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What is the status of current label situation on the music market? (pg. 6)
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| Normie |
| quote: | Originally posted by Beatflux
There was an article a while back that explained how whoever is at the top of the genre gets most of the cheese.
Everyone here making trance, techno, dubstep, whatever are helping to support their genre's leader.
So what if you make the best trance trance track ever? It'll go onto an Armin compilation and from then on it'll be associated with Armin's name.
There are some people that even mislabel several trance classics to Tiesto's credit, and all that does it help Tiesto and hurt the real artist. |
That's all true. Now for the sake of discussion, lets say that the hypothetical "Groovy Trance Anthem (GTA) by breakthrough artist Beatflux goes on to become the "Airwave" or "Binary Finary" whatever of 2012 and achieves classic status.
If you follow the traditional route, you could well end up in your scenario. But if you keep your rights and use it as you see fit to YOUR benefit, GTA is never believed to be a Tiesto song. Even if you sign it to Armada, what stops you from avoiding starry eyed fanboy sindrome and saying, "You want the track I want promotion to go along with the big check. I want to profit from my name and work."
If Armin says get hosed, take the classic of a lifetime and promote it yourself as such and profit to the best of your ability.
My point is to step off the train and stop helping everyone else but yourself (not you personally, just speaking in general) make money and get famous. Spend that effort on yourself and those like the Trance/Story idea. |
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| Normie |
Again for the sake of discussion, have a look at Dave Brown from "You and What Army" - http://www.boyinaband.com
I'm not into his music that much but he's a fantastic teacher. He's doing tutorials, sells merch, tours, has played big festivals, has won Red Bull's unsigned band contest and others, sells and gives away music, all manner of things. He milks the social network thing for everything it's worth, is constantly updating his site, running contests, giving away samples...it's endless.
I find him inspiring as hell, even if I don't 'love' all his music. Though some is pretty damn good! Check him out for examples of what can be done to promote yourself/run your own personal music business. No label required. |
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| mfitterer1 |
If any producer is willing to sign tracks to a label without an advance, kindly exit stage left...
As someone currently setting up a label, I can tell you that there are labels that are coming around now and understanding there needs to be fundamental change for things to get better.
Also, if you don't get ad advance, tell them to off and promote it yourself hard. You'd be surprised how much of a % of the time people will pay you for your track solely because you're getting the actual profits and not $.40 cents of it. |
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| Rodri Santos |
| well of course i prefer to pay 1$ that goes 100% to the artist than paying 1,50$ when only 50 cents go to the artist, the store had no talent nor effort involved. It's crazy but we are doing the second. |
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| DJ RANN |
What I find most interesting about this thread is that everyone clearly realizes the current model is irreparably broken.
Now having said that, we are a group of enthusiast producers and DJ's, meaning we have a better understanding of the mechanics of the industry we're part of and have a slightly different skew, than the average music consumer. Granted EDM consumers are to some degree more educated in this manner than 90% of people buying mainstream music, but I doubt the average human knows, and in many case gives a damn, whether the artist is getting 50c more or less on a song purchase.
They care about accessibly (i.e. how easy it is for them to get it) and if they like the music (i'm not going to get in to a discussion about successfully marketing and selling millions of a crap track through gimmicks or trend following etc).
It's the ability to cover both of these two markets (enthusiast & mainstream consumer) that makes the big boys get all the cheese. I've met enough people (especially growing with the wave of fistpump DJ's a.k.a. Guetta, EC twins, SHM etc) who nothing about dance music but profess to be "in to EDM" - these people don't give a toss about artist payment %'s yet are in some ways avid (and gullible) consumers of music.
To be really successful, you have to cover these bases. Figure out a way to market to the educated and the great unwashed, in a way that fulfills both their particular needs. |
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| tehlord |
I've always been under the assumption that there was little to no money in anything remotely EDM related if you weren't interested in playing live or DJing, unless you happened to be extremely lucky.
