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Dec 9, 1999 |
Singing the MP3 blues
BY EMILY VANDER VEER
(12/02/99)
Why any musician would think that simply putting his or her music online would give them "exposure," I cannot imagine. Anyone who has been on the Internet for more than 10 minutes knows that there are millions upon millions of things to see or do or listen to for every minute of possible viewing time. With thousands of musicians with identical-sounding music and equally ironic/random names, how is anyone supposed to choose?
-- Mark Solomon
Not all musicians measure success by CD sales to perfect strangers on a national or international scale anymore. Not every recording artist is young, single and struggling to "make it" in music. In fact, with the advent of home digital recording, many 40-something musicians can now record the album of their dreams without giving up their computer consulting businesses or their IRAs or their children's schools (or even their grandchildren's).
Many of these career musicians set up expensive home studios and produce quality music for the ultimate reason: self-satisfaction. Therein lies the true genius of MP3.com: They'll host your music with bio and links and a credit card transaction service in a site that's guaranteed both to not cost you a penny and to get you heard by somebody, even if it's nobody important. You might even sell a copy, even if it's only to your mother, without costing you zip. And if you happen to have a band that plays gigs, you put your MP3.com site on your publicity and you no longer have to mail out demo tapes.
I sold about a dozen of my piano albums with very little effort and no cost in my first few months at MP3.com, and reaped a good number of gigs by having an easy site for my private-party clients to find and listen to my music. And I have a friend who sold an average of 100 CDs a month this past summer by targeting specific country-music newsgroups with ads for his country-blues MP3.com site. I don't think we're exceptional. And BMI wasn't searching for a place to mail either of us our royalty checks before MP3.com either.
-- Jim Eshleman
When an artist signs up at MP3.com, the contract states that the artist will be paid at the end of each business quarter -- unless the total amount due at the end of a quarter has not exceeded $50, in which case the payment will be held until the first quarter that the artist's due payment has reached $50. What this means: Since MP3.com shares revenue 50/50 with the artist, an artist must sell at least $101 before they "earn" 50 bucks. So, a band could sell 97 songs at a buck each, and never get paid. Who keeps the cash? Mp3.com, of course!
-- Abbey Smith
One of the principal problems with actually buying CDs from MP3.com is that they are still too expensive. MP3.com has several artists whose work I would like to collect, but their CDs still cost about $10; call that $15 Canadian. After I get past the initial cost, plus any shipping cost, plus Canadian federal sales tax (7 percent) plus an extortionate $5 (Canadian) "handling fee" from Canada Customs, I am looking at a final bill of well over $20 Canadian -- quite a bit more than the cost of a store-bought CD (usually $16 to $18 Canadian). That's a problem.
The key is to sell the CDs cheap and stay away from middlemen. Get the price down -- below the cost of at-the-store CDs -- and online artists will sell plenty more than one CD per month.
-- David T. Anderson
Emily Vander Veer's article contains a slight inaccuracy about the music business when she states, "In exchange for the high percentage they make off CD sales, record companies fork out big bucks. They pay for a CD to be recorded, mixed, mastered and pressed and they pay to develop the artwork and promote the finished recording."
Those costs are initially paid by the record labels, but most (especially recording costs) are considered recoupable, and paid as an advance against future royalties payable to the artist. If the artist doesn't sell enough CDs to cover these costs out of their cut, they receive no money from the label, though they don't owe the difference to the label, either.
-- Rebecca Luxford
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