6 ms·

Ask HN: What are the economics of a streaming based record label?

33 points by max_ 3y ago

Hi, I have been looking at starting a record label as a side business. But it would be designed mostly to make money from Music Streaming services like Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube and others. I am thinking of using CD Baby for distribution of the music. Streaming services are not explicitly open about how much they pay per stream. I understand that the failure rate is high just like startups and movies. But I also realised that a hit song can accrue 500 million streams or even 1 Billion streams of its a big hit. My question is, how much interms of range should one expect to make incase they make such numbers. Is anyone here making money through streaming music? What's your estimated earning per stream across Spotify, Apple Music, & YouTube? Also, any other tips of how to run the project or improve odds of success or learning/reading resources would be very much appreciated.

iamben 3y ago
There's loads of numbers (if you Google) with estimations as to what streams pay. I think the question is what are you going to offer the artist that they can't do themselves, in order that you can take a cut of their streaming? Marketing? Promotion? Guaranteed playlisting? Do you have connections I don't? Arrange my tour? Etc etc. If you can't those we're back to a world with artists saying they get paid 'nothing' for streaming when the reality is the label is gobbling up most of it.
_spduchamp 3y ago
Why use your label when I can use Distrokid, create my own label, and distribute my own music on all the streaming platforms? I don't expect huge money from streaming, but I do like people to be able to find my music on their preferred service if they search for it.
cududa 3y ago
The vast majority of musicians make money from touring and merch - big and small. You can’t make a living off streams
floydianspiral 3y ago
The content of this is a strange to read so my initial take is it seems like you know nothing about the music industry or record labels but i'll argue in good faith. A simple google answers your per stream questions: https://www.igroovemusic.com/blog/how-much-do-i-get-per-stream-on-spotify-2022-edition.html https://www.igroovemusic.com/blog/how-much-do-i-get-per-stre... The sad answer is almost no one is making real money off streaming except the .001% Record labels aren't quite what they used to be now that we have distrokid, tunecore, soundcloud, etc as independent artists can get their music on streaming services themselves. You say you want to be a label, what are you bringing to the table? Do you have any connections in the music industry? These days the only way to make money off a song streaming is if it gets picked up by the big playlists, but guess what? Those are mostly curated by the big labels and you have to have connections to get on them. You can try and get your music on smaller curated lists by blasting out to popular blogs and reading lists as well. Use social media, hope you get lucky on tiktok. Google how to get your music viral as a social media influencer. The real answer here is there is no actual formula but by putting yourself out there on a ton of platforms and hopefully something sticks and it goes viral. At the end of the day is the music has to actually be good (read: something sticky even if its pop drivel) for people to spread it. As a musician and independent producer, this post irks me a little bit as you're basically signaling you want to simply make money from music rather than doing it for the love of the art. If that's not the case I wish you the best.
- gabereiser 3y ago
  To the OP: Don’t be discouraged. Indie artists are out there and if you get connections in that space it’s pretty accommodating. You will not make a living off of streams. You will not make it as a streaming only label. The economics of scale only work at the very very very top. Everyone else is touring, merching, festivals, or lending talent in other aspects of entertainment (licensing for example). To above: you knocked it out of the park with “what do you bring to the table?”. This is what labels do. This is what labels are for. Calling out the questionable motives - only the bold and determined survive the music business. If you aren’t in it for the passion, you will fail.
xigency 3y ago
Long story short, it would be a good project if you have passion and excitement for music and are willing to take it on as a labor of love. As a money-making venture, starting your own independent record label has a pretty poor outlook.
josh_carterPDX 3y ago
I'll echo a few of the comments made here. There is not much money in streaming. Bands typically have to tour and/or sell a ton of merch to make any money. Instead of another label being created, I would love to see a service for bands (similar to a digital or marketing agency) that helps to create activations. Some of the most memorable bands out there have come up with creative ways to sell albums. Years ago a rap group called the Get Busy Committee bought a bunch of uzi shaped thumb drives for $1 each. They unpacked them, loaded their album onto them, and sold them for like $20 each. They pocketed the profits and walked away with more than what they would have done if they did streaming alone. We need more of this style of engagement.
andrewfromx 3y ago
watch every episode of https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/210195-the-playlist https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/210195-the-playlist this first!
