dj lissa monet OFFICIAL blog | music.life.love.everything.

its been a minute since i’ve written a post like this.

i feel like sometimes we get caught up in the imagery of an artist to remember that they are working class people just like us who have to wait for cheques to be cut *smile*.

i recently came across an article that broke down the money trail of an artist signed to a major label.

im not sure how you guys know how i feel about majors, but its kind of a love hate relationship – from a distribution standpoint, they are the powerhouse for which an artists CD can [legally] reach the masses (aside from their arch nemesis, the internet) but from a management, marketing and development standpoint, the majors kind of fail.

its no surprise that before an artist gets a check in hand that everyone ELSE gets their piece of the pie first. the artists that spend countless hours in the studio, answer the same lame questions on radio, television and [un]known internet mediums, who face rumors, innuendo, propaganda and the pressures of living up to an expectation of a large group of people they DONT KNOW aka their fans, get the smaller piece of the pie.

According to the latest Nielsen research, only 2.1 percent of the albums released in 2009 sold even 5,000 copies — that’s just 2,050 records out of nearly 100,000.

i mean this chart was created with a ‘band’ in mind, but substitute some of the pieces of the pie for such miscellaneous ‘luxuries’ that i wont generalize in this post, but think of the things you see in 80% of all music videos with a club scene, the artist is lucky he/she comes home with enough money to pay the rent.

the root breaks it down even further here and also created a fun little calculator to find out how much you’d make as a musician.

just trying to put some things into perspective,

~lissa

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