Quote:
Originally Posted by Supz
I agree with you. All I am saying that is albums are not the only avenue anymore. It is not everybody. But this has always been that way. Although I do believe (It is my opinion) that more people make more money now, then before. Before it was the big names, big bands, for many many years. Also, there are a lot more bands, rappers, singers etc now. Then there was lets say 20-25 years ago. Everyone wants to entertain now. Talent or no talent.
But artists like 'Solja Boy'. who doesnt sell albums. Has 1 hit son etc. Can still earn a living because of social media. He has no talent, but millions of instagram followers..
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While there are some people who do make money from a hit song then selling the ring tone and making money from views on youtube etc, the middle class in music pretty much doesn't exist any more.
Back in the early 90's I worked for a small record label. We had bands that never got played on the radio (outside of college radio) yet many of them did pretty well for themselves. Between the publicity we could get for them through music magazines and press and them constantly touring they would do okay. We had several bands that would sell out 500+ seat places every night on their tours. I know that doesn't sound like much, but they were getting about $5 per person for those shows so the band was making $2,500 a night from ticket sales and another $1,500-$2,000 per night selling T-shirts and other merchandise. They would do 100 dates per year and clear $100K per band member just from touring. They weren't getting rich, but they were doing pretty good for an unknown indie band and some of them would go on to sign with bigger major labels and that early success helped them get better deals.
Those kinds of bands rarely exist anymore. Part of it is the competition. The cost of putting together an album is next to nothing now. Anyone with a laptop can record, mix and master an album if they want to. Then you can put it out and sell it on places like iTunes. The amount of competition because of that is staggering. Most of the music sucks and it makes just that much more difficult for the good bands to find an audience. So there might be more total people making money because you have a ton of people making a few hundred or a few thousand dollars from their music, but it appears there area lot fewer acts that are mid-list and make a living just doing music.