We’re releasing our new record today.

With the exception of the wonderful Fabrique des Balades Sonores in Paris, you won’t find it in any record stores. That means you can only get physical copies of our album at a show or via our website or bandcamp page.

You can purchase the Digital, CD or Vinyl versions directly from our website or on Bandcamp. (We have some pretty nice looking t-shirts as well.)

We have a little ROI counter on our site where you can see how your purchase has helped us financially. We have already managed to reach 33.63% with pre-orders and with your help, we might make it to 100% before the end of the year.

You’ll also find the album on iTunes, Google Play, eMusic, Amazon MP3, Spotify, Deezer, rdio and some other places.

If you’re interested in the financial aspect of this album, you’ll find a breakdown below of what it cost us and where the money goes when you buy a CD, Digital download or Vinyl record.

We spent €4,311 making this album.

We need to sell 174 CDs to break even on the CD manufacturing costs.

We need to sell 62 CDs to break even on the mastering costs.

We need to sell 33 CDs to break even on the rehearsal fees.

We need to sell 64 LPs to break even on the LP manufacturing costs.

We need to sell 36 t-shirts to break even on the t-shirt manufacturing costs.

We need to sell 4 LPs to cover the cost of the vinyl postage-packaging.

We need to sell 8 CDs to cover the cost of the CD postage-packaging.

So, to fully break even, we’ll need to sell approximately 277 CDs ,68 LPs and 36 t-shirts or get 829,038 plays on Spotify.

To break even on the Digital distribution costs, we need to get either 2,399 plays on Deezer, 5,767 plays on Spotify or 43 song downloads on iTunes or Google Play.

Here’s the cost breakdown for the CD, Vinyl, t-shirt and digital version of the album.

DIGITAL DIRECT FROM US

There’s virtually no cost to make a digital copy.

We sell them for €5.00 ($6.75)

Bandcamp takes 10%: €0.50 ($0.68)

Paypal takes roughly €0.37 ($0.50)

So there’s €4.13 ($5.57)left for us provided we have broken even on the manufacturing costs if you buy it via our bandcamp page and €4.63 ($6.25) if you buy it directly from our website.

CD

Each CD costs us €2.50 ($3.35)per unit to make.

We sell them for €10.00 ($13.50)

Bandcamp takes 10%: €1.00 ($1.35)

Paypal takes roughly €0.55 ($0.75)

So there’s €5.95 ($8.05)left for us provided we have broken even on the manufacturing costs if you buy it from our bandcamp page and €6.95 ($9.40) if you buy it directly from us.

VINYL

Each LP costs us €3.82 ($5.13) per unit to make.

Well sell them for €15.00 ($20.13)

Bandcamp takes 10%: €1.50 ($2.01)

Paypal takes roughly €0.65 ($0.87)

So there’s €9.03 ($12.12) left for us provided we have broken even on the manufacturing costs if you buy it from our bandcamp page, and €10.53 ($14.13) if you buy it directly from our website.

T-SHIRT

Each T-shirt costs us €6.26 ($8.38) per unit to make.

We sell them for €15.00 ($20.13)

Bandcamp takes 10%: €1.50 ($2.01)

Paypal takes roughly €0.65 ($0.87)

So there’s €6.59 ($8/95) left for us provided we have broken even on the manufacturing costs if you buy it from our bandcamp page and €8.09 ($10.96) if you buy it directly from our website.

STREAMING SERVICES

Spotify: $0.0052/stream

Deezer: $0.0125/stream

rdio: $0.005/stream

DOWNLOAD SERVICES

Google Play: $0.70/download

iTunes $0.70/download

eMusic: $0.29/download

Data is based on payments made by streaming services from 1st January and 31st December 2012.

How Streaming services pay Artists

Below is an article we wrote for MTV, which can be found here.

The State of Streaming

Streaming services have been making a lot of noise recently. Spotify, who made a big splash when it launched in the USA last year, has been backing up its recent statement about wanting to become a music operating system by announcing the availability of an embeddable music player called Play Button. Pandora has seen its market value decrease considerably since its IPO despite being extremely popular in the U.S.

Artists have been complaining left right and center about how low streaming payments are. Some big name artists and record labels have pulled their content from streaming services, and Grooveshark is being sued by all four major record labels.

As a small DIY band from Europe who made a name for ourselves in the music accounting world last year by divulging how much money we were getting from the different digital music stores and streaming services, we sometimes get asked what we think about music streaming.

It’s undeniable that streaming is the future. I would even go so far as to say that streaming is already the present. Millions of music fans listen to music via streaming services every day. Why bother downloading songs when you can stream them?

The debates about streaming tend to be more about whether or not they pay enough to the artists for the use of their music. Some believe they are cannibalizing record sales, others think that they’re serving as a catalyzer for music discovery and thereby increasing artists’ income.

