When is it Okay to Charge?
The Times have raised something of a stink recently by announcing that they are going to start charging for the online content of their newspaper. This isn’t new, exactly, because a lot of newspapers started out that way on the web, but quickly dropped all these clumsy logins and memberships and payment schemes because in the face of free and unlimited services like the Guardian and the BBC they quickly realised that they were losing out massively in the scramble for eyeballs, which is the one criterion everyone on the internet seems to agree is the key to influence, importance and, eventually, monetisation.
This kind of thing was reinforced by the same basic behaviour taking place in the real world, where newspaper prices plummetted and free papers like the Metro became everyone’s commuter read of choice, leveraging their impressive distribution to pull in the kind of advertising that rendered the price an individual might pay for the paper itself trivial.
You can see the same happening in music. Bands are repeatedly told by the evangelists of the new e-conomy that they should largely turn a blind eye to torrent sites and p2p sharing which basically distribute their content for nothing to a wide audience, with zero income finding its way back to the band; directly at least. And yes, that applies to Spotify too, particularly if you’re independent or on a small label – there’s just no money in it.
The money, for bands, is supposed to be on the gig circuit, which is quite simply one great big gigantic load of old bollocks. It’s fucking expensive to drag a band around the country and, until you get pretty big, promoters simply aren’t willing to pay the fees. It may be true for some bands, but for the vast majority it is not. People are asked to play in-stores for free, sessions for sites like mine for free, and, not unusually enough, the gigs themselves for free as well. The rationale is the same: give away the value – the content – for nothing, but in doing so win an audience, which then can be exploited.
But it costs a lot to make music, just as it costs a lot to generate quality news coverage.
When they rolled out their plans for their new model the Times estimated that it cost them £1.5million to maintain a Baghdad office during the Iraq war, and £10k to send a reporter to cover the violence in northern Sri Lanka. And they pay people. Compare that to being a musician where, although you can charge for performances and releases and so on, no-one ever factors in the investment in instruments and other equipment and the vast amounts of time spend practising, recording, writing, talking to people who *might* be able to get you heard by a wider audience and all the other shit you have to go through.
Basically, making this stuff is expensive, whatever it is, so how do you ever go about getting this money back?
Eyeballs were supposed to bring advertisers, in the online world, but it hasn’t really transpired that way. The benefits of advertising are hazily understood to begin with* and a combination of economic fear and widespread confusion about how to effectively advertise on the internet in the first place has meant that this model hasn’t really worked, even for the biggest sites.
It’s getting to the stage, though, particularly with things like Metro and various other free publications, where it almost seems like advertising agencies start magazines and pay writers to write quality content just to attract eyes to their ads. Effectively, as a writer you are now advertising the advertising, in a sense, so why would these agencies advertise in a newspaper or magazine whose content isn’t strictly controlled by their selling agenda?
Of course the 21st Century cynic in me hears about the Times’ plans to charge and just thinks that they’ve no fucking chance, and will just end up driving even more readers to the Guardian. And then Murdoch talks about taking his publications off Google and that same cynic bursts out laughing and thinks ‘well bye bye Times, then’. But I do have some sympathy for their dilemma, because it’s actually the same one faced by the musicians we’re all trying to support. You can find a way to justify giving pretty much everything away for free, so at what point is it okay to do what the Fence Collective do and say ‘No, this is what music costs to make, so if you want a CD then you can pay a bloody tenner’?
Apart from the musical angle I look at what the Times are trying to figure out and apply it this website. Could I charge for any of it? I fucking well should be able to – those sessions were expensive to equip and take a hell of a lot of work to do. And frankly, there isn’t a lot of better music television available out there at the moment, so would I have a right to charge for those? The answer of course is that whether or not I should have a right to charge people to watch the Toad Sessions, to actually try and do so would have a single, instant and obvious effect: the audience would dwindle to virtually nothing.
The Times are about to run this exact same gauntlet: they face the risk of completely losing their audience, but I have some sympathy with their plight. The various ‘money through advertising’ and ‘money through gigs’ mantras we constantly hear thrown at people when they talk about charging for digital content simply are not realistic, except in very rare exceptions, and it costs a lot of money to create all this kind of work so at some point someone is going to have to figure out how to actually make it pay.
Bruce Springsteen – Pay Me My Money Down
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* As goes the famous, and oh so true quote, generally attributed to retail legend John Wanamaker: “”Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half”"
I think that this paidcontent issue is a really interesting area and the similarity between what’s happening in the Music industry and Newspapers is clear. The internet has created an expectancy that stuff should be free and there are not too many people making lots of money in either industry.
The main difference between the two for me, which makes Murdoch and The Times’ plight even more of an uphill struggle, is the longevity of the products on offer.
With music you have a physical product, something tangible that will retain its value over the long term (within reason – the Menswear album I bought mid 90s isn’t massively valuable to me now).Even in digital music, you have somethign that can be re-used over time whereas with news it has such a short lifespan that it’s dead and buried within days, or even hours.
The main stumbling block to getting people paying for content is that there remains a free alternative for both industries – whether it comes in the shape of BBC for news content or Spotify/Torrents for music – this simply means that people don’t have to pay.
Given the option, people won’t, which pretty much spells tough times ahead for both music and news content.
The Times website is utter shite in terms of content and coverage compared with The Guardian’s………that Murdoch cock is not getting a penny from me!
