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By chrisbrummund, August 20, 2009 2:41 pm

I stumbled across this article at Music Think Tank that gave advice on how to make instant money by playing music.  Most of their advice consisted of playing, playing, and more playing.  They advised to take on as many gigs as possible, not just live shows with your band (although they recommended plenty of that, too).  But the biggest point that stuck out to me was the advice to play covers.

In the article, they say it’s a good way to practice and play different styles of music as your band is starting out.  Once your band gets more experience and recognition, then you can start pushing your own original music.

I’d like to look at this from the reverse angle.  If you are a band that has some solid playing experience and have written a solid catalog of original songs, try playing a cover and give it your own unique spin.  I have a friend who plays in a screamo band (I really hate that term, but I can’t think of a better way to describe it).  They’ve been playing and touring the country for about five years now.  This summer, they were in a studio and recorded a cover of a hit pop song that was getting a lot of radio play at the time.  They posted it on their MySpace page and it blew up.  They had over 15,000 plays of this song after only three days!  There were loads of new friend requests each day from people saying they loved the cover, and quite a few more who said how much they loved the band.  That’s a whole new slew of fans just from playing a cover song.

Here is how I would do it:

• Pick a song that’s compatible with your own fanbase, but crosses genres and potentially draws new fans. 
• Put in a solid effort when writing and recording this cover.  Nobody will want to listen if it sounds terrible! 
• Acquire mechanical use licenses so you can legally distribute and sell this recording.  Let’s say my friend from the example 10,000 downloads of this track over that weekend; if their cut after paying the publishers and distributors (iTunes, Amazon) is around $0.50, they would have made $5,000 that weekend!  I realize that not every cover would generate that type of response, and a 2/3 conversion rate from plays to downloads is pretty generous (especially since the 15,000 plays probably were not all unique plays), but any additional income stream can help an independent musician, no matter how small.
• Push your original music on website visitors who come to hear your cover.  If you are using a MySpace page, set up one of your own tunes to auto-play when a visitor hits your site.  This will increase the chances of new fans hearing, liking, and/or buying your other tracks or CDs. 
• Make sure you splash your tour schedule and other merchandise all over your site so new fans have more opportunities to support you.

So what’s you opinion?  Does your band play cover songs?  Or do you think it’s wrong to capitalize on the coattails of another song’s success?

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By copycatsmedia, January 21, 2009 11:16 am

I’ve read this post from CD Baby touting their revenues and figures from 2008.

Here’s some key figures listed in that post:

• 277,000 albums for sale and 150,000 artists with active albums as of January 1st, 2009
• Of the 277,000 albums, 194,000 of them are available for digital distribution.
• 993,175 CDs sold in 2007; 1,013,478 CDs sold in 2008 - a 2% increase
• 39,100 new album titles added in 2008, up 7% from the previous year.
• Digital distribution revenues:  2007 - $17.4 million, 2008 - $25.4 million - a 17% increase
• $34 million paid out from CD Baby to artists, up 28% from 2007
• $228 paid out to each artist annually on average
• 4,000 artists earned more than $1,000; 200 artists earned over $10,000

Mmmmm…numbers.  What to make of all this?

The first thing I notice is the absurd growth in digital download sales.  This obviously catches the attention of a guy working for a CD duplication business.  We all expect CD technology to become obsolete someday, but how soon will that day come?  Will we ever see the day where we only download music? 

I didn’t get too worrisome thinking about the future of our industry.  The good news is they’ve also had an increase in physical CD sales while the rest of the big labels reported a 14% decline in sales.  They also show a 7% increase in new albums added from the year before.  This tells me that there are increasingly more independent artists out there who are recording and producing new music. 

The last thing I noticed was the average amount of money paid out per artist - $228 annually.  This is assuming all things being equal (which they are not; some will sell more, some will less).  Making a very rough estimate, the 4,000 high sellers are probably taking at least $6 million out of that pie.  This leaves $28 million to divide between 146,000 artists.  Again, assuming all things being equal (again, which they are not), this averages out to $191 per artist.  This is approximately $16 per month, or the equivalent of selling about 1.5 CDs per month.

CD Baby is an excellent service.  We’ve been recommending it to customers for years.  But the moral of story is that your CD isn’t going to sell itself on-line any more than it sells itself offline.  You still have to promote, play shows, and reach out to new fans.  Use CD Baby’s service to supplement your other sales and give you another distribution channel for your music.