Here’s an Internet musician who’s making it famous without a record deal or being back by millions of dollars (unless you factor in the millions it takes to run Youtube). The videos of her singing with her guitar in front of a web cam have received roughly 50,000 to 90,000 views each.
Every now and then I get into arguments about how downloading should not be legal. And the usual response is “so you think it’s okay to steal music,” or “you think it’s wrong to make money, and all those people who spend their life’s savings investing in record companies shouldn’t get something for the use of their money?” That isn’t want I’m saying. When a song gets downloaded it reaches how many people at what cost to the record label (in terms of distribution)? The problem is that record labels, copyright holders, are sitting on a gold mine and they don’t know it. Downloading probably won’t go away over night, so why not just come up with a way to make money off of it. And don’t ignore the face that you have a big audience willing to download your music.
Anyway… so now we have these independent artists releasing their music on Youtube, and other sites for free, reaching a pretty big audience. Most of these artists will not make millions, some might make hundreds of thousands, most might make something in the tens of thousands. But for one or five people, that’s pretty good! Especially if the costs to manufacture your music is in the one thousand to three thousand dollar range. Their value is found in popularity and influence–revenue from click ads, a company picks their song for use in a commercial (it’s cheap for them for the return), or smart director picks their song for their upcoming movie.
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