The digital age is giving power back to the artist and making them less dependent on the record labels. Artists have more control of their own music, artistic direction, artwork and promotions. With social media it gives artists the outlets necessary to promote their own brands but is there still a large amount of profit being made? According to RapRehab, If you take an artist with a major label deal and has signed an agreement entitling them to a low royalty profit on their CD sale. It would take the sale of 3871 units to equal a minimum wage salary of $1,160 a month.
Major label artist going Gold would make roughly $149,832 on the low royalty end to $500,00 on the higher royalty end. If an independent artist were to sell the same 500 thousand copies the would make $4,000,000, which is highly unlikely. As far as streaming music, an artist would have to have their music streamed on Rhapsody 849,817 times , Last.FM 1,546,667 times and Spotify 4,053,110 times to make $1,160 a month per stream outlet. The music industry’s future will revolve around the fact of making new experiences with an artist’s brand, as well as figuring out ways to think outside the box because you can’t rely only on record sells.