I feel like it is a privilege to pay money to see up and coming bands…..but i wouldn’t pay you anything for the sessions.
Online and Print are like Apples and Oranges, and that’s where the difficulty begins. Look at something like Pitchfork vs. Melody Maker (or any of the many or deceased or struggling magazines). Pitchfork (as far as I’m aware, correct me if I’m wrong) started life online and as such the practices, infrastructure and business model are based on this. For a large, bloated institution like The Times (I’m just assuming its bloated as many ancient companies tend to be, a hangover from the good ole days I guess) to try and not only fit, but be the swinging dick, is just absolutely ridiculous and is typical of Murdoch’s arrogance. They may feel they have the right to do so, but they just don’t seem to realise that it’s not the same business -it’s a free media and you just won’t make a success of charging for it.
I’ve had some experience with established publications who have made a success of it, and they have done so by running the business as an almost entirely separate entity, with its own overheads and advertising targets, and it works.
I feel the problem with music is very different and more complex because the digital and physical products are so heavily intertwined, and unlike websites, the distribution of music doesn’t have a tried and tested solution for driving revenue equal to that of the cost making the music (inc. practice, recording, time). Music streaming sites appear to be having enough trouble covering the publishing payments alone! What if the old music business goes the way of print media, and people embrace home-made recordings from enthusiasts who do it in their spare time, forgoing all polished recording made in professional studios….I guess that would mean the end of U2 at least?
Bit of a ramble there, but it’s been ages since I posted so making up for lost time I guess
Euan, the other thing to bear in mind is that the free stuff is often pretty good, so there’s no real quality benefit to paying.
Chutters, I would be fascinated to hear a rationale for that. What’s the difference between paying a fiver to see a band in a shite venue and paying, say, a quid to download a full set of Toad Session recordings and videos? Apart from the practical ease of being able to wait until someone who had paid just emailed it to you instead?
I guess it’s the same rationale behind you putting up the MP3’s of band’s songs that, i assume, you haven’t paid for.
Great post Matthew.
I think you’d be in a better position to charge bands for the sessions, given the free exposure/PR you’re giving them. But then again musicians are usually broke and you might be accused of exploitation.
Euan, whilst it’s true that news dates fast, at the same time written content is around forever on the web and certain types of written articles will retain value for a long time, especially if they are informative and helpful.
I suppose it’s a bit disheartening for the likes of us when major companies are failing to find a way to monetize online content. But I really believe that the hard work that goes into anything creative is deserving of financial reward and we have to fight for it (even if we don’t know quite how to go about it yet!)
No, it definitely isn’t. That is directly designed to stimulate sales, and sales of someone else’s product – it’s an age-old advertising tactic – whereas your decision would simply be to not pay for something. I just wonder what the rationale is, because I pay a lot for music, we all pay for television, but people are not comfortable paying for news, and you aren’t comfortable paying for our Toad Session work. Yet I presume you would have no problem buying a Toad Records release.
Gill, yeah, the Guardian to seem to have totally restructured their entire business and their entire approach around the online content, which probably explains a lot of why they’re so popular.
Murdoch’s Google de-listing remarks really do smack of a great big tantrum at being a rapidly shrinking fish in a rather big pond as well, which, especially given it’s Murdoch, does make it rather funny.
i knew you would say that……
…..i have paid for and given away a fair few Toad products mister!
as long as you’re asking the permission from all the artists songs that you rip onto your site, then i’ll let you off……do you?
Good post Matthew. I’m concerned about a few things but typically have no answers/suggestions…
My concerns when thinking about the above points are that creative people, both in music and journalism, are not being paid fairly for their skill and knowledge. Could our favourite local musicians/writers do more, and achieve more, if they weren’t forced by circumstrance to work in shite day jobs to cover the costs of writing, rehearsing, buying a van, doing a decent recording etc? Will the fact that they end up in these jobs chip away at their creative output? In a lot of cases, yes. It is extremely hard for a band to organise a tour and for it to be profitable. Merchandise and CD sales I guess are the only way to really chip away at that expense. I love having free access to recorded music/videos, but I also value paying to support musicians/labels who I want to do well (btw I think it’s also more than fair to give people a choice whether or not to support a site like this one with running costs for live sessions).
I can’t see the Times’ website being sustainable but I really hope that creative folk find a way to get paid fairly.
Chutters, you’re deflecting by asking a totally different question.
I honestly believe that pretty much everything I do benefits the bands who are covered, whether directly or indirectly. You can dispute that, or you can argue about the methods I use, but that’s not the question.
I say that the things I do benefit the bands. Are you saying that your refusal to pay to view a full Toad Session benefits me?
I am trying to ask why people are happy to pay for things like TV and live shows but not for news, online TV, which is effectively what the Toad Sessions are, or, frequently, recorded music.
Is it simply because those are easier not to pay for?
Totally agree. The fact that there are a load of decent (let’s face it, often better quality) free alternatives be it pitchfork, songbytoad
, BBC or Huffington Post just makes it even more of a challenge to try and win people over and convince them to part with their pennies.
I think Gill is spot on with the intertwined nature of the physical/digital products complicating matters for music and I think that the industry needs to have a think about what it offers people.
The resurgence of vinyl suggests that there is still a demand for the physical product. People are still horders. They want the tangible – especially when the digital ‘product’ is pretty much the same price but clearly people are still happy to rob stuff for nothing. The price for the digital offer needs to drop, simple as…
There is almost a call for offering an online ‘lite’ version with an augmented physical product which are priced accordingly. In fact I think that you’re starting to see this more and more with people offering ’special edition’ physical products.
