There is a growing school of thought that ‘staying small is actually the next big thing’ and I am one of those who subscribe to that philosophy. When it comes to the world of music and art in general I think it is becoming more sustainable for artists to stay small. More and more, we are hearing people in the entertainment industry talking about the need to build a core fanbase - the nature of the product essentially demands that.
The internet has brought with it one major advantage to the artist - being - artists are no longer at the mercy of labels when it comes to being able to distribute their music. Some might even argue that there has never been a better time to be an artist given that cost of recording is the cheapest it has ever been. Unfortunately, that has also come with an unprecedented level of competition and saturation in the market. Just about anybody can set up a Spotify account and an artist page on FB and start releasing music. There are so many artists out there and there is a lot of music to chose from which means competition in the music industry is arguably at its highest. Before, an artist under a label could hardly be worried about another unsigned artists but today a signed artists has few, if any, advantages over an unsigned artist. Some even argue that there are more disadvantages and mere conveniences to being signed to a label.
When you are an artist, the goal is to become big. You want to be known by many more people across the world. Increasingly, we are finding out that being known and racking up YouTube views does not necessarily translate to sustainable financial success. One million streams on YouTube will fetch you a maximum of about $690. So For a song like Daphne’s Calee, normally we would expect her to have bagged about $14,500 for the little over 21 million views it has gathered. I however doubt that YouTube is just dishing out money for views.
In my life, I have seen only about three Cameroonian companies and Ebako buy YouTube ads in the territory, so most of the times we watch music videos on YouTube from Cameroon, we are hardly ever served ads so the artists really make nothing from our YouTube views. I remember when we were forced to use VPNs to surf the internet and I will get served an ad every time I watched a video on YouTube. I guess if we really care about helping our artists make more money from the work, we should all start using VPN’s to surf the internet. I mean eventually, YouTube will fish us out but…enough with the digression.
Many factors affect the aforementioned figures in relation to payouts per view. A huge part of those figures have something to do with the paid advertisements served on the videos we watch on YouTube, the types of streaming accounts etc. In 2014, according to Wired magazine, Pandora paid out $12,359 for Avicii’s “Wake Me Up” which had 168 Million streams, on the platform, in America. That is just for some perspective. Also, do not forget the fact that those streaming sites do not have a universal agreement with all artists on their platform; they have a different agreement with every single artists so meanwhile Drake might be making more for a single Stream on Spotify, one of our own might actually by making close to nothing. By the way 1/5 of the songs on Spotify have never been played.
Any-Ha!
Streaming has replaced CDs and bootlegging has never been easier so music sales are suffering. There is still a ton of money being made in the entertainment industry but the artists are increasingly getting the smaller piece of the pie. The money is coming from shows and merchandise. The costs of putting up shows are usually so high that the organizers usually walk away with most of the proceeds to cover costs before thinking of compensating the artists.
The Financial Times reported, in 2013, that 99% of recording artists share 23% of global artist revenue which means that 1% of artists make 77% of the change. That was in a 2013 report but I doubt much has changed since then. For an artist to make more from what they bring in, they basically have to move towards the independent route - hence the logic of winning big by staying small. With record deals, the artists seems to always owe the record label money even after they make money for the record label. I mean if you really want to make money, just start the next MIDA because music is more likely to get you girls, the ability to wake up at 11 A.M, avoid having a boss and many other things before it gets you money.
As an artist however, you can’t escape the need to make enough to have decent life and prepare for ‘retirement’ especially if you are making it a career rather than a hobby. You have to think of how to make enough to sustain your lifestyle. One person that has gone about this the right way is Jovi. I personally think he has left a lot of money he could have taken home on the table but I want to focus here on what he has done right which is - staying small and serving a niche of clients/fans who have turned out to be die heart fans willing to prove themselves right.
So, Jovi just released his 7 track EP ‘God Di Kam’ which saw over 30 thousand downloads in just a few days. It came out for free, then went on sale after he realized the demand was very high. For an artist who relies mainly on social media to promote his work and considering the fact that he has only a little over 47,000 followers on his FB page, that is a pretty high conversion rate. Jovi has been adamant about using band camp which is one of the only platforms where you can be sure the artist is getting most, if not all of the money the fans pay for their music. It is the platform where usually the artists has the fewest number of layers between them and the audience.
I always share this scenario with young artist that come to me for advice:- If you have only 5,000 fans who you can convince to buy your 4 track EP for 1000 FCFA, that is 5,000,000 FCFCA. Now if you do that 4 times a year i.e every three months, that is 20 million francs which is about 1.7 Million francs a month. If you only have 1000 fans willing to pay, then we are talking about 4 million FCFA a year which is about 330,000 FCFA a month; in Cameroon, that is good money. You are basically earning higher than the average civil servant that does not steal. I don’t think 1% of Cameroonian artists make as much money a month.
To be continued
- Tino Foy