If there is money to be made, I may well just destroy teh tarnce.
edit - of course making kick ass tracks is a prerequisite to any of the above. |
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| Raphie |
There is no money in EDM,
or you suck and get 10cts per track on <100 units sold
or you're good and appear on the Pirate Bay in an ASBO top100 compilation
both ways both ways you'll end up with no money. |
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| Looney4Clooney |
yes there is. You are making this assumption based on anecdotal evidence of you or you collegues sales which most likely are the type of tracks nobody would buy or would be released to vinyl meaning if you don't suck , you can make money. Honestly, this myth about no money is true for those that are not good enough. They are like the ty cover bands whining that there is no money in music,. Sure , not for you. But there is lots of money. Enough to make 100 k and afford a health insurance policy and live a normal life
more people are buying music now than ever. More sales. More money, Everything is more. I dont' understand where people are getting their information. Sure hardcopy sales are 0 but do you know that most artists actually make about the same from selling an entire cd and selling a singe on itunes ? Depending on the artist, a 20 cd back in the day could net you a 25 cent royalty. 25 cents on 20 dollars.
People that don't make money don't have a manager, don't have a publisher and they wonder why they aren't making money. I mean licensing alone, it is ridiculous. 1 track, 30 seconds on a syndicated show puts you in the top tax bracket. That is how easy it is, I mean you need to navigate and make your own luck and find the right people but like for example, alot of shows need dance music for a scene, instead of getting a track from an EDM artist, they go to those awful sound bank services and those guys make so much money with such ty music. But unless the show has a music supervisor in the know, well they don't know you exist so they rely on those companies that basically put 4 loops together.
I remember telling raphie I could send his info to one of those companies that does short clip[s that gets licensed and need all their clip mastered for tv broadcast. Basically a full time mastering job at standard rates ie about 5x he charges and enough work that you would have to hire people to pick up the slack and he doesn't even pm me. So ya, you aren't making money because you aren't hungry. The thing is that although i think raphie is awful , most people can't even tell. The budget is there, they need it mastered and if you do an ok job, well its yours.
So much has to do with just being able to do the job good enough. That is how you get hired, Can you meet the standard, do we like you , If both those answers are yes, you have a job., Nobody cares if you are jesus at the mixing console. If really is that simple.
But the model for EDM is ed up because they sell to djs. UNtil they realise how stupid this is, well .... And piracy is so small. People pirate huge collections. Tracks people like, that is an impulse buy and at 1 $ , you would be suerprized how many tracks you sell. But they sell becasue it is convenient. 1 portal 0-> itunes, 1 click done. That is why it works. It is effortless. But beatport, well nobody knows what the that is for one, and b, it is just not convenient enough. It caters to djs which is not who you should be selling to.
the sad part is that i am a musician composer with no business training what so ever. If this stuff isn't evident, i mean ya, there is an issue. I don't understand why this is such a surprise. Hire a manager or even pay a manager for 1 hour of consultation. Or if you live in a city where these people live, find out where they drink, make sure you have a hot friend, find the guy, introduce the girl, you have 20 minutes as he really wants to talk to that girl but in 20 minutes with a drunk music rep, you will learn alot. |
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| tehlord |
Funny you should mention the library sites as that's what I'm gunning for. I've got no interest at all in limelight or fame, I just want money.
Perhaps in another year when I'm happy with the mixes in the new studio. I'm pretty confident the content is there.
We'll see. |
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| Looney4Clooney |
| the problem is that the artists that submit their don't make money on those sites. The company does, but not the artist as you are given a one time pay out. lol sigh i know. Its like 70% of the people are getting ed and the rest are ing you. You just need to be on the non receiving end of the giant cock. |
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| tehlord |
Well a year or two ago I was just ing about as a hobby, but people seem to like my . I know I can write music as well. My issue was a lack of technical ability, but I'm solving that as time goes along with self education and gear.
I've already been paid on several occasions to write for people (not massive sums) and i'm making more than a part time income out of soundset sales so there's definitely money to be made one way or the other.
I'm out to create a brand anyway. No interest in being a superstar DJ as a) I'm too old to start it now and b) the attention would make me want to kill. |
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| Vector A |
| quote: | Originally posted by Looney4Clooney
yes there is. You are making this assumption based on anecdotal evidence of you or you collegues sales which most likely are the type of tracks nobody would buy or would be released to vinyl meaning if you don't suck , you can make money. Honestly, this myth about no money is true for those that are not good enough. They are like the ty cover bands whining that there is no money in music,. Sure , not for you. But there is lots of money. Enough to make 100 k and afford a health insurance policy and live a normal life |
Might want to give some numbers. How many of these people are out there making 100k with a nice health insurance policy? A few thousand? Couple tens of thousands? Out of how many tens of millions chasing the same dream? Sure it can be done but the odds are pretty terrible. So for most the advice "you will not make a living from this" is definitely the most likely outcome.
Not talking about people that work as mastering engineers or whatever. Just artists. |
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