I think the Julian Casablancas album is being released with a ‘limited special edition’ where you get the album on vinyl, a download, a book and b-sides and all sorts of stuff thrown in and they are charging a premium for this. Florence and The Machine is re-releasing her debut album (rather cheekily) on 4xCDs full of remixes and B-sides…
I think that this will be the way we see things going more and more.
Still can’t see this making much of an impact on the issue at hand though, if the free option is there, people will still grab stuff for free…
In terms of news… I think Gill is spot on again. Having worked for a newspaper company who for long enough resisted going online only to jump on the bandwagon and throw money at it there is a massive culture of trying to crowbar a totally new concept (online news) into a blatantly ill-fitting business model (that of printed news – where c.20% of revenue comes from circulation and 80% come from advertising). You are simply not going to get 20% of your revenue coming from subscriptions (without ad revenues goign through the floor), so something needs to be done. What? Well, I don’t know.
I think that again, like the music offering i mentioned above, there may be a call for an augmented news offering, whereby people join the guardian/times/sun reader club and pay for a subscription. In doing this they get access to all the web content as well as offers for other ‘affiliate’ brands…be it fantasy football, bingo, dating or whatever though the offers would need to be of sufficient value to bring people in. Alternatively the ‘tip jar’ might make some money. It worked OK for Radiohead and is pretty much how NPR in the US is funded, but whether it’s the final answer, I seriously doubt.
Christ what a load of rambling bollocks that was… don’t think i actually said anything… Oh well, that’s my tuppence worth (again)
Euan: there remains a free alternative for both industries – whether it comes in the shape of BBC for news content or Spotify/Torrents for music – this simply means that people don’t have to pay.
There is a salient difference of course, in that one of these is illegal. Spotify makes things more complicated of course, but it’s a (probably unstable) attempt to make the best of the bad situation we have gotten ourselves in.
The model for funding music-making most analogous to the BBC would be taxpayer-funded grants for musicians like the famous canadian one, or the Scottish Arts Council or something.
Something a bit along these lines was one of the (presumably)unintended consequences of free higher education. In providing grants to students we as a country were effectively subsidising our creative industries.
Milo – I agree with your point entirely. There will be value in some content over time (especially the well written stuff) but I would say it’s unlikely that the demand for this will be sufficient to make Murdoch the money he’s after – though i take on board the point.
I would imagine that if subs are introduced it would be the non-news content where the bulk of the potential revenue lives – travel, business, property, motors etc
Don’t get me wrong though, i sincerely hope that a way is found to help fund creative folk!
Matthew – it simply cos i don’t want to pay for it……mainly because i don’t think the sessions/videos are of good enough quality……however if you said – donate a fiver and this all goes to the band, that is a different matter…….
….my question is still valid, do you ask the artists if you can use their songs you put so altruistically on SbT?
If the terms were different, how do you imagine the reaction would change?
Say the 1st case is ‘£1.50 to download and own the Toadcast’, and the 2nd case is ‘buy a S,BTR artist’s E.P. and you get the option of the Toadcast to own for £1.50, on top of your £X for the album’.
I bet you the 2nd option wouldn’t meet such a negative response, when in value it is the exact same proposition – it almost seems like a great offer!. From an Economics point of view, people (I include myself in this) are baffling. That £1.50 is the same £1.50
There are a few conversations I’ve had with my wife that have really stuck with us as a couple. Funnily enough, one that did so for her was buskers. I always give money to buskers and she said she never did. I told her that if I enjoyed it, I ought to pay what it is worth to me.
We donate to public radio because we have it on all the time.
I actually have the same feeling about the Guardian. I would happily pay an online subscription because it is where I get most of my news and that is important to me. It has a value to me and that value can be quantified in a monetary term.
This is the same reason I still buy music.
Chutters, not all, but about 90% of the music that is posted on this site is done so with permission. Quite possibly more, actually.
Ben, I suppose that comes down to what having a free alternative has done to our mentality – that you actually have to go out of you way to pay.
Gill, it’s not something I’m considering, but this site represents a lot of work – more than a full time job basically – and it is hard to think of a single aspect of it which people wouldn’t insist they would never pay for.
I was kind of making the same comparison for musicians, should they pay to be in Toad Sessions for the exposure or should they charge for enhancing my site and bringing viewers who it’s then my responsibility to monetise. Depending on which side you were on you could make rational arguments for everything a musician does being free, same with this site, and given even the Times is having the same problem I really do wonder where it stops.
Ben – you’ve just reminded me, i donate to a community radio station in Melbourne cos they do such a brilliant job at exposing new music……though it is a bit jarring listening to the breakfast show at 7:30 at night!
Matthew – sure, I’m just speculating on the whole issue really. I guess I relate to how you feel
Very interesting topic, cuts to the heart of where the internet and the economy is going. Regardless of the content or product being charged for, news, music etc. it’s a question of business model and how to make money in this ‘new’ economy. If we’re all just creating content using ‘ real day job’ to pay for it, we’re all kidding ourselves and we’re in a dead end.
