Freeloaders vs. Payloaders
So as threatened, I have run the numbers. How cheap ARE you people? I added up all donations, digital sales and CD sales for each month, and divided that by the total downloads per month to come up with $/download (T-shirt sales are so far not a factor). This is not totally accurate, I’m just using the total bandwidth per month as my number, which is obviously not all song downloads. But since the average page view is orders of magnitude smaller than a single song download, I’m going to guess that more accurate numbers wouldn’t make much of a difference. Are you ready? Everyone should take a guess before reading on – how much per song do you think I get?
These numbers are in cents. The first one is gross, the second one is net (after iTunes, PayPal and Amazon get their cut).
Jan: 3.3/1.9
Feb: 1.4/0.8
Mar: 4.3/2.5
Apr: 3.0/1.8
May: 5.4/3.8
Jun: 3.2/1.5
Average: 3.4/2.1
So what do you think – more or less than you expected? I’m actually surprised how big those numbers are, I didn’t think I was going to be able to express these in cents. At current traffic levels, this doesn’t make me wealthy, or even offset all my expenses. And it’s a far cry from the $.99 everyone so happily spends at iTunes and elsewhere. But it’s more than I thought it was going to be considering how much I give away.
And now we will speak of money no more…
Well Now I Feel Bad
I seem to have touched a nerve – all you lurkers got busy with the comment button. Thank you all for your thoughtful suggestions and purchases and oaths of fealty. Obviously guilt works. Just a few hours after my last post, I got some donations from a few people. It was not my intent to generate cash through sympathy (although I am certainly not going to return those donations). I was just venting. In public. On the internet. So distasteful. Sorry about that. But it’s funny how it works, some months really hum along, and then sometimes it just seems to dry up for no reason. I never really push myself out there, I mostly just wait hopefully for a HamsterDance-like wave of instant fame, so it’s no surprise that there’s a little ebb and flow.
As my last post makes clear, this music-on-the-internet thing still confuses me. I am certain that you can’t stop people from sharing mp3s. I’m pretty sure that DRM is a waste of time. There’s no question that the way we all buy and think about music has changed and is still changing. And I do have faith that musicians will continue to be able to make money by making music. But I don’t know how exactly. Thinking about this the past few days has made it clearer to me just what I think I’m doing when I give all this stuff away. In a way I’m testing the theory that it’s OK to have lots of freeloaders as long as some people donate or purchase enough to make up for them.
So the question is, how’s it going? Who knows! I’ve never run the numbers. I can tell you that I can’t currently make a living doing this alone. But it should be easy to figure out the possibilities – add up all the money that comes in, divide that by the number of downloads, and that will give me the effective $$ per download ratio. This is going to be a small number, but that’s fine if it stays consistent when the volume gets bigger – one million half-pennies is a pretty big number, maybe almost a hundred dollars.
I’m going to crank up the old Excel spreadsheet-o-matic and see what comes out. If it’s not too embarassing I will post the ratio here, and then we can all figure out how to increase my traffic by 10,000%. In the meantime, please enjoy this real-life smoking monkey brought to my attention by commenter Ryan.
Four Down and…hey, where’s my money?
I have finished song #4 (well almost – what rhymes with “Optimus Prime?”), which turns out to be a classic body augmentation breakup song. Better than I thought it was going to be when I had no ideas but stupid ones. Perhaps some recording this weekend, and then I will turn my attention to the fifth and final song about artificial wombs. I may actually finish everything on time, and it might actually be good.
Speaking of my goodness, hey all you freakin downloaders, how about a buck for your old pal Coulton? I’m starting to get depressed about the number of people who download music and don’t buy or donate anything. Don’t get me wrong, I like being heard and it’s important for me to get my stuff out there. And I’m honored and thankful to everyone who likes the music enough to forward someone a link, or post on their blog, or whatever. But honestly, I’m giving up about a gig per day in downloads, First of May alone has gotten 900 hits so far this month and still no love.
I know, I know. I’m giving it away, so what do I expect? And I’m probably guilty myself of failing to donate to sites that I like. And I certainly sell more CDs than I would if I didn’t give anything away. I could start selling some of this stuff through Bitpass or something similar, but I hate all the friction that causes. Who’s going to take the time to follow a link and fill out a bunch of financial information when they just want to listen to a song? Do I have too many freebies? Am I not clear enough about appreciating compensation? Do I need to put more links to the iTunes store? A big dumb jpg of a smiling tip jar?
Anyway, I’m ready to sell out. Just tell me where to sign.
Popular Science Soundtrack Thingie
So I’ve spent the last couple of weeks working on a rather interesting project. As you may or may not know, I am listed on the masthead of Popular Science magazine as “Contributing Troubadour.” This is of course a highly coveted position at any magazine, but one of special importance at a joint like PopSci, where they take their geek music straight up without chasers of any kind. They have asked me to write a five-song soundtrack to complement their September issue on The Future of the Body. This is an unusual request, since magazines are not traditionally something that you LISTEN TO so much as READ QUIETLY TO YOURSELF.
I don’t want to spoil too much of the surprise, but I will say that the songs are about: a muscle-bound robot butler, DNA, mind-enhancing drugs, body augmentation and of course, artificial wombs. Each one is meant to correspond to an article in the mag and while there will not be an actual CD (this time anyway), the songs will be available for free download from their website. That DNA one is going to be a real toe tapper, I can tell.
It’s an aggressive schedule, basically five songs in as many weeks, so this is really an experiment in high-speed (for me at least) songwriting. But so far it’s been really fun, and I’m pretty happy with what I’ve written. I spent all day yesterday finishing up songs two and three, and now I am forced to turn my attention to songs four and five, which are still just rough ideas floating around in my brain and thus my least favorite. I am in constant fear of that awful moment of complete creative blockage.
So watch for the issue – I’ll post progress reports here if I ever make any more progress ever again.
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