Making Money Making Music
It’s a long one, so you might want a cup.
There are a lot of rappers who would tell you that they only rap for the money, and that if it wasn’t making money they wouldn’t be doing it. If that was my stance, I’d have stopped making music before I started, and I definitely wouldn’t be spending my own money to make #AfterTheSmokeIsClear. There are a lot of “easier” ways for me to make money as an able bodied white man born in the land of the rich labour worker. That’s just big facts. It doesn’t take 10 000 hours to get good at swinging a shovel, and even if it did, if I put in 10k hours with a shovel I’d be a few hundred grand richer than I am from the same time investment into writing my thoughts into rhyming words. I’d be as good at shoveling as I am at painting houses right now, because that’s how I’ve actually paid most of my bills throughout my life.
I do this whole music thing because I have a bunch of thoughts to express. They aren’t any more valid viewpoints than anyone else’s, but that’s sort of the beauty of it. We should all be expressing ourselves in one way or another. It’s not even about sharing ideas, as it is about the potential to. I’ve been satisfied talking to the void for a long while just based off that potential. It’s there to be found if anyone wants to look. Beyond that it starts to feel fake really fast.
KRS One asks something close to “if you woke up tomorrow and everyone else was gone, would you still do what you’re doing today?”… and I guess maybe I’d stop making #ATSIC because it would be impossible to spread anyone’s music to new ears.. but I’d damn sure still walk around saying rhymes to myself, and if I could somehow keep listening to new rap, I’d probably not do much else. That might keep me sane for a little while longer. Trap me on an island alone and I’m coming back to a booth with some fire memorized if anyone ever rescues me.
For the artists who say they’re in this industry only for money, I call bullshit. Some part of anyone who jumps on a stage with a mic to tell a crowd a long winded monolog set to music has something going on beyond the drive for money. They enjoy that shit, whether it’s cool to say it or not. The validation of a crowd isn’t something that everyone desires or pursues. I haven’t lived in anyone else’s shoes, but if there are people looking at rapping as their actual best option to make a dollar, our economy and society in general has completely failed. It’s possible of course, with the way things are set up. There probably are people who see music as a last option for making legit money. In that position, fine, look at it as a business and make that lowest common denominator pop appeal music. I’m lucky enough that doesn’t apply, and so are most of my peers in the national scene as far as I can tell. There’s a lot of folks out here doing this for the love of it, or because it calls to us to do it.
Art and commerce have always had a deeply entwined relationship. A few artists are renowned for making a bunch of money, and a bunch of artists are notorious for making none. It’s all either super stars or starving artists. You don’t hear much about the middle ground, and a lot of rappers at the bottom are full on pretending they’re mega rich already, so it’s easy to overlook the reality - that exceedingly few artists are making any regular income doing this.
Making music costs money. Considerably less money than in the past? For sure. Home studios knocked down a gate that big budget studios had long held guard at. Home studio equipment still costs thousands and thousands of dollars, and upgrade possibilities never end, so you’re always after the next piece of gear to upgrade your setup and make your output higher quality. As an emcee, buying beats costs money. Paying other emcees for features costs money. Sending the song to streaming platforms costs money. Taking the time to think about something other than scraping by paying your bills for long enough to write and record music costs money. Advertising so that you stand out from the heap of other music being made in home studios costs money, and on and on.
It’s not an easy situation. I’ve been asking people, both in my real life and on #FlyInFormation interviews that I do as bonus segments for my mix show “After the Smoke is Clear”: “What’s the best way for someone to support an artist that they like?” & “When was the last time you bought music?”
Neither have many encouraging answers emerging.
We’re living in a world where no one buys music, a lot of artists included. It’s considered a free thing now. It plays automatically when you get into a car or walk into a store, and it’s free for you to stream any song you’ve ever heard, instantly, from your pocket. People who want to support music tell me they literally don’t know how to, laugh about “people still buy music? I don’t even know where I would if I wanted to.”
As someone who’s podcast mix show also goes to the FM dial in The Land Before Time, I have to make sure I own copies of everything I play, legally. So I’m the last guy out here paying for music that isn’t on vinyl. They cost .99 or 1.29 per song for an MP3. Some artists send music to me when they release it, but most are doing the most by just remembering to send me a link to show me the song is up on streaming now. Who can be bothered to open gmail and send a file in 2022, right? It’s all good. I only play the songs I actually like, and I’m happy to be supporting the artists who make that music. I got addicted to buying music when CDs were a thing, and I’m back at it these past few years in the digital era, and really it feels pretty much the same having a library of music that sits in a box in storage while I walk around streaming it as it does to have a library of music I can stream that exists in an external drive or cloud somewhere.
