leaving 94% of the artists earning a fraction of a cent each.
The problem is, all Bandcamp artists are very cagey about revealing how much they really earn (because that kind of thing is "none of your business" - personal finance is as the name suggests - personal). This isn't a uniquely Bandcamp thing, this is true for most artists using most sales mediums, no one is willing to own-up to either making shed-loads of money or none at all because it's bad for business... and of course everyone thinks their big break is just around the corner. No one has more optimism than an delusional aspiring artist - after all if Amanda Palmer can make $15K in 3 minutes off Bandcamp then we all can, right? ...
Likewise Bandcamp themselves (being a privately owned business) do not reveal any financial data either, in fact they are one of the most secretive companies going when it comes to releasing any kind of stats - they simply say "Fans have paid artists $181 million using Bandcamp, and $4.7 million in the last 30 days alone" like that means something ...
... but it actually means nothing. It's a meaningless statement because they don't say a) how many artists that involved, and b) how that $4.7 million/month was distributed to those artists, nor do they say c) how many artists are registered on Bandcamp and d) how many tracks are available in total. $4.7 million a month sounds like a lot but if Bandcamp's database is 19 million tracks then that averages out at 25¢ per track or only one sale in every four uploads... which is not quite the optimistic utopia everyone dreams it to be. And if you apply the 90%/2% rule I stated earlier it means that only 1.1million tracks earnt any money at all in that month with the top 1/3rd of them earning $11 each and the bottom 1/3rd earning 12¢.
Here is a typical "Bandcamp" artist being open and honest about their earnings: " http://medium.com/@gloom303/a-year-ago-i-released-an-ep-on-spotify-itunes-and-bandcamp-this-is-what-i-l-earned-872925797930#.my46bvy00%20" rel="nofollow - A year ago I released an EP on Spotify, iTunes and Bandcamp. This is what I (L)Earned ."
This quote made me chuckle: "Naturally, there isn’t much money in being a completely unknown indie artist, but my goal has never been to make money, but rather not to lose money. So as long as I’m able to cover my expenses (server rental, mastering services, a new synth once in a while), I’m good."
In 10 months he earned $372 across all sales platforms. Methinks he's not even begun to cover his costs yet, nor will he ever. And that's perfectly fine, but looking at his streaming revenue ($14.63) I doubt he is that concerned about anyone making a fraction of that from his music on YouTube ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb66zfWB1Ts&list=RDBb66zfWB1Ts#t=215" rel="nofollow - 1,357 views ).
------------- What?
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