Hard News: Press(ure) Play
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It's incredible how few acts reach any sales momentum at all, and how many self released acts sell almost nothing.
haha, i'd agree with you there, but thats not what the graph is about. Its not about the amounts artists are selling, but how much they would have to sell to achieve a certain level of income.
its totally irrelevant for the sake of the graph wether or not an artist could sell that number...ie, its not challenging whether it is more difficult or not to sell 156 copies of a physical CD vs 116 of a digital download...
it is just simply showing the options available to the artist and how they compare with each other, the chart is flawed as it misses one of the most relevant income streams of an artist - direct to public online sales, and going by the fact that the number of unsigned artists selling direct to public FAR FAR FAR outweighs the number of artists on major labels - then that info i feel is very relevant - regardless of whether or not you believe artists can sell that number.
i probably have it totally wrong.
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and, haha, leave the long tail outta this...
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going by the fact that the number of unsigned artists selling direct to public FAR FAR FAR outweighs the number of artists on major labels - then that info i feel is very relevant -
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that number of albums in total sold by unsigned artists, to both majors and indies working as labels, going direct to the public probably accounts for way less than one percent of all music sold worldwide, which given the large number that are doing that, which I agree is very substantial, that gives you an idea of how many units some are selling.
I'd like to think that direct sales from the likes of bandcamp and band sites did provide a reasonable source of income but I don't think it comes close for 99% of all musicians.
Most online sales come via those folks I linked to earlier and people like Amplifier /DRMNZ in New Zealand. Even an indie high profile act like Phoenix Foundation use EMI and other distributors worldwide.
And the long tail is utterly relevant because the studies that were done after it came out indicated that most musicians working outside some sort of label setup, minor or major, sell virtually nothing online directly. There are a very small number that do ok, but largely they're the exception to the rule.
I wish it were otherwise, but we're not there yet.
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Incidentally my Bandcamp purchase of The Phoenix Foundation's album is coming through at 3.9kbs
It's the third time I've tried to buy something off the site in the past three weeks with this result and I've almost given up. Way to sell a an album....
Everything else online today is blisteringly fast
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haha, the words of a jaded man.
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