STOP SELLING MUSIC!

Every band and artist, needs to stop selling music.

Change my mind...

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👇 ABOUT ME:
Hey! I'm Damian Keyes and I've worked with musicians every day of my life for the past 20 years. The internet is deeply untrusting understandably and here is my background so you can have the full picture.

When I was 18, I was signed to a major label (dropped 6 months later) and at 23 I co-founded a Music University in Europe called BIMM (valued at $300M). I’m also a bass player, I’ve played for a number of artists including Eric Clapton, Alanis Morrisette and Billy Cobham. I initially retired at 30, but realised that life gets boring if you’re not building!

I have always been in-between the music industry and education which is how I ended up building my YouTube channel - I’ve been teaching artists how to release music long before it was a ‘niche’! I now educate artists around the world with my Academy, YouTube channel and I work directly with labels internationally alongside owning a live agency and management company.

It’s great to meet you and looking forward to working together on your music!

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[DamianKeyes]

I'm loving this comment and this thread of comments inc all the hate and debate. A few things...

I LOVE vinyl and I too get excited about owning the album on vinyl format. Saying that if I'm honest I do buy second hand albums from the 70's as I want that history as well as that authentic sound. I haven't really bought many albums from post 1979, but that's just my preference.


However, while it's clear that some people do love the feel touch smell and sound of the real thing, the majority of people don't so if you are selling on vinyl because you are making a point that it has been made for vinyl and it's for the music lovers (of which they are in the minority) then there is a case for the niche.


My issue is that the stats are showing that less people are buying new music and bands with smaller fanbases and little budget or time are fighting a losing battle.


Incidentally with the rise of vinyl the top 10 selling vinyl albums of 2017 still included Fleetwood mac, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Oasis, Any Winehouse and David Bowie:


÷ – Ed Sheeran
As You Were – Liam Gallagher
Rumours – Fleetwood Mac
Guardians Of The Galaxy – Awesome Mix 1 Original Soundtrack
Back To Black – Amy Winehouse
Human – Rag’N’Bone Man
The Dark Side Of The Moon – Pink Floyd
Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – The Beatles
What’s The Story Morning Glory – Oasis
Legacy – David Bowie


I'm not trying to hurt musicians careers I'm trying to get them to see that they need a strong strategy to cut through and right now when an artist needs to be in control of the art, production, distribution, PR, Social Media, Marketing, Ads, Management etc it's a tough time! Musicians need a clear path of what they want to achieve and what they want the audience to do next without confusion of targets.

[hany.jr]

As a music fan, I like to buy my favorite artists albums even though I can stream it on youtube just to support the artist/band

[Nathankaye]

You’re asking the wrong questions and not placing it in the correct context.
The film and tv industry aren’t stupid.
The music industry is.
Why?
You can’t get Netflix, etc for free.
You must pay.
It’s a streaming service, but you must pay.
They even invest millions of dollars of their own money into making great new content.

The music industry?
Spotify etc offer music for free.
They don’t invest their money in new music content.
The result?
They are all losing money (and recorded music quality is plummeting).
Lots of it.
Why?
It’s not sustainable.

AS an independent touring musician, I have people come up at gigs asking “where can I get your music?”
“Are you on Spotify?”
My answer?
“I’m not on streaming. My music is available right here. Right Now.”
Most of the time they then buy the music.
Point of sale.
It works.
It’s called scarcity which is what drives our capitalist economy.
The film industry funnels their content.
Why aren’t musicians?
Because musicians don’t value themselves? Because musicians are desperate?
“Oh please like me?” lol

The other major problem is that NOBODY values FREE stuff.
If you pay for something you generally have more respect for it.
When it comes to music that translates as vastly more listens.
Case in point: A few months or so ago, I'd heard the first couple of singles from an artist I respect and, based on hearing those two singles I was really close to buying the vinyl of his latest album.
However, my partner put his album on via Spotify.
It was free.
We listened to it once and never again.
Yet if we'd bought his album we would still be listening to it regularly.
You are no different to this.