As CDs become extinct (or collectibles like vinyl) and the need to download files becomes obsolete, streaming services will likely become the main source of revenue for recorded music. Therefore it is important for musicians to understand how much streaming services pay for music and how those payments are made.

However, streaming services and their associated payouts can be a little confusing.

How Streaming Works

The concept of streaming is fairly simple. The music resides in the cloud (in data-centers) and you stream the music, meaning you download and play the sound file at the same time. In order to make it work more efficiently, some streaming companies use peer-to-peer technology or provide a synchronization feature, which allows you to actually download the songs to your phone or computer, as you would with a song from iTunes. That way you can still listen to your favorite songs when you’re not connected to the Internet. The difference is that if you decide to terminate your subscription, the music will disappear.

The main difference in financial terms when compared to digital downloads or physical formats like CD and vinyl is that the user no longer owns the music, they lease it, or they pay for it every time they listen to it, depending on how you look at it.

So how exactly does a band like ours get paid from a streaming service?

This is where it gets extremely complicated.

How A Band Gets Paid

Put simply, every time a user listens to a song using a legal streaming service, it triggers off a set of royalties, some of which are based on statutory rates as defined by copyright law, with others having been negotiated between the streaming companies and labels and/or performance royalty collection organizations.

There are basically two parts of a song that are covered by copyright law. The composition (lyrics and music score) and the recording (what the lyrics and music score sound like once they’ve been sung and played by musicians and recorded as a sound file).

It is next to impossible to find out exactly how some of these royalties are calculated because of the confidential nature of some of the agreements signed between the different parties, but in some cases the streaming services will pay a fixed amount per stream plus a prorated percentage of their revenues (subscription and/or ad revenues in most cases) based on the artist’s market share. In other cases, they just pay a prorated amount of revenues. This would explain why the per stream amounts from streaming services like Spotify fluctuate as their ad sales and subscription revenues can go up or down. [Editor’s note: Spotify declined to divulge details on this.]

ASCAP, BMI, Harry Fox, SACEM, PRS for Music all announced deals with Spotify without disclosing any details.

Another fundamental difference between streaming and traditional record sales is that the artists whose songs are listened to the most receive the most royalties and not the artists who sell the most records. That may not sound like a big difference, but it is. It used to be about selling as many records as you could, but it’s now about finding as many listeners as you can and making sure they listen to your music over and over again. That seems like good motivation to make quality music to me.

These royalties are paid to different people depending on which part of the song they own or the role they played in recording it.

If you own the copyright to the song in full – meaning you wrote the music, the lyrics, performed all the music, recorded it all yourself and released the album on your own – then 100% of the streaming royalties are owed to you, and only you. Whether you actually get all that money is a different story, though.

Most of these copyright laws were designed a long time ago and don’t really suit modern day methods of listening to music. For example, what’s called a mechanical royalty was originally designed to ensure composers would get paid when their music was sold on perforated paper for self-playing pianos. This system trickled through the decades and stayed with us through gramophones, 7” vinyl, cassette tapes, CDs, digital downloads and interactive streaming services… but not non-interactive streaming services.

So what’s the difference between interactive and non-interactive?

Interactive means that the user chooses the exact song he or she listens to, meaning services like Spotify, Rdio, Mog, Grooveshark and Deezer. Non-interactive means that you can’t choose the exact songs you listen to – services like Pandora, Jango, Turntable.fm and other Internet and digital radio stations like Sirius XM.

From the outside, it’s hard to understand why Turntable.fm, Pandora and similar sites do not provide their service to users outside of the U.S., but there are reasons for this.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was passed in the U.S. in 1998 and allows Internet companies to develop web services around creative content (videos, music, etc…) as long as they respect a few ground rules. They’re also supposed to pay a statutory rate per song played via their service to a non-profit organization called SoundExchange.

SoundExchange then distributes the money to the interested parties. In Europe, SACEM (France), GEMA (Germany) and PRS for Music (UK) and the record labels typically negotiate these deals individually, which is why it’s so much harder for companies to create services like these in Europe.

Another example of how strange music copyright can get is the public performance royalty, which was designed to ensure a composer would get paid when an orchestra played his or her music in front of an audience. Whenever your music is played in a public place (restaurant, bar, business, etc…) the songwriter and the owner of the recorded song (master) are supposed to get paid for it. Streaming services also have to pay the public performance royalties, which seems a little odd when most people listen to the songs with headphones.

To summarize, in the U.S., interactive streaming services have to pay mechanical royalties and public performance royalties whereas non-interactive only have to pay (digital) performance royalties (as well as publishing royalties).

