Digital Media & An Evolving Music Industry

There has been so much change in the music industry in the past few decades that has truly altered the way people consume their favorite songs. The increase in diversity and variety when it comes to how accessible music is in our current time is expansive. The accessibility is closely linked to a transition away from radio-only music consumption, and the ability for consumers to reach the exact music they wanted to at any given time. While radio is by no means out of the picture entirely, the music industry has definitely evolved and it has allowed anyone with the right technology to access pretty much any published song in the world. Which is what leads to the fascinating fact that being a musician and an artist in this era of music is so much more within reach to broad audience. With apps like Spotify and music databases like iTunes, people can reach your music much easier, with an instant click.

The three songs that I chose to discuss for this are Your Song by Elton John, which was produced by DJM Records, You Make My Dreams by Hall & Oates, produced by RCA Records, and finally, Billy Joel’s Piano Man, produced by Columbia Records. DJM was an independent record label out of Britain, RCA is owned by Sony Music, and Columbia Records is owned by Sony Music Entertainment. A consumer pays about one dollar per song on average from places like iTunes and other music selling platforms. I even think things like Spotify have popularized the idea of spending per month for a subscription to all available music, rather than per song or album. 

In terms of royalties, it really depends on which platform or company that is distributing the music. It varies from distributor to distributor and also is dependent on who the artist is; whether independent or not. I came across an article from a few years ago discussing a new announcement from Apple about how they would be compensating their artists, “The New York Times reports that Apple will be paying labels 0.2 cents for each song streamed, a rate that the Times notes is “roughly comparable to the free tiers from services like Spotify.” Framing the rate into more digestible terms, Apple will pay labels $1 for every 500 streams.” (Heisler) So it is clear from both this example as well as in the other readings from this week that being paid as an artist by some of these top distributors can be a challenge. I actually have a friend who released his first album on Spotify and told me it is difficult to make a lot of money when you do not have a solid base of fans waiting for a release. Additionally, I found this interesting video from a creator named Landon Austin, who discusses exactly how artists make money from specifically YouTube:

The way an artist gets paid from a song download/purchase is a trickle-down process beginning with the distributor or retailer, through the record label, to anyone else involved with the producing of the song, and then finally to the artist themselves. Additionally, seeing how one YouTube video can generate thousands of dollars in ad revenue really puts into perspective how much one song can produce money-wise in just one publication of it online. I think it was interesting in the Rolling Stones article that artists who broke away from their label and worked on their own instead were able to profit so much more off of platforms such as YouTube. This is because the revenue is not going through a series of middlemen who helped get the song from the artist out into the world- instead it is just the artist and the world, no one else in between.

So for the top three songs that I chose earlier, looking closer at how the money is distributed, I watch Piano Man by Billy Joel on YouTube. It is a video published by Vevo. That video currently has over 126 million views. There are two ads, one at the beginning of the music video, and one at the end. If an artist makes $1 to $1,000 per video play, as the Rolling Stone article suggests, Piano Man published by Vevo could be making millions of dollars. And that is just one publication of the song on one platform- imagine all the dozens of others. I came across this infographic from Statista that shows who pays the best per music streaming service to artists:

This was a very interesting look into the music industry and its many ways songs reach the public. It is easy as the modern music consumer to get used to being able to just quickly download a music app or grab a song from a sharing platform. The time is definitely different from a solely radio-based music industry. Digital media has impacted how our society enjoys music and entertainment as a whole, and I think the primary way is in its speed. Our modern digital world demands everything take as little time as possible- people do not want to wait to listen to their favorite song. The digital media of today offers the ability for music consumers to access every publicly produced song ever, all with the click of a button. Looking deeper into how each individual is paid, too, from the artist themselves to the record label and beyond, is important when supporting one platform over the other for music consumption.