The erroneous notion of 'being discovered'.
As an artist, you're living in a fantasy if you think that you’ll either “get discovered” or “earn money” on streaming.
The figures don’t lie.
At roughly $0.00397 per play you’d need to get approximately 2, 000, 000 plays per month to make minimum wage.

That’s worse odds than winning the lottery.
That’s like a race to the bottom.
Moreover, it will push recorded music quality down, where all that remains is overproduced formulaic music-like-products en masse.

Stop perpetuating a myth.

Instead, we should collectively push for an industry reform, create scarcity and a revaluation of music, which, let’s face it, NOBODY CAN LIVE WITHOUT.

If you think you’ll can live without recorded music go on a music-fast for a month, or even just a week and see how long you last. That means no putting on any tunes whatsoever, no watching any movies or tv shows (all need music), heck, don’t even hum a tune in your head unless you wrote the melody yourself. Lol.

[DEMONATA]

Artists need to have a different marketing strategy for each type of fan they want to reach. Market to the casual by telling them to go and stream your music and support you that way, if they like you and your music enough, you can develop them into hardcore fans over time. For your hardcore fans, they are more likely to be willing to spend money on your new music and merch, so market to them through a mailing list and community group on social media telling them the ways they can support you and your new content. The third type of fan is a cold fan or ‘cold audience’, this means they’ve not heard your music yet and they need to be ‘warmed up’ into becoming a fan via advertising, but that’s a whole different topic.

Don’t treat your audiences the same, treat them like individuals and market to them accordingly, they’ll thank you for it, and you won’t be wasting time and money advertising to the wrong people.

Also, give people an incentive to buy the music - signed physical albums, limited run vinyl, limited run T-shirt’s, special editions, exclusive bonus tracks only available on the album, etc.

[ericcampbell]

Recording is not free, whether you book a studio or you buy the equipment to do it at home. Most musicians will not play for you without payment.
There are some who think that concerts should also be free, but again there are many expenses involved in touring. If an artist is going to devote their time to creating and traveling, then they could hardly hold a day job. Perhaps musicians should just be put in chains and can be rewarded with a dog biscuit when they sing.

[gregorwalton]

Your argument pretty much works for "Stop Streaming Your Music, Just Sell It". Streaming, as far as I can tell, gives artists nothing but a vague chance at exposure - unless you're a big name artist. Most bands would be better off, I suspect, saying "forget streaming, audition my music on Bandcamp and, if you like it, buy it". If we all did that everyone who wants to hear something other than the sonic equivalent of a Big Mac would be buying music and bands would be able to afford to make good quality music. If we carry on the way we're going we lose professional musicians as a breed and only have computer-generated corporate pap or amateurs
churning out whatever their ego tells them to. Or maybe I'm wrong

[steveacevedo]

I'm almost 60 and over my lifetime I've bought and still own thousands of vinyl albums, 8 track tapes, cassettes and CD's. Typically I would buy at least a half dozen albums or CDs every week back in the day when buying and collecting music was king. When the digital age came, I would borrow and rip CD's from my friends, then I started to download music legally, paying for each song or album. My kids would laugh at me for paying for music as in their lifetime music was always available to be downloaded for free. When the major streaming services emerged and made every new release available for downloading into your own personal library, it was the beginning of the end of my ever buying another song or album again. It's been years since I've purchased any music unless you want to count my annual subscription fees for streaming services of which I only have one which averages out to about ten bucks a month. I feel sorry for the artists but we the music consumers are the real winners here. I guess the next question to be asked is will we in the end be the losers when musicians will stop being hungry for commercial success and will no longer dedicate themselves to spending hundreds of hours toiling away in recording studios to create an album like Dark Side of the Moon or Born to Run.

