[jdquey]

What if the music industry saw the sales of their music more as a marketing awareness play than an income generator?

Songs played on Youtube, Spotify, Pandora, etc. and their covers drives little direct revenue to the artist. I doubt that will change anytime soon.

However, that drives serious brand awareness to the artist, who could then sell other add-ons (music tickets, t-shirts, limited edition releases, etc)

Maybe I'm naive to the industry. But most business owners I know would kill for marketing that paid them and returned an ROI.

[6stringmerc]

No, you're absolutely correct in the traditional way of doing business - just think back to AM/FM radio in the US. The songs were advertisements to go buy the record, which made the record companies a lot of money and the musician usually pennies.

Once people didn't have to pay huge mark-up to get music they rationalized that musicians weren't getting much anyway - so, let's spend our money on live shows, merchandise, fan club stuff - and there's a lot of music lovers that I believe have spent their money from recorded music on other music related things. Not sure there's data to support it, but I've always thought of recordings as kind of the throw-away element to being in the music industry: Nobody makes money on them unless you get them in a TV commercial or a movie soundtrack.

[whatok]

> However, that drives serious brand awareness to the artist, who could then sell other add-ons (music tickets, t-shirts, limited edition releases, etc)

Not all genres lend to live performance. Not all audiences buy t-shirts. Not all audiences purchase music at all.

[jdquey]

What genres have artists that do not sell anything outside of their music?