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
_trackno5 3y ago
You should look into Harris Heller. He created a record label to make copyright free music for people to stream on places like Twitch. He distributes his music through Spotify, Apple, etc. The key thing here is that his music is used on streams, which tend to last many hours. Imagine a bunch of streamers playing his music for hours a day (he created themed playlists/albums). He gets payed by play time. Last I remember he was making at least 5 figures a month through that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek6p_NmYb44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek6p_NmYb44 In a way he was at the right place at the right time. He focused on lo-fi music and released that for a very targeted audience.
smoldesu 3y ago
I had a friend in high school who owned her own music label. She was the most talented musician I had ever met in terms of performance, arrangement and overall songwriting. She released albums on an annual schedule, and even had a small fanbase of listeners that I was a part of. The money she made off music was pitiful though. She didn't just own her own label, she toured and wrote music every weekday. She gave it everything, more than most people have to offer, and in the end she got a salary most people would call "unlivable". The recent recession and COVID situation pushed her into a Starbucks job to pay rent. So... do what you want. I just want people to know that you could be one of the most talented self-made musicians in the world, and still go destitute despite owning your own label.
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
I am a nothing-to-no-one home experimenter with modular synthesis. I have one album of my music on Bandcamp. From that album I've received a total of US$50. On spotify that represents 15k streams. On apple music, 5k streams (*) These are numbers totally out of reach. But because 7 people liked the album enough, I still made enough for a modest meal out with my wife. Fuck this streaming shit. So tired of young musicians telling me that streaming is where the audience is. If you really believe that somehow you're going to become a superstar, by all means keep playing that game. But if you want to make money without becoming a superstar, focusing on people who actually pay for music is where it's at. (*) https://producerhive.com/music-marketing-tips/streaming-royalties-breakdown/ https://producerhive.com/music-marketing-tips/streaming-roya...
- super256 3y ago
  > So tired of young musicians telling me that streaming is where the audience is. I’m only a music consumer, not a producer, but I found some of my favorite artists (small, less than 20k monthly listeners) via streaming and bought their merch and tickets to live shows. So these young artists aren’t exactly wrong in my opinion.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    The audience is streaming, no question about that. The question is where is the paying audience ? The answer to that is a bit less clear. Also, given how many musicians and music fans appear to NOT know about Bandcamp, it's tricky to gauge the extent to which that model is an alternative or not.
    - JoshGlazebrook 3y ago
      It is the same audience. At the end of the day, if your music isn't good, unique, or worth my time, you're not getting my money spent on merch, vinyls, and tours.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
saaaaaam 3y ago
There are lots of smaller independent record labels making good money from streaming - and some making really quite large amounts of money from streaming, often with very small teams. A lot of people talk about tiny payments from streaming, comparing it to the "old model" where a CD would be sold for $20/€20/£20. However, the actual economics of those album sales are not as straightforward as they seem. The label would get nowhere near $20 for the sale. In fact, the label often got well under half of the retail price, with significant chunks of the retail price going to the retailer and the wholesaler - with another non-significant cost going on manufacture. This began to crumble with digital downloads - suddenly people realised that they didn't need to stump up for a whole album's worth of tracks, some of which - to a greater or lesser extent may have been "filler". So where before a label could press albums and be relatively certain on the return, with digital downloads a lot of people started cherry picking the tracks they wanted to buy, rather than buying the whole album, and although manufacture and shipping records around the country was no longer required - saving a bunch of cash - it meant labels took a significant dip. In a software context, the music business simply moved from up front licensing to a subscription model. That's definitely had impact on the wider economics of how revenues stack in the recorded music business, but it's not as catastrophic as some people might pictured it from the outside. If you want to run a label, though, looking at streaming payments means you're going to fail, because this isn't the challenge. And it's also not the whole of the business, there are other revenue streams for labels, like synchronisation, public performance revenues, and physical music products which, although a tiny proportion of music revenues overall, can be a significant revenue stream for strong independent labels with an engaged audience/customer base. The challenge is signing artists who are going to create recordings that people like - and then finding audiences for that music, engaging them, creating content and campaigns to keep them interested, and building long term revenue streams, and selling them stuff. A&R and marketing are more important today than they have ever been - if you don't have great talent, and you don't know how to market that talent, then it doesn't matter if streaming pays a cent a stream or a dollar a stream - you're not going to have a business model. (My credentials: one of my businesses advises a large number of independent record labels on copyright, digital revenue streams and strategy)
keiferski 3y ago
For a somewhat different approach, I recommend looking into a fashion/music company called Maison Kitsune. Quoting Wikipedia: > Maison Kitsuné was founded in 2002 as a record label by Gildas Loaëc and Masaya Kuroki in Paris. The founders first met in Loaëc's record shop in Paris where house music lovers, including Kuroki, Daft Punk, and others, frequented. After a trip to Japan for a music video together, they came up with the idea of launching a lifestyle brand not confined to one discipline. The result was Maison Kitsuné, which blends music and fashion as a multi-faceted Paris-meets-Tokyo brand. The pair promoted the brand by performing DJ sets, which was followed by the release of the first t-shirt, shirt, dress, and eventually a full fledged ready-to-wear collection in 2005 that represents 90 percent of its revenue today. The lesson here is: whatever niche interest or community you are involved in, try to combine it with your record label project. This is more unique and has a better chance of success than just a generic label.
