We know it’s tough to make money as a music artist these days thanks to the domination of streaming, which offers very little in the way of compensation to artists. To illustrate that point, leading streaming platform Spotify pays between $0.003 and $0.005 per stream, with a 70/30 split between the rights holders and the platform. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that for the majority of artists, once songwriters, publishers and labels take their cut, don’t earn very much.
Unless you’re at the top of the charts, you’re unlikely to see much money from streaming during your career, which is shocking (and an issue I’m not going to be diving into any further in this article). That means that artists have started diversifying their revenue streams with the price of gig tickets and merchandise soaring, and a host of options to push physical bundles (of both albums and singles) as a way of guaranteeing high chart positions during release week. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of a physical product and an artist will make a lot more money from a physical sale than from a stream, but I’m starting to feel like artists are rinsing their fans.
Before you jump in and tell me I’m wrong, I want to highlight a few recent examples. Recently Taylor Swift announced the release of her latest re-recorded album ‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’. The album will be released on 27th October 2023 and when it was first announced, there were a variety of different editions for fans to pre-order including vinyl, cassette, digital and a limited run of four CDs, all with different colours and containing collectibles. This has become a trend for Swift as she’s released new albums the past few years, and she’s not the only artist tempting fans to buy multiple copies of essentially the same product.
Earlier this year, Kylie Minogue announced the release of her new album ‘Tension’ on 22nd September 2023, and as has become the norm for the Pop Princess, there were a ton of different formats made available. On her official store there are 3 different vinyl releases, two different CD versions and a whole host of releases to boost the success of her smash hit single ‘Padam Padam’. On top of that, other retailers such as HMV and Amazon are offering different variations meaning that the hardcore Kylie fan could well end up owning the same album more than 10 times should they pre-order every single format.
Now of course, it’s up to each individual fan what they want to buy and how many copies, but those of us that are collectors feel an immense pressure to buy as many different formats as possible. This ends up being incredibly expensive for the fan and it artificially boosts the position of an album and/or single as essentially a small number of people make up the majority of sales by buying multiple copies. That’s why we’re seeing albums and singles debut high, only to drop like a lead balloon the next week; the drive for pre-sales gives a great first-week position but the longevity that used to exist isn’t really there anymore.
Add to that the extortionate price of gig tickets these days, and it’s become far too expensive for the average fan to be able to support their favourite artist. Kylie’s recently announced Las Vegas residency saw fans clambering to buy tickets that ranged from $200 to over $13,000 for her shows, while going to an arena concert now in the UK and getting a decent seat is likely to set you back at least £100, usually before added fees from the vendor. Those who are able to afford it usually enjoy picking up some merch and it’s rare to be able to find a t-shirt on the merch stand for less than £40 now. Some fans are forking out hundreds of pounds for VIP and meet-and-greet experiences, and laughably some artists’ VIP packages don’t even allow fans to meet them! What used to be a treat of a night out, is now costing couples and families almost as much as a holiday abroad. Isn’t that a bit crazy?
I appreciate that artists need to earn money in order to keep entertaining us, and they are certainly entitled to a much fairer deal from streaming platforms than they’re getting. What I take issue with, is that fans are being rinsed at every opportunity. I could understand an artist selling different versions of the same product if there was something distinctive about them such as exclusive bonus material tied to specific editions, but to sell the exact same album with only different artwork or colour vinyl seems very opportunistic. Honestly, I miss the days when you could only buy one version of an album and the only choice you had to make was which format you wanted it on.
