I was noticing that when songs are released they are almost immediately available on-line, sometimes on Youtube within minutes. They don’t make much from that, but fans go to concerts - that is where the money is made these days. Not in album sales.
The article listed streaming audio as one of the top 5 markets. And then indicated it brings in maybe 10% of the revenue.
And even then, the artists aren’t the ones seeing the revenue stream.
Time to do away with RIAA/ASCAP/BMI. They’ve pocketed enough already.
“It’s okay to stream the songs so long as the enforcers of copyright still get a cut, with fractions of pennies paid to the actual writer/singer...”
And that’s not to even bother with invoking all of the royalties collected that were never paid out.
Some labels like Bloodshot or YepRoc permit you to stream songs or albums online (at the label’s site).
This is good because the CD listening station in stores (and the record listening station of older days) for new releases is largely non-existent.
It’s tough to justify gambling on a “new” album when you’ve liked their work in the past. Some just aren’t up to snuff, or offering anything “different” than the last one, or are too different. Get burned once and you may not go back at all. Live shows generally include a mix of old and new material.
And the article mentions that the industry is lucky if people buy one new album a month. That’s quite a bit actually. Unless you live in a social environment like college or high school.
Growing up, I didn’t have 48 new albums. Maybe I’d get one at birthday, and two at Christmas, and buy a couple during the year. And some used ones from garage sales and some cut outs and check out some albums from the library. You’d learn more about the music from the albums you owned as it became your music/your soundtrack.