Trials Of A Recording Artist

I just finished reading http://www.digg.com/music/Our_entitlement_mentality_An_artist_s_perspective_on_music_piracy and the comments posted at Digg.com. I must say I read the article thinking nothing unusual about its content and then when reading the comments I realized that the community was up in arms about it. I, for one of the first times, was on the non popular side of the argument. I think an artist should be compensated for a work of art.

Ok, so let's take the label situation out of it. An independent artists wants to record a full length cd or collection of songs as the artist plans to release online only and no discs will be pressed (call it a "green" mentality if you will). Let's also pretend that the artist is a solo act but wants full backing music on their release and they have no technical ability with regards to recording, mixing, or mastering. We will name said artist "Johnny Flower Pot".

Johnny has spent a year writing his songs, perfecting the transitions, scoring out the orchestration and arrangements for the sessions to come. He is ready to record.

He needs backing artists to play drums, electric guitar, piano, violin, and bass on the recording so he heads out to his local scene to talk to other musicians that he has in mind. He asks all the respected musicians in his area to help him out and he has a minimal budget to do the recording as it is out of his own pocket and this is his first release so his budget is small. All the musicians he asks agrees to play for no pay as long as he supplies them with fresh strings, or sticks, or picks, or food, or beer, or whatever. Small stuff in the big picture but probably $500.00 when it's all added up.

He next heads off to a local independent studio that a buddy built above his garage. The studio is pretty nicely equipped but to do Johnny's project the owner/technician says that he will need to rent drum mics, a couple of 'really nice compressors', and some mastering software. The rentals will cost about $200 for the duration of the project and the mastering software costs $300. Also to pay for the equipment already purchased and his time he will charge Johnny $30/hr for studio time (that is cheap if anyone has priced studio time lately). Johnny figures that he will allow 1 week for drums and bass, 1 week for piano guitar, 1 week for violin and vocals and his acoustic guitar tracks. Averaging 40hrs per work week that totals 120 hours or $3600.00.

Johnny and the owner then discuss mixing and mastering expectations and time lines. The studio tech figures 40 hours will cover that and he will do it for the same rate of $30 / hr or another $1200.00. Then Johnny has some sound files that can be burned or compressed and posted to the web or whatever.

So now lets tally that up:
$ 500.00 - Guest Musician Costs
$ 200.00 - Mic / Compressor Rentals
$ 300.00 - Mastering Software
$3600.00 - Recording Time
$1200.00 - Mixing / Mastering
TOTAL - $5800.00

So Johnny goes out to iTunes, PureTracks, eMusic, ect..... and posts the material for sale. Each of the web stores charges about $0.99 per track and Johnny gets $0.25 as his cut from the web store. That means that he needs to sell 23200 tracks to break even. On the recording cost alone.
Now to get to the point of being of caliber to record costs countless hours of dedication and practice not to mention any equipment needed. If Johnny plays an acoustic guitar and has a couple, I bet they weren't free.

So Johnny has just put his life into making a collection of music and just for the argument lets pretend that the music is really good. Johnny gets his friends and local fans to help him push 'the collection' online by posting on forums, facebook groups, myspace, pounce, they even get some play on some music podcasts. The popularity is growing and Johnny Flower Pot is becoming a known name and has actually sold half of the break even point on the webstores, or 11600 tracks.

Then someone posts 'the collection' on torrent sites, p2p networks, irc bots, ect. Johnny gets major popularity via this course, he's become almost as well known as Tay Zonday! But Johnny notices that the sales at the web stores has dropped off. How is Johnny to make back his costs?

Many of you will say from playing shows and selling merchandise and that is a potential money maker but touring is a job unto itself with expenses and startup costs. Merchandise requires a capitol investment to get the product made. So Johnny is now in a bad place.

This is a reality for a major amount of musicians they work "day jobs" to pay for their music career because they can't spin the popularity into a means to live. Not all musicians want to be rich, they just want enough cash to live like anyone else but without some type of backing it's not really possible in the new / changing music market. Unless they sign to a label or have rich parents most artist fail right where Johnny did.

Thanks for reading.... argue away.