Entertainment For Lively Minds
Best ways to pay
Far be it from me to suggest content for the Word, but I'd really appreciate an article that talks about the cuts the artists get when you buy their product via each of the many routes now available to us.
I'm about to buy the new Super Furry Animals LP and could:
- buy from iTunes
- buy a CD online from Amazon, Play, HMV etc
- buy a download from Amazon, 7digital etc.
- see if they have the CD in HMV (the only record shop in Harrogate)
- buy it from a supermarket (not that they'd stock it)
- steal it online
Now, I want to make sure the band get the maximum payout as a percentage, without ripping myself off. Luckily, this being SFA, I have the additional option of buying a CD or download via their own site, so I'll do that. But otherwise, what's the best option?
- More from Simon Moffatt.
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And ....
Good question. Can I add to it whether we can be given any idea of how much artists are paid when we listen to their music on streaming services? I use spotify, We7, last.fm etc and always wonder what the artist is getting out of it.
I'd further add...
How much to they get from use of music on telly (if anything). The music doesn't get a credit, so there's no promotional advantage.
There seems to be hardly a programme that doesn't feature something from Seldom Seen Kid somewhere. By rights, Elbow should be doing pretty well just out of the One Show and Country File.
Free
The latest, highly recommended, edition of Wired contains an extract from Chris Anderson's book 'Free: The Future of a Radical Price'. Some interesting observations about this very topic. Seems to be the way it's going is that CDs are increasingly being seen as 'advance marketing' for gigs. He cites the example of a Brazilian 'technobrega' band who have made a fortune (enough to buy their own plane) by basically allowing the CDs to be sold for next to nothing by street vendors but charging for gigs, including food and drink charges, and ripping CDs and DVDs of the concert on the spot. Apparently Brazil leads the way in this area, for example with the very widespread use of open source software like Linux.
Free: The Future of a Radical Price...
... is available, appropriately enough, on Spotify as an audiobook for anyone who's interested.
I venture to suggest
Possibly off their own Web site ? They are offering it for £12. Or is this the expensive option ?
http://www.superfurry.com/
what happened to Mix Music?
the inevitable I suppose :-(
(I used to live in Harrogate around 1997 ish... lovely part of the world)
iTunes
is apparently one of the worst ones. A friend producing independently her own music managed to get it onto iTunes and found she was actually making a loss when her 'profits' started rolling in.