It is analogous to what you can see with services like http://www.lulu.com , producing books photobooks etc and and http://www.ponoko.com producing laser cut products. There are also tshirt, mug etc printing services like http://www.wordans.com and spreadshirt. These allow users to create products to sell, basically by allowing them to add their content to a t shirt etc. This creates a physical product and people will pay, but what if for example ebooks really take off and they go the bit torrent route?
I guess it’s less likely, but if the means to generate physical products like tshirts or whatever became significantly cheaper and easier to do, then would we see CAD models and designs being bit torrented?
hope you can find a business model that works for you matt, I’m still don’t understand how you go about making money in this grass-roots low level way on the internet, but if it’s possible I’m sure it’d be a great and sustainable way of supporting yourself or at least breaking even.
here’s a couple of links to discussions I’ve come across in the past;
wired discussion on the economics of free
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free
http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Make_Money_Around_Free_Content
somebody making that cack argument about bands making money from gigs;
Charge for the scarce components: Concert tickets are more valuable. Access to the band is more valuable. Getting the band to write a special song (sponsorship?) is more valuable. Merchandise is more valuable.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070503/012939.shtml
open source mobile phone hits problems;
http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/06/openmoko-freerunner-canceled-staff-slashed/
I don’t think Murdoch’s worried about whether or the Times website actually turns a profit, I suspect his motivation is more the desire to prevent people gaining his content for free.
Some thought-provoking comments on here, as ever folks…and a well-written article, Matthew.
I think one of the problems that we know have is that over the last decade or so, we have got used to having so much for free (whether it’s legal or illegal) that people sometimes feel rather cheated at having to pay for it. I can’t stand Rupert Murdoch, but in terms of the people who write for newspapers/magazines etc.. it must be a worrying time for freelancers.
Keith is spot on: “My concerns when thinking about the above points are that creative people, both in music and journalism, are not being paid fairly for their skill and knowledge. Could our favourite local musicians/writers do more, and achieve more, if they weren’t forced by circumstrance to work in shite day jobs to cover the costs of writing, rehearsing, buying a van, doing a decent recording etc? Will the fact that they end up in these jobs chip away at their creative output? In a lot of cases, yes. It is extremely hard for a band to organise a tour and for it to be profitable. Merchandise and CD sales I guess are the only way to really chip away at that expense.”
I could do so much more to help the artists on 17 Seconds Records if I was paid to do this full-time. All the artists on the label are either studying or working fulltime (obviously I realise that the two are not mutyually exclusive). A lot of people are only in certain aspects of the music industry to make money, and even the more altruistic/caring folk have to make money somewhere.
An example: At the end of October, 17 Seconds Records did a night at the 13th Note where four of our bands played. The condition was that we got the door and we didn’t have to pay for the venue providing they took £160 at the bar. Thankfully they did. Double that in fact. But touring is a whole different ball game.
Added to which, bands can sometimes find themselves in the position of actually having to pay to play. With one of our acts, we recently paid to get them on a bill in London. The reason? Because if you’re not playing gigs in London you can’t get reviewed by English papers. We took the gamble.
Trying to get artists heard is a hugely difficult ballgame. You can apply in Scotland for a grant from the Scottish Arts Council. But (having had some of our acts investigate this), whilst they will pay to help with recording costs, they won’t pay for pressing or promotions costs. So you go down the download route…then worry that you’re affecting the indie shops.
Sorry, a long ramble, but this is my pennyworth.
…and yes i normally don’t get most things, but are you wanting to make money via the SbT blog (SbTR’s aside)?
Chutters, I would like to find a way to be paid (even a shit) full time wage for what is basically a full time job. But as for making SbT a charging site, no I think that would be insane.
We also have to differentiate between things which people don’t pay for because they can avoid it and things which people simply will never pay for because they don’t value them that highly. The two things are different, I think, although they get muddied, particularly at the bottom end of the ladder.
it’s a hard one…….donations or some form of toady membership might be a way forward
But there is a difference between the question of whether the issue is the lower, amateur quality/production values – in which case I’m just complaining about not being good enough, basically – or if it’s that no-one really knows how to monetise digital content at the moment. A bit of a mix of both, presumably.
but then don’t you get into the same argument that you have had with some record labels and the like over copyright?
What, that if you force people to pay for something then a lot will simply say ‘no thanks’, so you don’t really gain anything?
Or that certain things are simply a part of culture and as such people have a degree of right to treat them as public property?
well are you not going create a sense of ownership if you want people to pay for your content?
so what happens then when someone uses your content (without your knowledge) for there benefit?
Sorry, being an arse, but “The benefits of advertising are hazily understood to begin with” is not actually true. Wannamaker said that a century ago though, when it probably was true.
The problem – and this I’d imagine goes for you too Matthew – is that most people don’t know how to sell it right, in a way that’s both creative and profitable, or simply don’t want to actively sell it at all, hence one reason why Google’s cleaned up, taking the hard work out of it.
The other problem with the internet is that all content-producers from tiny wee bloggers to The Times, all now think that their content is worth something, when 99% of it is utter guff. If they run out of money it’s because they weren’t very good, not only because we don’t want to pay for it.
Hmm, I think that’s only mostly right.
I absolutely agree with the last paragraph especially. In particular sites like mine think they are worth something because of… what, opinons, which is what most of this is? Opinions must be cheapest commodity in the universe, especially on the internet.
If I want to actually make anything out of the Toad stuff then I need to be very clear on what there is about this which is actually of any value, be it the size of the audience, the longevity which provides access to some pretty good bands (which I don’t really take advantage of because I am more interested in small ones) or whatever it is. But yes, talking pish on the internet is not it, that’s for certain.