purpleblue 3y ago
99% of any successful music artist is marketing. Getting people to hear and listen to an artist's music is the extremely hard part of it. Why would anyone need a music label when they can release everything on Youtube or Tiktok by themselves?
- vkou 3y ago
  > Why would anyone need a music label when they can release everything on Youtube or Tiktok by themselves? And how would they differentiate themselves from the fifty million other people who are doing the same thing on YouTube? Labels have historically provided assistance with recording and marketing, in exchange for the lion's share of the bounty. Recording may have gotten easier, but the gap between the skills of a musician, and a marketer is still here. I'm not saying the economics of the past were great, but the economics of the present aren't, either.
  - purpleblue 3y ago
    This is my point. A "music label" with zero money and zero strategy for marketing as the above seems to indicate won't be successful. The technology behind it isn't as important as the money needed to market it.
- saaaaaam 3y ago
  Because labels run properly have great data to market more effectively, and can spin up tried and trusted playbooks, because they tend to be genre specialists. An electronic artist won't sign to a folk label - but a folk artist signing to that label can plug into a whole bunch of proven strategies, which mean far less money and opportunity is wasted. There's a whole bunch of stuff - pixel data, audience profiling, relationships with playlist curators, email lists - that a label can apply to an artist they sign. Releasing music onto YouTube or Tiktok is not marketing - it's distribution. Distribution is trivial, it's a commodity service. Because anyone can distribute music, there's lots of it. Getting much heard requires specialist expertise - and that's why there's probably more value in good labels today than there was ten years ago.
breakfastduck 3y ago
What exactly are you bringing to the table with your label?
ndeast 3y ago
As others have said, running a record label (in this day and age) is a labor of love. You do it because you love the music, you love the artists and you love the scene. I am friends with a few label owners and it's an absolute treat when their release breaks even. I don't think a whole lot more needs to be said really. You are approaching this with entirely the wrong motivations here. Start with a passion in music and the desire to give your friends band a platform to try and scrape together a barely sustainable living, or even just get their songs pressed on a physical medium. At least that will be spiritually profitable.
- cpach 3y ago
  Good point. Also: Please correct me if I’m wrong but I would guess that quite a few owners of indie labels also have other sources of income in order to make a living…? I.e. a dayjob.
  - ndeast 3y ago
    The vast majority of indie label owners are toiling away by day to fund their passions. If you are a successful indie label you are likely investing a lot of your profit back in to sign and put out more bands. Some are able to run a profitable record label along side a more 'traditional' business like a record store, recording studio, or being in a fulltime touring band.
rabi_molar 3y ago
I would not recommend this unless you would consider yourself experienced and best in class in marketing music, or you'd like to use this project as a way to do a deep dive into those skills. The competition is fierce and the market is saturated, so you want to be honest with what you're getting yourself into. On the flip side, it's never been easier to connect with audiences, so if you like what you're working on and you get energized by the grind of audience building, I think you can have a lot of fun and maybe even find some traction.
andjd 3y ago
>I understand that the failure rate is high just like startups and movies. I'd suggest that startups and movies have a much higher probability of 'success' than minting a hit song that can generate 1 billion streams. While there are a few stories of hit songs that organically break through, the vast majority are promoted _hard_ by the labels using resources (both money and connections) that are hard to amass outside the major labels. It is an axiom that today, artists make all of their money touring. But even live performance (particularly at the largest venues) is dominated by monopolistic players. Without having a large number of headliner artists, you won't have the negotiating power to get favorable rates, and they'll eat you for breakfast too.
