[LINK] Labels may be losing money, but artists are making more than ever

[Kim Holburn]

http://labs.timesonline.co.uk/blog/2009/11/12/do-music-artists-do-better-in-a-world-with-illegal-file-sharing/

> Do music artists fare better in a world with illegal file-sharing?
>
>
> This is the graph the record industry doesn’t want you to see.
>
> It shows the fate of the three main pillars of music industry  
> revenue - recorded music, live music, and PRS revenues (royalties  
> collected on behalf of artists when their music is played in public)  
> over the last 5 years.
>
> We’ve broken each category into two sub-categories so that, for any  
> chunk of revenue - recorded music sales, for instance - you can see  
> the percentage that goes to the artist, and the percentage that goes  
> elsewhere. (In the case of recorded music, the lion’s share of  
> revenue goes to the record label; in the case of live, the promoter  
> takes a cut etc.)
>
> Hopefully, this analysis - and there’s more on the nuts and bolts of  
> our method below - sheds some factual light on the claims and  
> counter-claims that are paranoically sweeping across the music  
> industry establishment, not least that put forward by the singer  
> Lily Allen in this paper recently - and the BPI - that artists are  
> losing out as a result of the fall in sales of recorded of music.
>
> The most immediate revelation, of course, is that at some point next  
> year revenues from gigs payable to artists will for the first time  
> overtake revenues accrued by labels from sales of recorded music.
>
> Why live revenues have grown so stridently is beyond the scope of  
> this article, but our data - compiled from a PRS for Music report  
> and the BPI - make two things clear: one, that the growth in live  
> revenue shows no signs of slowing and two, that live is by far and  
> away the most lucrative section of industry revenue for artists  
> themselves, because they retain such a big percentage of the money  
> from ticket sales.
>
> (It’s often claimed that live revenues are only/mostly benefitting  
> so-called ‘heritage acts’. Unfortunately, the data doesn’t shed any  
> light on this because live revenues are not broken down by type of  
> act, gig size or ticket price.)
>

...

> An even more striking thing, perhaps, emerges in this second graph,  
> namely that revenues accrued by artists themselves have in fact  
> risen over the past 5 years, despite the fall in record sales. (All  
> the blue bars in the chart above represent revenues that go directly  
> to artists. As you can see, the ‘blue total’ has risen noticeably.)  
> This is mostly because of live revenues, but also because of the  
> growing amount collected by the PRS on behalf of artists, which  
> accounts for a much bigger chunk of industry revenues than most  
> people realise.
>


-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
Ph: +39 06 855 4294  M: +39 3494957443
mailto:kim at holburn.net  aim://kimholburn
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