Earn Money Because Of Your Music, Not From It

47 365 Music, Maestro!

Photo Credit: *spudballoo*

In the search for a new industry model, this concept comes up frequently. Not only does it constantly keep appearing in all the music industry blogs (heres a list you should be subscribed to), it actually works.

The idea is that you don’t earn money from selling your music, you earn money because of your music. So instead of trying to survive off your record, your focus should be on getting your record into the hands and ears of every single person you can.

We could sit back, whine and sue file sharers

The old industry practically survived on earning money from an artists music. The idea being to sell 500,000 (or usually more) CD’s will make a profit. In the past when dealing with tangible units, this economic model of supply/demand works.

You can actually see the major labels trying to cling onto this model with their lawsuits against file shares, or more recently the PPCA’s proposed increase to broadcast royalties.

But the democratization of media (read, the arrival of the internet) has lead to the easy transfer of intangible units. If want you could ignore this fact and continue with the old supply/demand model. The internet is becoming such a major part of our lives though, it can no longer be ignored.

A New Model

We could sit back, whine and sue file sharers. Attempt to destroy peoples lives to remain in the comfort of our ‘proven’ model, whilst demonizing ourselves at the same time. Or, we can take the mature route and recognize and accept the times and culture has changed, and so our business needs to as well.

If we embrace the change we can empirically see happening, we can survive it. Embracing it though, requires a change in mindset. We need to shift the economic focus from selling albums and songs, to selling music and artists.

The shift is to move to a model of complementary goods. This has already been made (for the most part) by consumers, we as creators and artists need to recognize this and change too.

In the next post in this three part series we’re going to analyse exactly what complementary goods are in relation to the music industry, why this works, how you can use it to your advantage.