nemothekid 3y ago
I know one of one person doing a "streaming based" record label that brings in quite a bit of money. As I understand it (and I don't know if the business opportunity still exists), the best way to succeed is acquiring rights for an existing catalog of popular music. Through a family connection he had started acquiring the rights to several old 70s and 80s mexican/southern american music and putting them on streaming. The music already had an audience, there was no talent to maintain, and acquiring the licenses was relatively cheap. As for new music; I don't see what a "side business" label could offer an artist that they couldn't do themselves with distrokid. Unless you had the capital to develop, build, and market artists I think it would be very difficult to generate a return.
lifeisstillgood 3y ago
I am (still!) writing a book I intend to self-publish. There are printers who can do a single run of a single book. I am not aware (though I suspect I will be wrong) of anyone doing similar things for vinyl (CD is fairly obviously common). But I could imagine there is a fairly large number of people who would love to record and press their own album, and one or two of them might actually be able to sell their stuff to strangers. If I wanted to start a record label, that's probably the value I might be able to bring - vinyl presses, maybe studio recording and self publishing.
yannovitch 3y ago
As a studio owner and music shop co-manager, what I would recommend is rather to have an approach of "where is the added value" + "funding model". "where is the added value" >> For example if you own a recording studio with lots of very high-end equipment, and you ask for bands to sign with your label in exchange for a reduced rate. Or have new technology (for example, I am one of the first studio in the city to have Dolby Atmos). Etc... "funding model" >> Rather than trying to make money from streaming only, the value of the band is generally in the community it can gather. Community which can be asked for money with Patreon. Or merchandising sold in concerts. Etc...

fragmede 3y ago

The paying audience is listening to Taylor Swift play at the closest stadium. The days of making a CD and living off those sales have gone the way of the, well, CD. The money now is in getting popular streaming, then going on tour.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
The audience for, e.g. ambient soundfields, is not at the Taylor Swift concert, and they never were. Neither are the bluegrass fans. Ditto for every other highly developed genre. It used to be possible to make a modest living as a genre musician; accepting and adopting streaming has destroyed this for (almost) anyone not already established. My point is this: most people who want to be musicians will NEVER make a living from sales of anything related to their music. Not from streaming. Not from touring. Not from merchandise. So why settle for an absolute pittance from streaming sales, when you could instead adopt a strategy that accepts the (likely) limits of your success, but maybe gets you a couple of hundred dollars a month extra, at least some of the time ?
- fragmede 3y ago
  Because, like you said it's an absolute pittance. What's the difference between $50 from Bandcamp vs $1 from Spotify? You can't live off of that, you're not quitting your day job, regardless. So then it's about the music, and not about the money. If money is the only thing driving you to make music, that's fine, but that's a thing. There are those that need to make music, to express how they are and how they feel and the urge to create won't let them go. They need to share their gift, tell their story and just want people to listen. If you could get everyone in the world to listen to you for 3 minutes, what would you say or sing or play? Some people just know what their answer to that question is and have uploaded it to SoundCloud. Success would be nice, but if, instead, people have heard my music and appreciate it? Listen to it over and over again? I'd take that over beer money. Beer money would be nice though.
- RussianCow 3y ago
  > My point is this: most people who want to be musicians will NEVER make a living from sales of anything related to their music. Not from streaming. Not from touring. Not from merchandise. So, if I understand correctly, your point is that people shouldn't try to make a living off music, period. That's fine, but art has always been a difficult road for a career; the advent of streaming has little to do with this. > So why settle for an absolute pittance from streaming sales, when you could instead adopt a strategy that accepts the (likely) limits of your success, but maybe gets you a couple of hundred dollars a month extra, at least some of the time ? That's not unlike asking, "Why start a business when you could instead work a 9-5 and probably make more money?"
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    > That's fine, but art has always been a difficult road for a career; the advent of streaming has little to do with this Oh, in the realm of recorded music, it absolutely has a LOT to do with it. From the early 1950s until the advent of streaming, record labels played an important role as cross-subsidy systems. You might not like Brittney Spears, but the cut of her album sales that went to her record company allowed her label to continue to work with many artists who were barely profitable (if at all). Streaming (and to a lesser extent, megastars forming their own vertically integrated corporations) has ended that model entirely. If you make "niche genre" music, you're going to be operating without any potential cross-subsidy from more popular music, which translates to either working without a record label at all, or working with a "niche genre" label that helps with marketing but also has extremely low cash flow. > That's not unlike asking, "Why start a business when you could instead work a 9-5 and probably make more money?" I see it as a very different question. I'm acknowledging the appeal of pursuing your artistic inclinations, and I think we should encourage as many folks as possible to do that. But I'm also saying "if you think you're going to make a living from this, you're almost certainly mistaken". There are plenty of things people keep doing in their lives without the prospect of making money from it. I'm suggesting that it would be better if more people understood that in 2023, music probably ought to be one of those things, rather than the basis of a dream way of making a living. It's more like "should you start a business based on your hobby, that almost certainly will not make enough to live on and stands a good chance of destroying your interest in the hobby, or should you accept that it's a side-gig that bring s you joy and occasionally a little bit of extra income?"