Not every band has a right to make a living and not every publication has a right to the income to support a full time blogger, never mind a staff. Especially when you look at the concept of supply versus demand, in almost every creative field there is a massive amount of supply and limited, finite demand, which is an unavoidable fact of life for everyone.
However, I will disagree somewhat about the advertising comment. I assume what you say is true for real-world advertising, but I am forever reading articles which talk about advertising effectively on the internet proving to be somewhat elusive. Popups and intrusive stuff antagonise, including these splash animation thingies people love so much, AdWords have been a little too subtle and don’t garner the attention, as far as I am aware, and people are getting better and better at tuning it all out.
So in general I have been left with the impression that advertising effectively on the internet is proving to be very hard indeed. If you’re in the profession though, please correct me if I’m wrong, because I’m just repeating what I have read in a few publications over the last couple of years.
Chutters – I don’t think I should look to monetise the blog directly. The blog already means that gig promotion and the label make more money than they strictly should, because it brings an audience with it. I think if anything I’d be looking to treat the blog as one big loss-leader and use it to make money in other areas.
You seem to talk like I am in favour of unlimited free downloading, for some reason, which I am not. I don’t post whole albums, remember. Coming to this site is not a free alternative to buying an album.
But yeah, if people started using my work in a way that they were making money from it and I wasn’t then I would have to decide if the publicity and word-spreading benefits were outweighed by the cost to my bottom line, the same as bands do now. I’ve already asked a few people to remove my site from their aggregators, but generally I don’t bother.
You misunderstand my argument if you think I want to do away with copyright law – I have repeatedly said that this is not the case. I want to curb the currently rather egregious abuses of it, such as the above, and people making YouTube take down videos of their kids dancing to their song, or remove videos of people using clips to make a critical point such as here.
The Associated Press want to charge people to even quote them.
But I still think that preventing the wholesale copying and exploitation of other people’s intellectual property is crucial – it would be borderline insane not to, wouldn’t it?
The sense of ownership is the nub of though because people seem to value stuff by what they paid for it not the other way around. So if you give stuff away for free people will simply value it less.
Well this is where the question marks come in. It makes good sense for newspapers to give away a lot of content, partly because nowadays breaking news is just ‘out there’ almost immediately, so if they don’t give that away then they are just sacrificing their audience.
But as was suggested earlier, at some point they may have to put their collective feet down and say, no, this editorial or that investigative report is going up in precis form, with the option to purchase the whole article either directly or by ongoing membership, for example.
The same is true for this site – most of it should be given away for free because it just ain’t that special. So, the same as with musicians, I find myself simply wondering where on earth that line is to be drawn, because no-one seems to really know at the moment.
I was talking about something along these lines the other night. Basically a friend was asking how I’d expect to make a living out of music if I were to have a real bash at it. My argument was that because of the ease and relative cheapness of self recording distribution and promotion, you don’t have to take the plunge that was expected of budding musicians in the past; pack in work, sign on, get in debt punting yourself up and down the country to tiny or disinterested crowds, hoping and waiting for a major label to pick up on you.
I’ve been in The Stormy Seas for about 18 months now, and our first gig was less than a year ago, though we’ve definitely had more exposure in that time than my last band ever achieved. The more willing audience, kind community and the fact the stormy seas are better than the last band considered, a lot of the exposure and acceptance is due to, whether I like it or not, free publication of myspace guff and the like.
If we can see many more artists working on this level, then that’s preferable to me than having a handful of mega groups. U2 for example are not proportionally as good as they are big, if that makes sense. The money that goes into that shower of shite could keep 100 bands recording, touring etc. if it was accepted that being a full time artist is a job, not a means to either mega fame and untold riches or alternately a life in the doldrums. My red streak is showing here but basically democratic distribution of music; i.e. the means of production more in the hands of the artists = good. The fact you have to keep a day job = bad.
Great article. Not got time to read all the comments but wanted to say:
1 I’d be happy to pay to read and listen to this.
2 Happy birthday – glad you liked the package.
Who do I give my credit card # to so I can comment?
The difference between sites like this one and news sites is twofold. Opinion and community. I started reading for your opinions and content at first and have stayed for the communal value. The site is a lot better read because of the contributions of the readers and the replies to your posts spur the better writing, research, etc..on your part. They feed off of each other. Newspapers are as dead as fax machines. There is no opinion, only a soundbite and then on to the next story. My local is trying the pay per view format and I removed them from the favorites links.
coupla observations:
“people embrace home-made recordings from enthusiasts who do it in their spare time, forgoing all polished recording made in professional studios….”
is this necessarily a bad thing?
“i really believe that the hard work that goes into anything creative is deserving of financial reward”
really? even if it’s shite? or even god forbid it’s good but nobody’s interested?
“could our favourite local musicians/writers do more, and achieve more, if they weren’t forced by circumstrance to work in shite day jobs to cover the costs of writing, rehearsing, buying a van, doing a decent recording etc?”
