Who is Making $1Million Every Hour in the Music Biz?
You just heard me talk about labels making 1 million per hour from streaming, and we're gonna dive right into that.
But as my return subscribers would know, this is when we talk about the artists of the day for 25 seconds, so let's do it! All right. Today's artists that you might not know about, but you should know about is: Buffalo Stack. This band is led by a wonderful guitar based in the Hudson Valley, Beacon, New York; his name is Andy Stack, and he's been touring and playing with many artists as a sideman for a long time. In the last few years, he started releasing records and singles under his own band called Buffalo Stack. I have always been a fan of Andy's playing, and also at the way he writes songs - it really sort of has that Hudson Valley singer songwriter of vibe to it, with all the roots and all the depth that so many musicians and artists that have come out of that area really possess. Under normal circumstances, you can hear him play all over the Hudson Valley all the time, at venues like the Falcon, which is like the best venue I think on the East Coast. So enough of me gushing about Andy and his wonderful band, click this link to listen!
So let's talk about that one million.
I don't know about you, but this year I had really big plans for 2020. I had it all figured out, written down on a sheet of paper ready to get started, and then March came around and everything went to crap. Well, that's not the case for the record labels. I should clarify that they lost money in live events and their artists going out and working, but what has not fallen off the face of the earth as far as revenue is concerned, is streaming in the last three months, they have done over 22 billion in revenue just from streaming. Yes, in the last three months, which breaks down to a little over a million dollars per hour.
It's pretty ridiculous because I mean, we're in the middle of a pandemic and no one's making money, but they are. What does that say about the industry that we're in right now? I mean, beyond the obvious that we're not getting paid enough as artists - what it says is that streaming is extremely profitable and we as artists need to continue to take stands into getting our rates raised as far as what we get paid for the streams, but more importantly, we need to start taking the streaming platform seriously, and we need to start thinking about how we can up our streams and up our followers on these platforms so that we can benefit from this type of usership.
So what does that mean for you? Does that mean that you have to sort of leave these old 1970’s archaic ideas of what the record label industry is all about and how you release art? I think so, I think it's time for us to start thinking about a regularly scheduled programming of releasing music, and it doesn't mean that you have to abandon some of those things that you like so much, like albums, for example, you can still release an album in a year, but maybe think about making each one of those songs count and release them individually throughout the entire calendar year. Say your album's twelve songs long, release it one song per month, and then at the end of that, let it amalgamate into an album that you're proud of, it gives a chance for each one of your songs to be consumed by the people that love your art, because let's face it, when we release an album these days, people go and listen to the first song or two, and then they click on to the next thing, even if they're your friends in some cases, so doesn't it make sense for us to just make sure each one of those songs are heard by making in an individual event for each one of those songs?
Coupled with a little bit of learning about how the Spotify platforms work and all the other streaming platforms work, you might be surprised what you're able to accomplish, and by accomplish - I do mean, how many people see your songs.
Leave comments down below with content you’d like me to talk about, I always love hearing from you. So until next time, I'm Sweet Deat!