  - bruce511 3y ago
    Well it's kinda like it, and kinda not. You can make a living with a job, or a small business. One will end up making more, but fundamentally both are viable approaches to living. Alas its not really possible to make a living from music. Sure some rounding error of people can, working terrible hours, always on the road, grinding away. It's a pretty bad lifestyle for pretty bad money. Yes there are successes, but the fact you can -name them- is a bad bad sign for an industry. If you like to play music, then do it got fun, not money. If you accumulate enough for a meal out, then great. Get a job, pay the bills, and enjoy making the music, even if no-one listens. Stream if you like, sell albums if you like, either way it's gonna be a pittence. Arguing over which is better is meaningless in the sense that they're both bad. Focus on the fun. Don't let the money rob you of the joy. Oh, and starting a record label? Good luck with that... but it's a daft idea.
- brandonmenc 3y ago
  > It used to be possible to make a modest living as a genre musician Really? I used to play in genre bands 20 years ago. No one made a living doing it. There are a lot of rose colored glasses being worn here. The reason musicians made money in the past is because there were so few of them. The barrier to entry - buying synths and studio time, distributing music, whatever - was so high that only a fraction of the people who wanted to make music, could afford make music. A lot of us just dreamed about having the money to even get started. The result was that the demand for music far outstripped the supply of people who had the means to produce it. Which is profoundly unfair. Now everyone can make great sounding music and distribute it globally for free. The result is a gazillion genre musicians. Sure, none of them can make a living selling songs (how quaint) but in the past they would have been completely denied the opportunity to make music at all, even for themselves. The current situation is much, much better: everyone has the opportunity to make music, and listeners have more music available than they could have ever imagined, and it's all essentially free.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    > Now everyone can make great sounding music and distribute it globally for free. The result is a gazillion genre musicians. Entirely agreed, and a point I often find myself making in conversations about this stuff. However: > I used to play in genre bands 20 years ago. No one made a living doing it. There are a lot of rose colored glasses being worn here. I've never been a fan of spectacularly popular music. I used to have a collection of about 3000 vinyl albums, and of that, about 2/3 were by musicians I would characterize as "genre". Of that, I would guesstimate at least half of them used to make some sort of living from their recorded music (based on a quick mental survey of the musicians and what I knew/know about their lives). This is (was) particularly true of jazz, improvised music, electronic music. > The current situation is much, much better: everyone has the opportunity to make music, and listeners have more music available than they could have ever imagined, and it's all essentially free. I mostly agree with this, with the proviso that I'm not sure we really understand what the long term impact will be of "even less people than before can making a living from selling recordings of their music".
    - 3y ago

mjr00 3y ago

Putting your music on streaming services is marketing, because yes, streaming is where the audience is. You say 7 people bought your album, which is great (congrats!), but how did they find out your album existed in the first place? As odd as it sounds, in music-as-a-business, the mentality needs to be that the music you're putting out is marketing for the actual product, which is the musician themselves. Because it's fans of the musician who do things like buy physical records, go to shows when they're on tour, or buy merchandise, which are the things that actually generate revenue.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
> but how did they find out your album existed in the first place? No idea. Should I care? > As odd as it sounds, in music-as-a-business, the mentality needs to be that the music you're putting out is marketing for the actual product I fundamentally disagree with this.
- ixwt 3y ago
  > No idea. Should I care? If you actually want more sales you probably want to know a bit about where they came from. To know which efforts are bringing in customers. Basic marketing.
- IMTDb 3y ago
  > No idea. Should I care? It really depends if you want to go to a second meal with your wife or not. But if you are selling something, knowing who your customers are and how you can reach them to let them know about your product is the absolute basic you need to get right before thinking about promoting it.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    My point was really that without any promotion (maybe a tweet?) I earned more from actually selling the album than I ever would via streaming it. Certainly if I wanted to sell more, I'd need to think about that sort of thing. But I'm already way out ahead of anyone in my position who had opted to rely on streaming for income.
