THE CONSIDERABLE WINDFALL OF MUSIC CAREERS

In 2013 iTunes Store music sales have dropped around 13%. Overall album sales dropped 8%. Not as many people are buying music but rather stick to streaming services but are not paying for it. 28 Million people are going for the subscription fee to skip ads on services much like Spotify or Pandora, but the rest bear no mind at hearing ads between several songs.

Music scouts rarely exist due to the internets availability to have your band heard and noticed as long as you have any recording means such as a camera or recorder. However, this also orchestrates because of such a high volume of artists trying to get well known it’s a competition out there if you’re going the label-route, most artists go the “indie-route”, meaning they manage their own businesses from promoting, tour-dates and merch.

On a music manager and producer’s perspective, keeping up with the current markets music scene and derailing an artist’s visions to what their music should say or is about can be quite a conundrum or a battle itself. Most industry’s will hire a “face” (ex. Katy Perry, N*Sync) and have a hired professional write out the songs that have a “structure” that have had studies done to determine what works best for the MAJORITY of people. Hence why you don’t see as many people looking into complicated riff songs but rather subtle, simple and upbeat.

Best route to get into the music industry is by mingling, networking and have a promo-package; Which means that you’d have to show your recordings, any examples of live shows to see how you sound and how well you interact with the audience. Other factors include how many followers on social media sites you have, how well you sell merch and other artists people can associate you with.

Due to a lot of artists and bands not having the well-to-do or know-how can be their biggest downfall. But realistically it is also keeping up with current day standards. Due to streaming between 2014-2015 CD’s have dropped 17% and music videos 20% in sales and album downloads 5% and singles 13%. However Ad supported on-demand streaming is plus 31% and subscription streaming is 52%. Interestingly enough too, Vinyl LP/EP’s are up 32%.

“Most people simply want a soundtrack to their lives. They don’t care very much which songs they hear. Sure, they get pulled in by the latest hits, and may even buy some songs to listen to, for a while, on their mobile phones. But the half-life of a pop song is no more than a month or two, and those songs get forgotten as new earworms work their way up the pecking order.” – Kirk McElhearn

Sources: http://www.businessinsider.com/these-charts-explain-the-real-death-of-the-music-industry-2011-2

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2013/09/25/lies/

http://pigeonsandplanes.com/in-depth/2015/05/10-reasons-not-to-work-in-the-music-industry/522445

http://www.mcelhearn.com/is-the-music-industry-suffering-because-there-is-too-much-music/

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/25/business/media/music-sales-remain-steady-but-lucrative-cd-sales-decline.html?_r=0

The point being – in the end, that’s kind of okay. You learn to be the most cautious, up front individual that you can possibly be. Why? Because there is no other way. In a an industry that doesn’t have a lot of second chances you’ve got to take advantage of what you can and suffer while you have to. I meet even go so far as to say that this entire thing is about suffering. The moral you learn, at the end of the day is that you always need to double check. Yet – there is a lot to learn from this, and from picking this apart understanding can be be gained. That isn’t meant to be some Proverbs-like phraseology, but merely that punks like us, baby were born to run. – Matt Bacon