&
“If we’re all just creating content using ‘ real day job’ to pay for it, we’re all kidding ourselves and we’re in a dead end.”
was there some utopian era when anything other than this was ever the case? where is the issue with having to graft to make/do something? or are we suggesting that every record made so far is somehow tainted coz the folk making it maybe worked a 35 hour week in an office or shop?
think there’s somewhat of a discrepancy between what the people making something think it’s worth and what the paying public think it’s worth. and i don’t want the scottish arts council (or any other tax funded body) using public funds to try and balance this. life ain’t fair and lots of good bands never get a chance. is the answer to start subsidising them?
a balance will be found somewhere down the line no doubt. and in all likelihood there’ll be a lot less bands (and certainly a lot less mediocre ones). people have done and will continue to buy shit. people will continue to make records for the fun of it knowing there’s little chance of making money from them. where’s the loss?
oh and the bbc isn’t free it’s publically funded. and the reason why the guardian’s so popular? it’s a fucking brilliant site.
I’ve been amazed by the amount and variety of content you manage to get onto this site each week Matthew you must spend half your life in a semi coma through lack of sleep.
The one shred of good news is that right now no one knows a sure fire way to make money out of music or news whether online or in print. There are no rules at the moment which means anyone with creativity and determination has a chance. That has to be better than big business saying ‘do it our way or don’t do it at all’.
Oh yeah the main reason for the post is the Sunday Times ran an article on this a couple of Sundays ago.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article6902843.ece
Its about how having a close relationship with a relatively small number of fans can make a career in music profitable. There was a table to go with the article in The Sunday Times, which basically said that if you have 1,000 dedicated fans you can make £50K a year gross income. Increase that to 5,000 dedicated fans and you can make £316K.
The pledge thing mentioned in the article is already being taken to extremes by some American bands I’ve come across. $7500 dollars to pick the set list, meet the band and have dinner with them after the gig.
how far is too far?
http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/90
Just a couple of thoughts to tag on to all this.
There was a time when I spent just about all my spare cash buying music and all my spare time listening to it on my treasured (and expensive) stereo. I really looked forward to a new release from my favourite bands and went without to make sure I could purchase it. And when I did buy it, I would play it for days, weeks.
But times have changed, and so have listening habits. All of my music now lives on my computer, over 20,000 tracks last time I looked. Now I check out a dozen or so blogs most days and usually pick up a few mp3s, which I’ll give a listen to a few times. Very, very occasionally I’ll find something which makes me want to hear a whole album. Which I’ll find somewhere and download.
I don’t listen to music the same way anymore. I don’t really listen to albums over and over again for a simple reason – there’s so much music around now, every day something new pops up. There’s not enough time to listen in the old way.
Music doesn’t have the same monetary value anymore. There are more bands around (or at least, more bands getting exposure) than at any time in history, precisely because it’s so cheap and easy to get your songs out there.
I haven’t any answers to your question, but I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in changing my listening habits. Not good news for anyone trying to make money from serious music although it doesn’t seem to affect the Simon Cowells of this world. Sadly.
“was there some utopian era when anything other than this was ever the case? where is the issue with having to graft to make/do something? or are we suggesting that every record made so far is somehow tainted coz the folk making it maybe worked a 35 hour week in an office or shop?”
I think the point i was trying to make was that before the use of the internet to promote music/news, and the ability to get it without paying, the public’s purse (and radio) was the shit filter. Now, if no-one pays, how will our favourite musicians/papers afford to do what they should do? I don’t think albums are tainted by jobs, just that the creativity behind the album might develop better without having to go back to the office/shop after everyone downloads it.
I don’t want to see loads of crap bands get government subsidy, I just want the ones that can generate interest, and that have people willing to pay money for their content, to be able to gain money to survive and grow from what they do.
Also, I think that the amount of bands creating music is far more likely to increase over time. Including shit ones. Simon Cowell is still at large.
how will our favourite musicians afford to do what they do? same way they always have. work a day job in the hope that you eventually make enough money to quit it and make music for a living. and if they can’t deal with that, tough shit i’m afraid.
before the internet (and this is getting kinda off topic) there was no crap filter. so radio and journos decided what got played and listened to and that was that. like a song, buy the album, hope for the best. worked out alright for everybody but the consumer (and that’s such a horrible word in this context).
frankly i don’t mourn the loss of music papers and magazines. we’ve all put an end to them. and i couldn’t be happier.
anyway back to the point. if people are willing to pay money for a bands music or papers content then what difference does it make whether it’s available elsewhere for free? philosophically the issue – from every side of the argument here – is with the percieved worth of the product. we’ve all happily treated music as a commodity and now cry foul when it’s out there for nothing.
the rules have changed for better or worse and there is no going back to pre-torrent/rapidhsare/blogspot/p2p days. deal with it and move on. and i think it’s obvious that (digitally) the subscription model is the way all these things are gonna go.
anyway my final point. most of the musicians i listen to work day jobs, don’t make fuck all money from record sales and yet still somehow manage to be happy creative people putting out quality albums and touring. i imagine all of us would much rather be doing something else for a living but that don’t mean just coz we want to we get to.
I don’t think I’d disagree with a lot of that. I’m consistently amazed by how many musicians I interview who I think of as famous and yet who still have day jobs.
And also, given that creativity seems to be some sort of fundamental human instinct, it should be no surprise that a lot of the resulting output is shit. The whole point of average means that most stuff is fucking average.
Again, as a paper, at what point do you get to say that enough is enough, we’ve sunk enough money into our Somalian office, we’ve paid for lengthy editorials on the similarities between the New World slave trade and the dependence of the modern West on Far Eastern sweat shops, and now we need to be paid for that.
