[steven2012]

I'm curious what the net amount of money going to musicians are, as opposed to the amount of money going to record labels. That's much more important to me, because I don't care if the music labels starve, but if the musicians go broke, then there is no more content. And in this age, it seems strange that there isn't a good way for a musician to completely bypass labels altogether and just release music on their own, in a profitable manner.

Based on the numbers I've seen from posts here, Spotify clearly isn't the answer, it's just another mechanism to drive the value of content to $0. Maybe we'll see Spotify start their own music label and give artists money more directly, the way that Netflix and Amazon Prime are essentially creating their own TV stations.

[aikah]

> I'm curious what the net amount of money going to musicians are, as opposed to the amount of money going to record labels.

Before It didn't really matter. Yes artists were screwed on sales, but they were getting a lot of money before hand with juicy contracts. On a 10$ CD sale they used to win around 1$. The rest was made with touring ... So unlike today artists were getting a lot of money upfront. Anyway there were still getting 1/10 on each sale, compared to the pennies they get with Spotify...

A way to bypass labels hey? but running a label is a full time job. It's like saying, why don't artists do their own promo? why don't they do all their own design, videoclip, PR ,manage sells on digital plateforms, send DMCA takedown requests to thousands of websites, and design and sell tshirts/merchandize on their own ?... well you can't really make music, shows, be on the road,and manage all these things at once.

Sure,if you're JayZ,you can own your own label, your own plateform, and a whole team dedicated to all these stuff, but all artists aren't JayZ

Labels used to be "banks" for artists ,no more, no less. Try to bypass banking and see what happens.

Yet I'm optimistic.Things always evolve in an unexpected way. But to say "artists are better off without labels" is misunderstanding the role of labels.

[spiralpolitik]

For 90% of artists the record labels are now redundant. They can do everything themselves. Yes its going to be hard work, yes you are going to end up playing the same small venues year after year as you build your audience, and yes won't be heard on the radio (outside of NPR maybe) or breaking any sales records.

You will get a lifetimes career out of it and in the end you'll probably make more money than 90%+ of label signed artists. The key thing is the choice is now yours.

[Steko]

The artists are the ones that let the labels make all the sales/straming money. Take 10 decent artists, the label says "ok we like all of you, whoever will sign for the lowest % of music sales/streaming will get signed and promoted and has a good chance to get famous and make that much more from concerts, etc.". Of course they end up making all the sales/streaming money. That's not evil that's just how it works.

[drawkbox]

I think for this reason we will see more distribution platforms like Tidal started up because of this to challenge this even if many of them fail. Almost a renaissance that is similar to when Charlie Chaplin and others setup United Artists. Being your own artist + label isn't enough, now you need the distribution platform to really own the revenues.

[ianlevesque]

Yeah, as a music consumer I'm looking forward to using the next dozen music distribution platforms.

[drawkbox]

Louis CK created his very own for his comedy and I prefer it for sure, I know he does as well. You can still get it from all the normal channels, there will just be channels that you can get it better and more direct. I hope it doesn't turn into exclusives though and into a mess, it could if the labels keep with their greed.

[dreamfactory2]

Musicians can commercially self-publish on cdbaby, bandcamp and probably quite a few others. Most choose to do it via a label due to knowhow and marketing increasing reach to an extent which outweighs the cut taken.