compa wrote:If money is a matter, I'd suggest, stop making music now.
^^ this ^^^
this is extremely naive in my opinion, u gotta feed urself, u gotta keep up to date with music software, hardware would be nice, money is unfortunately, for good or for bad- the root of all that, by producing u will never earn big bucks (unless ur liek skream or someone like that) so there is no point in thinking it will make u rich, but if u want to earn some bucks to progress ur sound through re-investing in synths etc then there is nothing wrong in wanting to be paid.
however ur speaking to someone who got labelled Gorden Gekko on a recent Guardian poll of how radical are u? lol.
although saying that it was the guardian and they are some liberal f*%&^ bullshit
i hope to be making obnoxious music well into my 80's, and i expect to make no money from it, thats what its about right? ....sitting down on a sunday morning with a whole pot of coffee, then realizing its 8 pm and you forget where the day went. maybe in 80 years theyll have some visual projected way to make music, like a less lame xbox kinect kind of way....
Vinyl more often than not doe's not make money at all you take big gambles on vinyl due to manufacture and mastering and artwork although the later is normally the cheapest part you need to be selling 300 to 400 units just to break even vinyl is not cheap to buy and the customer base for it is very limited.
Labels like Swamp, DMZ, Tempa and the like will always sell well but to get to this level of reputation these days can cost anyone a small fortune and yes you can do a P and D deal but if your first release bombs they wont risk putting out another and that’s where your mp3's start to cover the cost of your vinyl and then ultimately you end up with a bill and a load of unsold vinyl in your house or pay a storage fee.
If all the people on forums who bang on about vinyl actually went out and bought it there would be no problem but this is just not the case. The vinyl market has seen a huge decline in the last 10 years and any distro firm will tell you that, it is a fact.
One comment with the guy saying the label said they should never have pressed his tune is out of order it’s the labels responsibility to push and sell those records not his! You take risks with vinyl and they should know this and not make him feel bad about it or even make comments like that.
As for percentages of sales in my experience it usually goes like this, Mp3's are split 50\50 with the store you sell at unless you have a different deal but this is usually the norm. But if you have a main distributor for your digital they will then take an additional 15 percent from each sell so a label ends up with 35 percent of the sale then split with an artist which is usually 50\50 makes the artist 17.5% shocking I know but there’s costs and time for everyone involved running big sites like Beatport, Juno and Boomkat is not cheap!!!. And with upload sites freely dishing out mp3’s it’s a struggle to justify to most people why they should buy it when they can take it without anyone knowing.
But I will tell you this if you DJ or love good sound quality buy from shops there’s plenty of occasions where I have been at clubs and heard a warm up DJ play a blatantly ripped tune, they sound awful and it makes you look like a scab well that’s what I thought anyway.
On the face of it decent labels take time to place and sell your music plus they already have a good customer base and contacts for getting your music heard its either you take the time to set up a site build up a rep or go to a label then like most people if your well received you can start your own label.
PERCEPT wrote:Probably made about £150, and spent well over £800 on production equipment in the process.
But Percept, you're fairly new to the game, I'm sure in time you will begin to make more and more, especially because your tunes are fucking HUGE! (Finger's crossed for Boxed In) Really though? Just 150? On that Corrupt tune? That compilation was in the top 5 on juno for quite some time, I'm surprised you didn't make more.
I've always wondered how artist get paid on juno. Or how the downloading tunes / payment to the producer works. Is it like, for every download you get a portion of the buyers payment, or like, for every 100 tunes sold you get x amount of dollars?
To get top 5 on a download site like Juno in the Dubstep section you only really have to sell a couple of hundred units, once you take out mastering costs and the royalties get split..
X amount to distro
After that cut..
X amount goes to label
X amount goes to artist
It works out that if you sell 100 units for a 2 track single and get free mastering, artwork and all that stuff; sell it for a 1pound and distro takes 20% then label splits 50/50 with you; you earn roughly 40p a sale so ... lets add that up.
0.40x100 = 40 quid.
But again; you have to include mastering costs, promotional funding, artwork, etc etc.. That 40 quid soon turns to 10 quid.
There isn't money in selling digitally or vinyl unless you're putting out/selling thousands of units.
Soulstep wrote: My point is i just wanna hear more vibes
It works out that if you sell 100 units for a 2 track single and get free mastering, artwork and all that stuff; sell it for a 1pound and distro takes 20% then label splits 50/50 with you; you earn roughly 40p a sale so ... lets add that up.
No it goes 50\50 with the shop you sell it at so if its a pound the shop gets 50 pence then if you have a distro like ST Holdings or Nu Urban they then take 15 percent of the 50 pence from the label making the label total 35 pence.
No it goes 50\50 with the shop you sell it at so if its a pound the shop gets 50 pence then if you have a distro like ST Holdings or Nu Urban they then take 15 percent of the 50 pence from the label making the label total 35 pence.
Which is exactly what I said.
And thats not true about the shops..