I doubt, however, that the money will run down the same old riverbed. One valid point the freetards might have accidentally made is that people need to look to new business models. At its most depressing, this means that you think of yourself as a band, but you make your money pimping t-shirts. At its most optimistic, you establish yourself as an authority by giving your content away for free, as the Guardian does now, and you reap the benefits in other areas.
But as Cows hints, basically if everyone wants to be creative that means supply is enormous, whereas demand is not. And any twelve-year-old economist can tell what the end result of that is.
Are you saying, Cows, that in order to make your living in a creative job you have to become well enough respected that people actually want to give you money, and that legal obligations either don’t or shouldn’t come into it?
I have my doubts, vague as they might be. I think that people have come to expect certain things to be free, and that this is to a degree the fault of the people trying to sell those very things. If you put a value on your own work, then the world should, largely if not always, follow suit.
This assumption, of course, might be total bollocks.
Wonderful post Matthew. I don’t have anything to add but I have read all the comments and I’ve enjoyed reading all the different points of view.
I have to agree with Cogstar too, I really don’t know how you find the time and energy to write so often and so well. The fact you’re posting comments at 4.28am though might have something to do with it!
“Are you saying, Cows, that in order to make your living in a creative job you have to become well enough respected that people actually want to give you money, and that legal obligations either don’t or shouldn’t come into it?”
yeah i’d mostly agree with that. in terms of music rightly or wrongly you can usually find an album for download before or immediately after its release. so any right thinking person will have to make the decision to get it for free or buy it. that’s how it is, and no amount of ill-thought out government legislation is gonna change that now. personally i buy a tonne of music every month, music that’s tangible, generally limited runs, mostly vinyl, from people i know or respect or just love listening to. i also download a shitload of what i can’t afford to buy or want to try. i prioritise. so if i get my third letter and broadband cut-off, nothing really changes for me or for any band i’ve stolen from. and before anyone says it, i am aware not everybody does this and are quite happy never to pay for a cd again.
the problem generally as i said is the turning of music, recorded music, into a commodity. and the subscription model for me ultimately devalues music to being a bulk purchase like buying a slab of chopped tomatoes from asda. it used to be you bought a house to live in. now (well not so much right now) it’s an investment. same with music. it’s become less about the song and more about a commercial enterprise. christ ten million people watch x-factor thinking it’s anything other than a televised business model.
so it shouldn’t be surprising when mass marketed mulch (a concept that unfortunately tars much of the sound world) comes to be seen as worth almost nothing. catch me on a cynical day and i’d agree that the majority of what gets downloaded is worth precisely that. fuck all.
paying for newspapers or tv for me is slightly different. to make and distribute music these days costs next to nothing if you d.i.y. as you said it costs bucks to get to somalia or afghanistan. something 99% of bloggers from outside any of these regions can’t afford to do. again personally i don’t watch tv so don’t pay the license fee or sky/virgin/bt subscription. in terms of papers i read the guardian electronically and the times. again if it went to pay per view nothing would change. i’d happily pay for the guardians online content and continue manually reading the times. at a guess pay to view is how it’s going to go. which should be interesting for the beeb. i’ve often wondered if the license fee was removed and it went to subscritption would be happily pay a tenner a month to watch? i dunno.
wow that’s a load of words…
It was only 3:28 really – I just haven’t set the time on the blog for Daylight Savings. Thanks though
Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-eeeeeep.
Out of curiosity how much do artists make from Spotify? I’ve found it surprisingly difficult to persuade people to go premium on it. Since I have it on my mobile it’s basically exactly the service I’ve been waiting for. I can listen to all the music I previously downloaded and still buy the CD of the keepers.
I’ve no problem with paying a subscription for the music I like.
News is different though. We already pay a subscription that gets us the BBC. It changes the market completly, have you seen American TV news!
Oh well that’s alright then!
Yeah, I hadn’t thought that basically news is competing with a service we have all paid for once already. Kinda changes it!
And as far as I am aware, small artists and labels make so little on Spotify as to make it not worth uploading your stuff. If you look at it purely financially, it’s about the same as free filesharing – you make nothing and people listen to your music, but there are definite benefits to having it ‘out there’.
I haven’t done a lot of research though, so don’t take my word for it, but that’s my basic understanding of it.
re- spotify, thats how i understand it as well…….bit pants really!
I’ve not heard much positive stuff about the sustainability of their business model, so they may not be around for long. Still, I’d be surprised if it was the end for that basic format, but getting the pennies when you’re a small fry is going to be some challenge.
maybe I should read all the comments before posting…but my cup of tea’s getting cold and I want to make a banana cake and still have time to do some edits on a new song before going out, so I’m going to weigh in there:
1. Was listening to the bottom line on radio 4 only a few days ago-they were talking to some silicon valley venture capitalists (who have helped a number of small companies like, ooo, google and paypal start) discussing this thing of newspapers charging and making the point people have got used to getting content for free. They were sort of saying, yes well done newspapers, gotta wise up, or you’ll be just as far up s*** creek as the music industry. Brilliant, I thought to myself, that’s encouraging.
2. From time to time I find my own music up for sale by download none of which comes to me. I mean, how flattering anyone can be bothered, but also how annoying.
3. As Matthew points out, cds don’t make themselves, and the idea that you used to gig to sell cds, and now you give away music to sell gig tickets is nice but doesn’t add up financially. I admire the way fence are not into download & very consistent about charging proper price for cds.