    - RussianCow 3y ago
      The $50 you made doesn't prove anything. It's a small enough number to be statistically insignificant, and could easily have been a lucky fluke. You can't claim that your experience generalizes to higher income levels for people actually trying to make a living off music.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
        Alas, it's not easy to find actual statistics to describe the different income streams for the same artist on bandcamp vs. all other streaming services combined. Every musician I've spoken to who does both uniformly reports 10-1000x more income from bandcamp than from streaming. I could be talking to a too-small or unrepresentative group.
- jrflowers 3y ago
  > No idea. Should I care? This is a good question. Should you know how you made money? Do you need or want money? What even is a “sale” other than somebody giving you money for your music? “Should I know what led to the situation wherein people paid me money?” is a question bordering on mystical best left to the music philosophers and academics.
  - dahfizz 3y ago
    It's clearly a hobby for OP, not everything needs to be optimized for profit.
    - RussianCow 3y ago
      That part is fine. What's not fine is the OP extrapolating that experience to Streaming Is Bad™ simply because they made some small (insignificant) amount of money taking a different path.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
        I'm no extrapolating. I'm saying two mostly unconnected things: 1. streaming is bad because musicians get paid a pittance for it. This remains true whether musicians could make more elsewhere or not. 2. there are other ways for musicians to get paid for their music (but many contemporary musicians do not bother to explore them, believing that streaming is the only answer).
        RussianCow 3y ago
        #2 was not clear to me from the OP. Thanks for clarifying, as I do agree with that point. With that said, my argument is that none of the options are mutually exclusive. You can have your music on Spotify and sell albums and do tours. Why rob yourself of a great marketing tool for bringing in new listeners?
        ixwt 3y ago
        One could argue that the pittance that musicians get paid for streams is really them getting paid for their content getting marketed for them. This leads to concerts, where they get paid more for performing their content. Yes, I agree with you that I would love to support more artists directly through things like Bandcamp or a similar platform rather than streaming platforms. I actually did look into doing it. Many of the artists I enjoy don't have any way for me to easily purchase their music directly. And I can only enjoy them through streaming.
digging 3y ago
> but how did they find out your album existed in the first place? I would assume they found it through Bandcamp's discovery services if the user is not putting their music on streaming services.
gabereiser 3y ago
>As odd as it sounds, in music-as-a-business, the mentality needs to be that the music you're putting out is marketing for the actual product, which is the musician themselves. It’s actually the other way around. The music is the product. The musicians are replaceable. Every “music-as-a-business” has shaken up lineups and replaced musicians, front men, dancers, roadies, publicists, managers, everyone.
- mjr00 3y ago
  In the context of a band with multiple members, the product is the band, which does occasionally have different members. But not the music the band creates, which is going to be available freely on the internet whether the band/musician/label wants it to be or not. Do you think record labels could replace Taylor Swift or Nicki Minaj with someone off the street and have them sing the same songs and be as successful? No, they could not, because all of the marketing and branding has surrounded those two individuals. Even the most amazing song in the world isn't really going to have value if you call it "UNKNOWN ARTIST - UNKNOWN TITLE".
  - gabereiser 3y ago
    Spotify has a huge library of covers by unknown artists. The band is the “company” at the execution level. The label is the private equity or accelerator/VC. The music is the product. It may be freely available, but it’s not free. It’s a business of land and expand before you see a dime so you need to establish the scale first. Taylor swift is an interesting choice since her whole music catalog was bought out from under her (she still owns the song but not the masters) and now she’s recording it all again. Just being Taylor swift isn’t enough, she needs her music, in order to be “Taylor Swift - The Band”. Yes, you can’t replace Taylor and still have her music. Just like you can’t replace Atari and still have Atari. There are companies that exist as an extension of the founder (cough X cough) but most don’t operate this way.
    - mjr00 3y ago
      What would make more money: Taylor Swift/Metallica/The Arctic Monkeys doing a concert that's entirely covers of other artists' songs, or me (a nobody) doing a concert that's a cover of Taylor Swift/Metallica/The Arctic Monkeys songs? If you answer that question correctly, you'll understand what I mean when I say the band and the brand/marketing behind it is the product, not the music.