Ableton Forum

Hi!

I am just wondering how many pay'd downloads other artist do have on Juno, Beatport, Itunes ect...

Okay, i know that it's a private question, but i am just curious.

I do have some tracks myself on Juno download, but i am only having about 100 downloads, in 2 months, that's really not that many, but okay, i guess it depends on what you release, or not?

And one more thing, a sad thing i guess, is that after releasing my tracks, i do find them all after a week somewhere on the net ready for illegal download on servers like Rapidshare...

Please feel free to write your experience's, it would be nice and interresting to hear if anyone actually makes a living from Digital Downloads? and what do you do against the illegal downloads?

Kind regards...

I think that only top sellers make any real money off digital downloads. If you want to make a living off music, it'll be through licensing or performing. Selling music via the web is so commoditized that it's no longer a true viable income stream...it's more like marketing. Just think of it this way...the first time I actually found one of my tracks on a p2p program, I was quite trilled anyone cared enough to grab it...

only one reply?

I guess it seems that everyone here only making music as an hobby?

I made about $8 having 3 tracks on Juno

Woo hoo, making music for a living rocks!

i made about 45 euros the first month our stuff were published on beatport, the problem is that there is the need to advertise it, if nowone knows you or your track(mine), he will never make it to your page.

Exactly, actually getting your tunes on a site for sale is the easy part. Continually drumming up publicity to get people there without annoying the hell out of them is the hard part

The thing i find ludicrous is the breakdown... beatport must be raking it in.

Think of the product being 100% - say its £2

they split 50/50 with the label - so the labels getting £1

the label wil split their half with you the artist 50/50

so you get 50p, now if you have a writing partner or theres a remixer then you can cut that in half agian - so 25p per track.

beatport is getting a £1

No idea how many tracks ive sold but ive made around £100 uk pounds in 6 months or there abouts - it kind of makes me sick to think ive therfor sold 800 or so units and some guy at beatport has made £800 out me - multiply that by however many tracks are on that site..

It's still a MUCH better breakdown than selling something on vinyl though. The mount of money is different, but in terms of percentages, artists make more on MP3's.

As it has already been said, if you're track makes it to the top 10, that means that you've most likely sold over 300 DL's in a week if not more.

A release that has 500 DL's or so in the first month is doing well.

Tarekith wrote:It's still a MUCH better breakdown than selling something on vinyl though. The mount of money is different, but in terms of percentages, artists make more on MP3's.

this is very true. I've sold... not a whole lot of physical CDs, albums on MP3, or single tracks in the past couple of years, but the return is better on MP3s, primarily because the 'reproduction' and distribution cost is so low.

The good news is that any profit goes directly back to the project because when you don't have big promotional costs, there is comparatively little overhead.

Tarekith wrote:It's still a MUCH better breakdown than selling something on vinyl though. The mount of money is different, but in terms of percentages, artists make more on MP3's.

I disagree actually. One of the main things to consider first is if you're using a digital aggregator, or if you're selling stuff on your own. Let's just consider the BEST case scenario where you're selling your MP3's on your own. You need to sell about 2.5 to 3 times the amount of MP3 downloads if you want to make as much as you would selling 1 vinyl record.

So, if a label is pressing, and selling out of 1500 records, and only selling 500 dl's, the mp3 sales in terms of gross revenue generated is only about 13%. It's way more profitable from a revenue standpoint to sell records...BUT, it's certainly a more costly/risky investment.

Brian Ffar wrote:

Tarekith wrote:It's still a MUCH better breakdown than selling something on vinyl though. The mount of money is different, but in terms of percentages, artists make more on MP3's.

I disagree actually. One of the main things to consider first is if you're using a digital aggregator, or if you're selling stuff on your own. Let's just consider the BEST case scenario where you're selling your MP3's on your own. You need to sell about 2.5 to 3 times the amount of MP3 downloads if you want to make as much as you would selling 1 vinyl record.

So, if a label is pressing, and selling out of 1500 records, and only selling 500 dl's, the mp3 sales in terms of gross revenue generated is only about 13%. It's way more profitable from a revenue standpoint to sell records...BUT, it's certainly a more costly/risky investment.

well that's "if" yes, and you have to invest much more up front, yes.

Like I said,t he money you make overallis different, but the artist gets a greater return on MP3's than vinyl. Wasn't saying that you'd make more money total on MP3's over vinyl.

Now i am actually feeling a little bit better! i am not alone..

But it's a fact that we don't gonna make a living from producing anymore i guess?

Without a lot of gigs, we can't pay the studio bills....

But i just can't only think about the money, i love producing to much i guess

Nice to see all the nice and hornest reply's!

Thanks!

i've sold about 50 copies of my latest track on beatport, peaked at 20th something on the techno chart ... earned more or less nothing, as a previous poster said, you need to be a top seller to actually get some good cash for it .. those at top 10 probably sell a lot and after that there's a huge gap .. hehe