The Art of Physical Music
Article ★ Logan Gordon ★ @lrgordon ★ 800 words
In a world full of iPhones, television, electronic billboards, and many other advanced technologies, music has a variety of outlets in which to succeed.
But what about the people who make the music?
While the music itself may be thriving off of technology routines, the artists behind the melodies get less recognition and compensation because of technology.
Before streaming, music lovers listened to cassettes, vinyls, or CDs. They weren’t just ways to play everyone's favorite tunes, they were also amazing memorabilia.
Visual Capitalist has created a diagram that represents five decades of evolving music industry revenue formats.
Revenue in music sales between 1973-2022 via Visual Capitalist
During the analog era of 1970 to 1990, we can see vinyl replaced by cassettes and then cassettes by CDs. Sales were wild and endless, with millions of people falling in love with the little, portable discs. Even from 2010 to 2020, vinyls surged back to high sale numbers while streaming fought against them.
According to the graph, streaming has to make billions of dollars to make just a fraction of what vinyl and CDs have made over a few decades. Still, despite their appealing allure, these physical products are losing fast to the easy ways of streaming.
Because streaming is so accessible to everyone, it slowly overtook all ways of listening to music. While this resource has its benefits, i.e. convenience and cost, it takes away an artists' ability to make good a profit.
Last year, heavy metal band Limp Bizkit sued Universal Music Group (UMG), one of the leading organizations that represents musicians. According to Pitchfork, the lawsuit read that UMG withheld $200 million dollars in stream revenue and created policies to hold back money from the band. This is only one problematic example of many for streaming, with big artists and small ones. Multiple artists have spoken out about the negative effects that streaming brings to their careers.
According to atVenu, an artist can sell one t-shirt to make the equivalent amount of money as 9,000 streams. This means that the average stream for artists to make is around $0.004. Of course, this may not be a scary idea at all for artists like Billie Eilish or Taylor Swift, but for smaller, local artists who may only get one million streams in a year, this only provides them with 4,000 dollars.
But, what about physical product sales?
If we compare the streaming evidence from before with physical sales, an artist and label can easily make 15,000 dollars if they only sold 500 vinyls. For that same profit, 1,000 CDs would have to be sold to get that number.
Already, physical products are earning artists more revenue for less sales or exposure. Of course, exposure is essential to an artist's career for anything to be sold, but revenue and exposure need to be strong for an artist to succeed. Not only are physical products good for artists to earn more revenue, they also are a simple idea compared to streaming.
With streaming comes Performing Rights Organizations (PROs), major royalty distribution problems amongst hundreds of people, and constant algorithm changes just to ensure correct streaming numbers. All of these collide with one another in a clash of problems and confusion. Plus, artists have to go through this without ever really having a say in how streams are handled. They only receive about 10-20% of revenue sales if they have signed organizations or licenses involved.
However, with physical product sales, all artists have to worry about is a fan buying a CD or vinyl, the revenue going to either them or the label, maybe manufacturing and shipping costs, and that’s it. It doesn’t become this whirlwind of fighting tooth and nail just to satisfy everyone, like with streaming revenues.
All in all though, the main beauty for artists through physical music products is the look, the essence. Vinyl, CDs, cassettes, merch, and even ticket stubs have been used as priceless memorabilia for hard-core music lovers for years. Whether hung up in a room or worn on the streets, the artist can connect in a deeper way with their fans through something they can hold. People camp out for days just for a newly released product.
Streaming may be able to connect with fans through the music itself, but physical products can do that and more.
When you buy a vinyl or CD, that music and those memories are yours forever. They won’t ever be affected by the promised effects of streaming. The music in those packages will forever and always be just how they were meant to be loved. Without these arts, there would have never been a base of love for all things music for streaming to be built off of. So, despite the convenience and allure of streaming, physical products of music will always be more beautiful and worthy if listeners are willing to dig deeper.
