Today an article was cross-posted to Gizmodo about independent bands and what they “really” make from sales, including streams, downloads, and physical. I think Giz’s point in posting it was to give insight to the new world of streaming music, and how little an artist makes from that. It’s an interesting discussion because everyone claims streaming will save the music industry. You might be wondering what insight I have on this and why I as a designer should be spewing off rebuttals about what is and isn’t wrong with the music industry. I spent three years as the Creative Director of The Militia Group, which for those who aren’t familiar was an Indie label based in Southern California with it’s more well known artists being Rufio, Copeland, The Rocket Summer, Cartel, and Lovedrug. A big part of my responsibilities there was to work with out distributors over at RED (part of Sony) on production. Additionally, I have handled production for artists without a label, and facilitated everything from licensing requests to digital/streaming sales.

Enough back story about me, what’s the problem I have with the bands post? In general I think it comes off as misleading at best, and in some moments showcases everything that’s wrong with the industry surrounding music (let me give you a hint: it’s not just the labels who make a bunch of unsound decisions). You have a band who apparently has concerns about covering it’s digital distribution costs of $50 a year/record and can’t get any sort of physical distribution, talking about their physical product and vinyl release. I don’t know a thing about Uniform Motion, and I’m currently giving their record a spin on Spotify for the first time (and enjoying it, quite a bit). I have no idea what their fan base is like, I have no idea if they really struggle to sell 24 albums a year on iTunes, but what I do know is they seem to be advertising some incredibly un-wise business decisions. My point of this post is merely so offer up some additional information as no case study is complete with one data set. Additionally, let’s remember my experiences (and these are only my experiences) are in the US where most of the people who would be reading this (and Gizmodo) are, so perhaps there is something “lost in conversion”.

Streaming/Digital
Uniform Motion discusses all their rates for each streaming service, it’s nothing shocking for anyone who has done a little research on the topic. I think most of the world is starting to see that streaming isn’t the cash cow people thought it would be, maybe it gets there though. For some contrast to their numbers, I just checked an artist I work with and he makes $0.01/stream on Spotify. He is unsigned, not actively touring, and in the past 3 years has released a single and an EP distributed digitally through TuneCore. His EP has been on Spotify for 2 months at a cost of $1.98 to do so, he’s already made that back and more through Spotify streams alone. As you know, the best part about releasing music this way is there virtually no overhead aside from a $30 or so yearly fee. If you can’t sell 10 copies a year to break-even on that cost, it’s probably time to stop making music.

Physical Product
Let’s start with Vinyl, I know they come off in the article as a really artsy Indie band that does live art during shows and other awesome things, but this is an Indie-Pop act (give it a listen, you’ll see). Vinyl probably isn’t necessary, but $6.00/unit isn’t bad for vinyl (although these pretty much have no artwork, so you could possibly do better). I love vinyl, I think it’s fun to listen to and a great collectable, however if this band really has issues selling 75 units of Vinyl (even as a cool hardcore fan collectable) they shouldn’t be making vinyl, period. They’ve already sold 30, on the day the record was released, so they should be fine to hit the break-even by the end of the record cycle. I should add that this means selling 30% of product to break-even, doesn’t seem too reasonable of a goal right?

On to the actual Compact Discs, Uniform Motion has a pretty cool package for their album, they call it a digifile and it’s basically a digipak with no plastic tray for the disc. The package breaks down into the digifile (which appears to be printed one solid color and has a sticker on it), the booklet (which I have no idea of knowing how many pages, but let’s pretend it’s 16, which is a lot), and the disc itself. They are paying $5/unit to manufacture these, and honestly I’m not sure why. Every album I handled production for, whether we were doing 100k or 5k, the goal was always $1/unit. We did some really awesome packages over the years at TMG, and ALL of these hovered at most forty cents or so over that goal. Brandtson’s “Hello, Control” was a custom digipak with multiple die cuts with a rather large booklet and I believe we still got it in for $1.30/unit with an initial run of about 20k. Most bands can’t run 20k of print upfront, and we had plenty of artists on the label that we ran 5-10k initially, and a lot of times these packages were around $0.70/unit.

Packaging comes down to cost analysis, pure and simple. Sure with every artist, on the label and off, I wanted to do something as cool as we did for Copeland’s “Eat, Sleep, Repeat”, but you can wind up with just as perfect of a package with much simpler boardwork that has just a bi-fold and a pocket for the disc. The absolute biggest bargain (and more environmentally friendly) we could get for packaging was boardwork, and very much in line with the “digifile” Uniform Motion used, because it has no plastic involved. Let’s get to the almost hilarious fact that they paid $1.66 for the disc alone, even for quantities as low as 1k you can readily find full color replication for around $0.50/unit. If the option is there to do the coolest package you can think of but spending $5/unit to do so, or having a really good looking package for say $2/unit, why are we concerned with the rest of your potentially bad business? If you want to create special, truly unique, packaging I’m all for it, but as a band you are also a business and you need to look out for your bottom line, or not talk about it at all.

The Missing Truths
Uniform Motion fails to discuss any of the actual pertinent costs that go into making their record in their discussion of breaking even. It’s an important detail to always note the costs of the recording process and the costs for promotional materials and design, and even though I don’t think any of their information gives a truly accurate depiction of what it should cost a band to put out a record, this info should definitely have been in the conversation.

To me this whole thing is a great publicity ploy (intentionally, or not), but fails horribly at giving an accurate depiction to the public and fans of costs/profits bands experience.

Head on over here and check out the website!

D. Jay is one of the brilliant minds behind Anthem Films, and also takes some great photographs as well. Check out the site here.

Denison is an incredible musician who has put out a plethora of brilliant records, and has recorded some of my favorite songs ever. If you aren’t familiar with his amazing blend of folk pop (my words, not his), you should go check him out immediately.

Also, if you are familiar and don’t have his new album yet, get it ASAP. You are missing out.