Buying 20 or 30 songs some weeks stacks up, but I can paint a house here and there and stay on top because my wife is a boss. That’s the reality here. If one of us didn’t have a high paying job, After the Smoke is Clear would cease to exist, because I can’t keep it going at the pace it does while also working full time, it’s just impossible. The shows main patron shares my last name and writes my broke ass off on taxes. I try to thank her every day for supporting not only me, but the whole damn country worth of independent artists who I toss loonies at like a drunk at a Berta strip club.
Spotify pays Canadian artists 1 cent for every 6 plays. That means songs you see with 30 000 plays have earned that artist 50 bucks (quick maths). Considering it took 19 bucks paid to CDBaby (or DistroKid or whatever middleman with a weirdly juvenile website name you choose) to get the song onto Spotify and the other platforms, plus anywhere from $30 to … there really is no top end here, but lets say like 1000 bucks a beat.. then recording time/home studio gear, paying for a mix and master, maybe paying to make a video so anyone might ever actually hear the thing, hours and hours of time learning the craft, ect ect.. No one is paying the bills off streaming numbers (and many of the artists with big play counts are paying money for those numbers too, but that’s another rant).
So where does this leave us as musicians? SOL?
You could book a lot of shows if you have enough fans to support that kind of thing. You gotta be careful with that though, because popping up for a show every three months in all the 7 major cities you’re established in gets pretty old pretty quick, not just for the fans but for the artists themselves. Living on the road is fun for a bit, but doesn’t stay glamourous, especially for lower rent entertainers. Families miss you, you miss them. Rapping at dive bars is fucking depressing, lets be real here.
If you read this far you probably hope I’m about to share the secret. I’m not. I have no fucking clue. The answer I get from artists when I ask how fans can best support them is a laugh and a “I guess they could share my music or buy my vinyl or something?”.. I don’t think many of the people I’ve talked to are holding out much hope of music being lucrative. I know I never have, personally. The absolute furthest I’ve allowed myself to dream that line of thinking is that eventually one day I could find a way to make music and keep the bills paid. That’s a pretty common bar to shoot for as an artist, I think. Most of us end up starving in our attempts, and destroy our relationships and our credit scores and everything else, but at least the world gets some (free) art out of the deal.
Bottom line is, and I say it all the time on #ATSIC, “If you like these artists, show some support for them by finding them on Bandcamp and buying their music, even if you can stream it anyways”. It’s not that radical of a concept. I know a lot of people want something in their hand in exchange for money, so buying digital music is a foreign concept. That’s just old-school thinking and yall should adapt. If you would pay for art to hang on your walls, art to drape on your body to express yourself through (clothes are art), art you go to a theatre to sit for, art that you buy at a farmers market from the local craft person to show support, art that you pay monthly to a telecom or internet provider to enjoy from your couch, art you enjoy while dancing to live music, or whatever other art you pay for to beautify your world… then you should also think about paying for art that you listen to while you work out, clean the house, commute, party or meditate. The music part is a big part of being a musician, it deserves to be valued as such.
Beyond that, if you value the idea that art stays diverse and multifaceted, and expresses views that might not be popular, or might ruffle feathers and stir pots, then you need to step up and put some money into your local music scene. The big forces are locking down the gates and it’s next to impossible to get above the big money ad campaigns to get heard by a wide audience. Independent creators are being squeezed out of every sector by the larger forces with more money who all want to push the same mainstream artists and agendas. Independent artists are grinding in a very real way trying to build fan bases that are engaged and willing to fully support their creative process.
Support things that are being made by one voice or small groups of voices who do something because they love it, not because it’s a guaranteed way to make money. If we allow art to be dominated by what makes money, then only the art that makes money gets made. If the only things that make money are the safe bets appealing to the lowest common denominator of humanity, we get a world with bland homogenized art that doesn’t challenge or push boundaries. The best art has been breaking boundaries as long as there has been art or boundaries.
Buy merch. Buy music on Bandcamp on the first Friday of every month when every cent finds it’s way to the artist (BC waves their fees). Support artists through their GoFundMe, Patreon, Cofi, PayPal or whatever other direct services.
If you’re as broke as everyone else is right now, everyone can relate. We get it. That’s why we make music and put it places everyone can listen for free. I hope you can use it to get through the tough times, and I hope you remember the value you got from it when you get out the other side and times are good again. Meanwhile, maybe it’s time to tell a friend. People can support for free by hitting like on posts (it helps boost them to be seen by more people for free). If you support an artist, hit like on everything they post on every platform when you see it. Dropping a comment does the same algorithmic manipulation to show the post to a wider audience. That’s why every rapper you’ve ever seen post a new song gets the same 23 people from across the country posting a few fire emojis or praise hands in the comments. Those commenters know that doing that will get that post shown to more people. It’s not that I think every local level rapper needs to know that I think their song is fire. We’re all self assured enough or we wouldn’t be sharing our art with strangers.
I post the fire, and the fire emojis because we can also crowd source each other in ways that aren’t financial.
TLDR I have a Patreon now. Check it out. I love my supporters, thank you.
Stay Up.