[zazous]

I believe that if you want to sell music today, then it must offer something extra. If its a physical format it could almost be a piece of art. Like the Velvet Underground's first album with the removable front cover. Bands could take that concept and create something modern and exciting. For example, perhaps fans who purchase a physical copy could get a reward such as free access to a bands online VIP area where they can watch secret blogs and stories from the band. In summary, fans need an extra incentive to buy a physical copy.

[ThomMillsDrums]

I think this is a dangerous argument and one that devalues musicians and their art form. I agree when starting out as a new act trying to sell your music would be a difficult almost pointless exercise. However once you have begun to establish your music and have a fanbase, selling music is a way to begin to recoup costs to the label. I work in a touring band and we don not sell millions of copies of albums, but the fan base wants to buy the music because they love the band and the art form and some people out there still think rightly that musicians do have value, which they do. We must think about the generations coming through as well and future of music, if we say there is no value in it then who will want to make music anymore?

[celineellis]

I agree with this. I don’t even own a CD player or way to play a cd. I’m a Spotify subscriber, I don’t buy music. I don’t expect people to buy my music. I struggle with it though, because some people ask me if I have a cd, and the cost of producing cds to sell 8 of them is huge.

[drkstrnd]

I get your point don't you think it's good to have some CDs for live shows, not for money, but because people always complain if there's no CDs

[fernandust]

Hi Damian, what is your position about music videos? Do you think is worth the work? And how would you approach the release of a single with video? Would you release them at the same time? Thank you for your videos!

[theaddictofgaming]

Bandcamp Name Your Price. It's free and easy. I think it makes sense, especially if you don't push it.

[danielscottburke]

You are magnificent. I have been selling a brand for years now. The music is NOT the momentum.. it is the "why" that brings the focus. Fighting mental conformity, depression and creating music for healing purposes. They buy it when it connects to their personal belief system. Something bigger than ourselves. Something we all have in common. <3 #love #struggle #togetherness

[lonniebaldwin]

Well said.
I've been going on about this exact thing for a month now.

LEAD WITH VALUE! Then use that to sell your widget.

[deandoeslife]

Agree with this. I can’t remember the last time my band sold a CD, yet we have reasonable streaming stats and seem to be playing shows to decent crowds as of late.

[edbrotherton]

I’m going to try and change your mind.  
 
First of all, you have artists like Drake and Ed Sheehan who are a very very small percentage of artists who are actually making any significant money from streaming.  

