Who's Getting Paid In The Music Business

There's a big disconnect when it comes to musicians and where they think the money for their efforts comes from. Although in the Music 3.0 world the view has changed somewhat, artists and bands always believed that if they sold a lot of records (meaning CD's, vinyl, digital downloads and recorded music in general) that they'd make a lot of money in return in a major label deal. Well, not from the sales of music they won't.

In the chart above from high-power industry attorney Don Passman, author of the excellent book All You Need To Know About The Music Business, we see just where the money goes and it's not pretty.

I think that the figure on the bottom says it all - "For every $1,000 of music sold, the average musician makes $23.40!"

But this isn't all that different in the grand scheme of musical things than it ever was. Another high-power attorney, Ken Hertz (who handles Beyonce, No Doubt, Christina Aquilera and Alanis Morrisette among others), once told me that it was an acknowledged industry insider fact that bands and artists have always made 95% of their money on the road, not from records. Records are the engine that make everything go, but not the real breadwinner, as we see from the chart.

There's a nice article about this chart at the Root.

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