The 30 Richest DJs

Who says you can't make money as a DJ? It seems like the stars of EDM far out-earn the rock stars of yesterday, and all without needing the major label infrastructure to promote them to boot.

Considering that the 7 biggest EDM clubs in Las Vegas average income was $625 million a year (according to Nightclub & Bar magazine), and many DJs now have sponsorship deals with major brands like Ralph Lauen and Sonos, you can see how the those at the top have become hot financial properties.

Here are the top 30 DJs with the highest net worth, according to celebritynetworth.com.

• #1: Tiesto – $75 million
• #2: Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo (Daft Punk) – $60 million
• #3: Thomas Bangalter  (Daft Punk) - $60 million
• #4: Paul Oakenfold – $58 million
• #5: Paul van Dyk – $52 million
• #6: John Digweed – $45 million
• #7: Armin Van Buuren – $40 million
• #8: Judge Jules – $42 million
• #9: Sasha – $40 million
• #10: Pete Tong – $32 million
• #11: Moby – $30 million
• #12: David Guetta – $30 million
• #13: Steve Aoki – $28 million
• #14: Fatboy Slim – $23 million
• #15: The Chemical Brothers – $20 million
• #16: Ferry Corsten – $19 million
• #17: Deadmau5 – $18 million
• #18: Carl Cox – $16 million
• #19: Skrillex – $16 million
• #20: Benny Benassi – $15 million
• #21: DJ Pauly D – $15 million (Sad but true)
• #22: Sven Vath – $14 million
• #23: Jeffrey Sutorius (Dash Berlin) – $13.5 million
• #24: Calvin Harris – $13 million
• #25: Avicii – $12 million
• #26: Afrojack – $11 million
• #27: Kaskade – $10 million
• #28: Sebastian Ingrosso (Swedish House Mafia) – $10 million
• #29: Steve Angello (Swedish House Mafia) – $10 million
• #30: Axwell (Swedish House Mafia) – $10 million

For those of you who want to break out the turntables (or more appropriately, the computer) and get into the game, just remember that we may be seeing the absolute peak of the market here. I'm told by a friend who owns one of the world's biggest sound companies that EDM at the major European festivals is already somewhat passe this year, although EDM-only festivals remain hot. Any one care to speculate on the next trend?

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A New Way To Distribute Music Digitally

If you want your music on iTunes, Spotify, and other digital services, most artists choose to use either Tunecore or CD Baby as a distribution method. Each have their upsides and downsides, with the downsides mostly being financial, with Tunecore charging a flat per year for each release and CD Baby taking a percentage of the sale. Now there may be a cheaper and easier way to do it, thanks to DistroKid.

DistroKid is an offshoot of Fandalism, the social network for musicians started by Philip Kaplan. What makes it different from most other distribution networks is that it costs only a subscription fee of $19.95 a year which allows unlimited uploads of your music. You can even upload one song for free before you enter any credit card information.

Kaplan started the service with an eye on democratizing music distribution even further than it currently is by making it a snap for anyone to release their music. While on the surface this seems like a noble idea, the big problem is that since there are really no record label gatekeepers to sift through the mediocre to find the brilliant, at least the service fees of Tunecore and CD Baby would make people think twice before they'd release something that might not be up to par.

The flip side of that coin is, who really knows what another person might like? Music history is filled with big hits that their writers, artists or record labels thought weren't very good and were later pleasantly surprised by the public's enthusiasm. The beauty of Music 3.0 is that if you look hard enough, you'll find at least a small audience for it somewhere. The downside is that it's hard for the consumer to sift through all the noise.

DistroKid is a boot-strap operation despite the earlier online successes of Kaplan (the ad network AdBrite and social shopping Blippy), so it's yet to be seen just how effective it will be in getting your music to all of the sites it claims. Plus, there's not a lot known about how the accounting is handled yet. That said, if you want to get your music on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play and Amazon in 2 to 4 hours (which is really fast), give it a try.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Interested in the Music 3.0 archives? Buy The Music 3.0 Guide To Social Media for the best of over 800 posts.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Twitter's #Music New Chart Features

Although Twitter's #Music discovery service has gotten off to a somewhat shaky start (it was probably impossible to beat the expectations), it seems to be settling into its own comfortable groove. One thing that's important to fans and artists alike are charts, and #Music has finally included them, giving everyone a better idea not only of what's happening on Twitter but elsewhere as well.

#Music now provides 10 musical genre charts (from rock to country to hip-hop), but the 5 additional charts are the more interesting ones. These include Superstars, Popular, Emerging, Unearthed and Hunted. The Superstars and Popular charts show the songs that are currently trending on Twitter, while Emerging and Unearthed are truly for music discovery of new or lesser-known artists.

The most interesting chart of the bunch may be Hunted, which seems to be derived from We Are Hunted, the service that Twitter bought and turned into #Music. This chart actually looks at blogosphere to determine the listing, not just Twitter.

This service isn't catching on because it has limitations, since you need either a Rdio or Spotify subscription to listen to the song, or you can listen to 90 seconds from iTunes. That just isn't easy enough to use for most listeners who now have plenty of other choices that are much easier to get their music from. Too bad, because #Music could really be a boon to music discovery.

You can access the charts via the icon on the upper left corner of the #Music page.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

A New Revenue Stream For Musicians

While a Kickstarter or Indie Gogo campaign is all the rage for artists to fund a recording these days,  another twist on an old idea may give traditional crowdfunding a run for its money. A new site called Patreon, labeled as a "fundraising" site, allows fans to subscribe to the artists they follow and receive "patrons-only" streams of their work.

The brainchild of Pomplamoose's Jack Conte and AdWhirl founder Sam Yam, the site allows fans to perform the age-old function of patron. The difference from European royalty is that instead of a large lump sum bestowed upon the artist, each patron can contribute a small amount (think of it as a tip) every time the artist releases a piece of content. The content can be videos, songs, blogs, articles or recipes or anything other "art" that comes on a regular basis.

A patron receives more than the stream though, as they also have the ability to post in the artist's stream and can unlock additional patron packages like private Google+ Hangouts or tutorials with different levels of support.

It's a cool idea and just another way that an artist with a fanbase (that's the key here) can create a new income stream. Check out the video below for a more detailed description of Patreon.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Prince's New Record Deal

We tend to think of record labels not changing much even in the face of the major paradigm shift that is Music 3.0, but while that may hold true for the major labels, there are a few that are forward thinking. Take Kobalt Music, for instance, which is an independent publishing company that launched their version of a label last year with the idea of giving control back to the artist, allowing them to not only maintain ownership of their work, but when and how it's made available as well.

The latest to sign a deal with Kobalt is superstar Prince, who joins the likes of Dave Grohl, Paul McCartney, Dave Stewart and Eddie Veder (among others) who've decided that this is the way to go in the future. Of course Prince is all about control, even changing his name to that unpronounceable symbol in order to get out from under the clutches of his deal with Warner Bros.

One of the things that he gets in the new Kobalt deal is access to their new software that closely monitors the streaming world, thereby increasing the royalties. Every artist and songwriter is concerned about streaming and what it will do to their career, so any way to get a foot up is attractive, which is why Kobalt seems to be making the splash that it is at the moment.

It's still to be determined just how successful their software tools actually will be, but there's a lot of music heavyweights that are convinced that Kobalt has something they need. You'll hear more about them in the future.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.