There are currently around 40 million songs in the spotify inventory with 10 percent of those (4 million) that have never been streamed.  The average streaming payout is .006 to .008 of a penny per stream.  That means that you have to have a song stream at least 142 times to equal $1.00 download.  Now if you’re a band and there are 4 members, that one sale is being split between the 4 of you or the revenue from 142 streams is getting split between the 4 of you.  If you want to sustain a living from your music this means you have to earn a livable amount.  Let’s say it’s $2500/month.  Since there is four of you multiply by 4 and this equals $10, 000/month.  And if $1 download equals 142 streams this means you have to maintain 1, 420, 000 streams per month for your band members to earn a living. Now is it easier to maintain the 1.4 million streams per month or maintain 10, 000 in download sales per month if you provide no streaming option?  Who knows? That fact of the matter is that when you put your music on a streaming service you are basically throwing your needle in that haystack hoping it finds an audience.  Unless you have a marketing plan behind you or the music is THAT GOOD, it won’t.
So regardless of whether you offer your music for purchase as a digital download or for streaming, a new artist must promote promote promote promote.  Is it easier for a new artist to sell digital downloads to real fans they are connecting with and actually make some money or is it easier to give it away for free to those same fans (who would have bought) just because you hope your music gets heard in the midst of 40 million other songs competing for the same play?  New artists lose in this model because the only real way they will make any money is to sell their music but because companies decided to give it away for free artists feel they need to put their music where all the consumers are.  But this is such a fallacy because just because there are 110 million people on Spotify for example doesn’t mean those 110 million people are going to notice you.  There is only so much real estate on that screen much like there is only so much real estate on those shelves in the music stores.  Artists must compete for that space.
The other problem is that the streaming services like spotify don’t really care about the artist.  Hell they aren’t even in the music business. These companies are in the business of aggregating populations.  They are selling subscriptions.  This is there business.  They just happen to be exploiting the music industry and renting their music inventory to their subscribers.  There is another thing that is being missed by I think the industry as a whole. There are actually two customer bases that has to be considered.  The one that everyone focuses on is the buying consumer.  Companies offered streaming services and basically offered access to 40 million songs for free verses buying songs for a buck each.   Of course the buying consumer is going to go for that. Just because it’s what the public wants doesn’t mean they should be getting it.  Afterall nobody asked the artists what they wanted which leads me into the second customer base.  This is the artist themselves.  Artists are the ones that create.  They are the ones creating the product and bringing it to life.  And the artist ultimately gets to decide how they put their music out to the world.  So if the artists decides that they are not going to offer their music for streaming and only offer it as a download, their fans will buy it.  After all it wasn’t that long ago when we got in our cars, drove down to the store, fingered through the collections and payed 10 to 15 bucks for that new album that you only enjoyed 2 songs on.  So yes people will buy music if the Artists decide that’s how they are going to put it out.  The other issues is the long term effects on the music industry not even considering that labels have to do things like 360 deals to make any money etc.  But I’m talking about the real cultural shift that is bound to take place.  
Free or almost free streaming leads to artists not paid and the artist fan link being broken.  This creates a view that artists are poor and not a good career choice.  This results in little or no investment is music programs in public schools etc. This causes a rapid decline in the quality of music and the loss of value.  If the quality of music declines it’s not too long when the decline of our culture follows.  This results in investments in theaters, venues, radio, to decline as well causing multiple systemic breakages in music business and local music scenes causing bigger acts and neighboring industries to feel the pressure/stress as general belief in artists ability to support and inspire communities decline resulting in labels and others to invest in lower quality, short term projects. 
Now I know you’re of the belief that artists should stop selling their music all together.  But without the sales, there are no billboard charts, without the sales, there are no paying back that advance the label gave you to get that album released.  The artist has control.  It is their music and they ultimately get to decide how to share it.  The streaming industry is in the subscription business while the music industry is in the music business and if it wants to survive and thrive then it must provide a way to be more equitable across the board. The industry will continue to evolve and change until this equitability is established.  Saying don’t sell your music isn’t the answer, no more than saying stop streaming your music is the answer.   I hope this helps.

[wickedwoodshaunt]

After spending thousands and thousands to make an album why would you not try to make your money back in every way possible.. print vinyl, print cds, have it available on spotify, etc.. do it all.. why limit the way people can get your music? You might not make a ton, bit isn't it worth a try to make sales if someone will buy it? Why are cds still being pressed, and the vinyl press companies are so busy? Someone is buying it somewhere, I certainly do still.

[jcole]

This is an argument to ban streaming, not stop selling! Grand Theft Auto doesn't give their game away for free. I've worked in the music business my entire life... as a side man, a solo artist, a producer and a manager. Streaming benefits one small group of people: The parent companies, of which there are now mainly 3. The record companies, who have 360 deals and receive monthly payments from giving their music away... and the streaming sites themselves. Oh, and maybe 150 artists at any given moment. Flavors o the day. Arianna, Justin, Ed etc. The rest are pedaling as fast as they can with no hope to make money but take it on the road. Which is fine, except I'm still an artist. 58 years old. I've done my touring/schlepping. I like to make records. It costs an enormous amount of money to make quality sounding records. Sorry Damian, but your argument is that of a music fan, not a music maker.

[marcusjayallen]

I needed to hear this, thank you love this channel so much