Digital Tunes for instance works at 80/20 if I remember correctly? Thats why you get on a distro because the cuts are different due to the relationships they have with the retailers.
Soulstep wrote: My point is i just wanna hear more vibes
Yeah the label gets 35 pence then if its a split with the artist they then get 17.5 pence not what you said, you said you get 40 pence to the artist Digital Tunes do do great deals but most shops do not charge that low a fee. I do have a statement infont of me telling me what the percentages are for all the shops.
ImKindaOfABigDeal wrote:If all the people on forums who bang on about vinyl actually went out and bought it there would be no problem but this is just not the case. The vinyl market has seen a huge decline in the last 10 years and any distro firm will tell you that, it is a fact.
Do you mean strictly for EDM? Because last year saw the best year for record sales since 1993 (at least in America). Here's a UK article from just three weeks ago http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/musi ... slump.html
I've read a bunch of different articles and industry stats on this; I'd rather not dig around for them now, but if you're unconvinced, I can.
compa wrote:If money is a matter, I'd suggest, stop making music now.
Discussing this is as unprofessional as discussing fees.
I disagree to some extent... obviously if money is your sole reason for making tunes then yeah, stop. But if you wanna make tunes and DJ for a living then you've gotta earn money from it, if you aren't then you'll have to get another job.. hugely limiting your time to produce and DJ.
In Pearson Sounds redbull academy interview he said that he makes the majority of his money from DJing so producing was pretty much promoting himself (from a business point of view, he clearly doesn't make tunes just so he can DJ.. im sure he does it because he loves making tunes).
PERCEPT wrote:Probably made about £150, and spent well over £800 on production equipment in the process.
But Percept, you're fairly new to the game, I'm sure in time you will begin to make more and more, especially because your tunes are fucking HUGE! (Finger's crossed for Boxed In) Really though? Just 150? On that Corrupt tune? That compilation was in the top 5 on juno for quite some time, I'm surprised you didn't make more.
I've always wondered how artist get paid on juno. Or how the downloading tunes / payment to the producer works. Is it like, for every download you get a portion of the buyers payment, or like, for every 100 tunes sold you get x amount of dollars?
To get top 5 on a download site like Juno in the Dubstep section you only really have to sell a couple of hundred units, once you take out mastering costs and the royalties get split..
X amount to distro
After that cut..
X amount goes to label
X amount goes to artist
It works out that if you sell 100 units for a 2 track single and get free mastering, artwork and all that stuff; sell it for a 1pound and distro takes 20% then label splits 50/50 with you; you earn roughly 40p a sale so ... lets add that up.
0.40x100 = 40 quid.
But again; you have to include mastering costs, promotional funding, artwork, etc etc.. That 40 quid soon turns to 10 quid.
There isn't money in selling digitally or vinyl unless you're putting out/selling thousands of units.
ImKindaOfABigDeal wrote:If all the people on forums who bang on about vinyl actually went out and bought it there would be no problem but this is just not the case. The vinyl market has seen a huge decline in the last 10 years and any distro firm will tell you that, it is a fact.
Do you mean strictly for EDM? Because last year saw the best year for record sales since 1993 (at least in America). Here's a UK article from just three weeks ago http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/musi ... slump.html
I've read a bunch of different articles and industry stats on this; I'd rather not dig around for them now, but if you're unconvinced, I can.
Yeah mostly EDM those articles you quoted are talking about acts like Radiohead,Paul Weller, Kasabian, Arctic Monkeys and Lady Gaga and some of them put out special 'vinyl only' release's which is why they sold well hence pushing the vinyl sales up. This thread is talking about artists who come on this forum and thats where Im coming from. Some EDM labels still sell decent amounts of vinyl but its a far cry from even 5 years ago. Talk to any EDM distro firm they will tell you the same. And its a fact that those distro firms relay on the digital sales to keep them going. It is also obvious that more and more Dj's are using Traktor, Serato and CDJ'S. I honestly love the sound and feel of vinyl when mixing and respect anyone that takes time and money to produce or buy it. Id love to see the articles your talking about if you have the time.
I've read a bunch of different articles and industry stats on this; I'd rather not dig around for them now, but if you're unconvinced, I can.
The big takeaway from this article is that digital download sales are up 25%, which is a huge increase. I think download sales will eventually surpass physical CD sales in the UK, and they are scheduled to pass CDs here in the US this year.
However, there is also now more competition than ever before, and when you throw in artists who release works for free (big ups and respect for them), you gotta either be willing to be very poor or not count on music to pay the bills if you want to exist as a musician at all (as applies to 99.9% of all aspiring musicians/producers/DJs, who are not on major labels).
For the record, I got signed, conned, and now my music is for sale (or free) on several sites not even associated with my ex-record label, and of course I haven't got a cent from them. Lord knows who got my Amazon or iTunes money, which probably wasn't that much to begin with, but anyway.. its frustrating and I've given up doing it "for the money." I kind of never did; maybe that was my main problem.
