“His first album, self-published in 1992, gathered dust at local shops. Then along came the Internet. Around 1995, Nevue created his first Web page, DavidNevue.com. In 1996, he launched a site for piano enthusiasts, featuring music reviews and links to other sites, plus information on everything from sheet music to the history of the piano. Nevue also promoted his own, New Age CDs online (soon, he’ll have seven of them). As a result, he now sells $1,000 worth of CDs a month and distributes his music digitally through MP3.com.”
That’s from Business Week, which rounds up the impact of the technology on musicians. Olga Kharif’s great article enumerates the Internet’s benefits to the independent artist.
It’s not just about reaching bigger audiences. The margins are much fatter with no middle man; “Artists who sell their work independently usually garner $8 on a CD retailing for $16, instead of $3 or less when they record for a label.”
And don’t forget to give the music away. When Napster provided free versions of Janis Ian‘s songs, her site got 100 extra visitors a month. According to an article on Ian’s site: “Of those 100 people (and these are only the ones who let us know how they’d found the site), 15 bought CDs. Not huge sales, right? No record company is interested in 180 extra sales a year. But’ that translates into $2700, which is a lot of money in my book. And that doesn’t include the ones who bought the CDs in stores, or who came to my shows.”
As Ian puts it in another article, “Water is free, but a lot of us drink bottled water because it tastes better. You can get coffee at the office, but you’re likely to go to Starbucks or the local espresso place, because it tastes better.”
(Via Blogcritics.)
