Artists Make More Money in File-Sharing Age Than Before It

[TalkingDog]

http://torrentfreak.com/artists-make-more-money-in-file-sharing-age-than-before-100914/

Every other month a new study addressing the link between music piracy and music revenues surfaces, but only a few really stand out. One of the most elaborate and complete studies conducted in recent times is the master thesis of Norwegian School of Management students Anders Sørbo and Richard Bjerkøe.

In their thesis, the students take a detailed look at the different revenue streams of the music industry between 1999 and 2009. By doing so, they aim to answer the question of how the digitization of music – and the most common side-effect, piracy – have changed the economic position of the Norwegian music industry and Norwegian artists. The results are striking.

After crunching the music industry’s numbers the researchers found that total industry revenue grew from 1.4 billion Norwegian kronor in 1999 to 1.9 billion in 2009. After adjusting this figure for inflation this comes down to a 4% increase in revenues for the music industry in this time period. Admittedly, this is not much of a growth, but things get more interesting when the research zooms in on artist revenue.



Obvious caveat: Torrent Freak has a vested interest in promoting studies with outcomes favorable to them.....

[Evasporque]

1. more artists make some money...rather than a few record companies

and artists...making MOST of the money.

[TalkingDog]

2. Most of the people I know who make music, do much better

when they sell their own stuff.

Not much fame, not much glory, but if that's what matters to you....

[Edweird]

3. That's the reality. You don't make anything from unit sales.

You make it from touring and merchandising. The record labels were a way to gain exposure - so you could get better paying gigs....

[L0oniX]

4. The big money for a popular artist was/is concerts ...not music sales...

ACDC holds the world wide top ticket sales record of the year at about $100 per ticket. Having their latest release at Walmart didn't hurt the promotion of concerts either. Remember that for most signed groups, recording sales profits go back to the company who paid for the recording, CD or other production, promotion, packaging, distribution, etc. You have or had to go platinum for a group to make money from recording sales.