[TheSlayer]

(07-30-2013 11:50 PM)lurker Wrote:  

(07-30-2013 11:28 PM)TheSlayer Wrote:  

(07-30-2013 11:11 PM)lurker Wrote:  

Yeah, but he was on top when people actually bought albums. What sort of royalty cash are today's artists getting in comparison?

I took a course in university that was focused on entertainment marketing. Our professor who is kind of well-connected and has worked with some pretty famous artists said that these days the money for artists isn't in royalties. The money for them these days comes from concert bookings, worldwide tours, and endorsements. He said that artists actually want you to pirate/download their albums because they want to get famous and cash-in their fame for your dollars at their concerts.

His view was that it's the record companies that make all the fuss about illegal downloading but artists actually couldn't care less if you download their album for free. The 'singles' concept of selling songs for $0.99 isn't where the artist makes the money these days.

That's always been true. I remember reading a book in the early 90s about the industry when I had rockstar dreams that was focused entirely on merchandising and tour revenue. My point was they no longer have both streams.

I agree but my point was that with social media/internet merchandising, tour revenue, and endorsements account for most of the money the artist makes (and they make much more from these streams than they did in the past). In the past they had a balance between album sales and all those other streams but now it is much more lopsided in favour of concerts, endorsements, and merchandising etc.

Look at Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Bieber etc. All of them have close to 40 million followers on twitter. Even G mentioned that many of the other artists these days have a really strong social media presence and that translates into more endorsements. These artists and many athletes included (LeBron James for example) have multiple tie-ins with companies where the companies are given access to their facebook and twitter followers or they will simply tweet products without even appearing in commercials for these companies.

You are right that merchandising was very big in the 90s as well but the entire music industry has shifted and artists are not reliant on album sales for income anymore. Somebody like Justin Timberlake who hasn't released a lot of albums or songs in the past 4-5 years (I think he did release one this year) is still making tons of money going on tours. Him and JayZ just played here in Toronto a couple of weeks ago and both of their shows were soldout.