So basically, my randomly numerical points which have numbers really to try and make myself feel organised at this point in the day rather than because there is any meaningful hierarchy, serve to underline the general
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nature of you might cover costs or make a living as a musician.
aaah yes that’s what I was going to say-trying to go big enough for the tiny margins to add up (there are sites like kerchoonz that have free content, where the punter doesn’t pay to download, but the artist gets revenue from advertising, again, a nice idea but just too peanutsy in practice) seems daunting from the perspective of a write-a-few-tunes-play-a-few-gigs person. But! I think going small might be the way forward. I’m not just saying this because i played there and Alan is my friend, but the Leith tape club is perfect example. Small, once a month, but highly crafted, with a nice USP in the compilation cd which is exclusive of tracks recorded on the night. There are people I spoke to there who go to it as their outing of the month because they are confident in the choice of bill. That sort of thing can work well.
It doesn’t end with newspapers and music, either. Videogames have the same problems – which are fought back with by technological measures, trying to lock down content as much as possible. And by the cost of making them is huge, more on a par with films than with music. (Of course, the area I’m into is indie games, which has more in common with music – games made by small teams without proper funding. And with audiences not huge enough to support the makers…)
And films! The cost of them…
And TV!
And basically any industry that produces things that can be replicated digitally and which creating fulfils creative urges. Which is, I guess, an expanding range of things. Just wait til robotics and AI really starts to take off in every day life – see what can’t be made digital…
(And, I’m aware that I’m rambling and straying from the point at hand, but – in old sci-fi magazines, people predicted in the future, everything would be automated, and society would have huge problems due to the surfeit of leisure time. What to do, when machines do all the work for you? Except it never quite works out like that, does it?)
Oh, and, Matthew – I seem to remember your day job being something like medical product design… Does stuff like http://openprosthetics.org/ give you shivers?
(Added to the list of requirements: the tools should be relatively affordable. I’d say a couple of tens of thousands is the limit…)
Kurt Vonnegut was a good one for that, actually. I’ve found myself talking about him a lot recently, but haven’t read one of his books for years. Might be time to get back to him…
Actually, the cost of software is an amazing one. I don’t know anyone who pays for it because at the real cost I don’t know anyone who could even come close to affording it. I suppose in a sense that locks everyone into your software, so not chasing up individual infringers makes a degree of sense from a business perspective, but with games that aspect pretty much goes out the window I guess.
Surely there’ll come a time when the developers give the game away for free and then lock people into subscription packages for updates, customisation packs, new bits and pieces and stuff like that.
George, it doesn’t really, no. Developing serious products is a long, slow and complicated business. There is pretty much zero (imminent) chance that the kind of time, coordination and expertise required to develop new products like that will be feasible for this kind of project. Disposable bits of plastic kitchen shit maybe, but not more complicated stuff – not for now anyway.
Adobe’s business model is – if you’re a serious company with an income, you’ll pay the thousands per head for photoshop or whatever and not blink. And that’s because all the amateurs who eventually work there know it, and prefer it. The game tool I used, Unity, recently made this more explicit – its free unless you’re a large business or need some of the fancy extra stuff. Which is a great strategy, and great for amateurs, too.
And yeah, the games industry is focusing on services, on MMOs and the like, rather than one off products. Because they can do things like throw pirates off, like the recent xbox live foofaraw. Doesn’t work entirely, but I can’t be see it moving that way. Besides, people spend more if its per month than a one off… (but then, to keep people paying you need to consume a lot of their time – and attention is only vaugely more scarce than money)
As for your day job – developing an OS is a long and complicated business too, but open source has done it once. I guess the difference is that you can compile one on your home computer, and that OSs (and especially unixes) are hugely modular. And there’s a bunch of legal obstacles too. I suspect that if home 3d printers ever get competitive with centralized producton, things will change though. Heh – once the proletariat owns the means of production…
Surely, but with medical products it’s the tortuously long, expensive and arcane approvals process which will provide more of an obstacle than anything else. As I said, the home 3D printer stuff will be more of a threat to the ‘bits of plastic kitchen shit’ market than medical devices at the moment.
You’re right though, as the means of production become more and more affordable that will presumably change.
It could get really interesting if people can just download a CAD model for a new dining set. Many in industry are not in slightest bit prepared for that kind of change. It will be places like Asda that will feel the hurt at that time. There’s no way to currently make electronic products on a small scale and that’ll provide some insulation.
That distinction is becoming less obvious in music. I imagine there’s few listeners on here that would get more listening value from a hugely expensive U2 record than many bedroom recordings.
I think “someone” (you, Matthew) needs to find out exactly how spotify does charge. I’m assuming the licencing issue is circumvented by the fact that you don’t ‘own’ it. I suppose it could be classed, legally speaking, as an interactive radio station.
I’m optimistic about this micro-payment model though. Maybe I’m naieve but it would seem to me that if we all went premium on spotify the technology is there to carve up your (admittedly tiny) subscription fee and pay each label/artist a per listen fee. In principle at least. Big bands would still be big and small would at least be visible and without completely giving the music away. It would seem to cut out alot of middlemen.
Does anyone know whether I should be optimistic or whether Spotify is likely to be unmasked as an denizen of some evil empire ?
Acouple more interestig links on this issue;
http://news.zdnet.com/2422-19178_22-320699.html
http://blogs.zdnet.com/SAAS/?p=807