Some of that money is paid to organizations like ASCAP, BMI and Harry Fox Agency who collect money on behalf of songwriters and the owners of the masters, the rest is paid directly to the labels or music aggregators like Tunecore, CD Baby, etc, who pass the money on the artists.

As for services like Pandora, they pay SoundExchange performance royalties for the musicians and master owners, and songwriter royalties to ASCAP/BMI, etc.

This means that you need to be members of all of these organizations in order to get paid, but that does not provide you with any guarantees that you will actually get paid. You often have to chase after the money like any business owner. But is it really worth spending several hours chasing after a few dollars?

It’s probably not a huge amount of money, but it’s money that’s being paid by companies like Spotify and Pandora for the use of our music, which does not end up in our pockets. So where does it go exactly? That’s another tricky question.

In most cases, it gets divided up between the members of the organizations that collect the royalties, meaning other artists, record labels and publishers. Yes, some of the money artists and record labels get does not belong to them. But they take it. Why wouldn’t they?
Most people don’t realize that they directly or indirectly pay for music all the time.
When you watch an ad on TV that includes a piece of music, an ad agency paid for the right to use that music in the ad and to show it to a certain amount of people for a certain amount of time.

When you buy a concert ticket, you’re not just paying for the right to see the band, a small portion of your ticket money goes to Public Performance Organizations who collect that money on the songwriter’s behalf. What if the songwriter is the one actually playing the songs, you’re thinking? Why not give them the money straight away, so they can pay for gas, or some pizza? Well, that would be too easy.

In some countries, taxes have been added to hard drives and blank CDs and all of that money goes to the collection societies, who are supposed to share it with their members. When you download albums from commercial filesharing sites, advertisers have paid to occupy that real estate so you see their ad when you download the files.

When you use the free version of streaming services, you indirectly pay for music by listening to or watching their ads.

It’s important to realize that the smaller artists very rarely get their full share of the pie, which in itself isn’t the end of the world. We all pay VAT or similar taxes, but what’s annoying is that this money is not being put to good use; it’s going into the hands of people who did nothing to earn it and who in most cases, do not need it.

So here’s some food for thought. Spotify uses peer-to-peer technology to improve the user experience of their music service. What’s stopping artists from using open-source technologies to build an independent peer-to-peer streaming service that cuts out Spotify, the major record labels, the royalty collection agencies and all the other middlemen in the music industry? A non-profit organization that shares the profits from ads and subscriptions directly with the artists?

(Fact checking and editing by

Brenna Ehrlich

)

Update to Release Day Economics

The figures for iTunes, eMusic, etc… have not changed since we published Release Day Economics in September 2011, but payouts from streaming services like Spotify and Deezer have increased fairly significantly so we thought we would update the numbers.

SPOTIFY: 

Spotify’s payouts increased 56% in 2011 compared to 2010. Per stream payouts were on average 0.003 EUR in 2010, in 2011 the average grew to 0.0047 EUR/play. 

So if you listen to our album all the way through, we’ll get 0.042 EUR.

If you listen to the album 10 times on Spotify, we’ll get 0.42 EUR

If you listen to it a hundred times, we’ll get 4.23 EUR

If you listen to the album 1,000 times (once a day for 3 years!) we’ll get 42.30 EUR.

DEEZER:

Deezer’s payouts increased 116% in 2011 compared to 2010.

We’ve been getting 0.0127 EUR/play from them recently.

That’s 0.11 EUR/album play.

So if you listen to the album 10 times on Deezer, we’ll get 1.14 EUR. 

If you listen to it a hundred times, we’ll get 10.14 EUR. 

If you listen to the album 1,000 times (once a day for 3 years!) we’ll get a whopping 100.14 EUR! 

Little Knight Needs Your Help!

Voyage, voyage!

As some of you are aware, the story of Little Knight ends as he departs on a quest to find his lost Princess. If you haven’t read the story, you can find it here.

However, since Little Knight is only a fictional character, he doesn’t have a bank account allowing him to buy plane tickets, to travel the world in search of his beloved. 

How can you help?

All you have to do is download the PDF file containing templates of cut-out Little Knights. Then take a picture or shoot a short clip of him somewhere, anywhere you like! 

Then upload the picture/clip to dropbox/mediafire/yousendit, and send us the link. 

Then what? 

Then we will edit a video using all the footage you’ve provided. We’re going to need lots of it so don’t hesitate to make more than one, and ask your friends to participate as well! The more the merrier! 

Send us your links on facebook, twitter or leave them in a comment here.

Evil Surveys - Knowing Your Fans

We ran a survey recently in which we asked people who had purchased and / or downloaded our music to answer a few questions.

The purpose was to get to know our fanbase better, to try and understand how they had found us and what had motivated them to download and/or pay for our music. We also slipped in some questions to see where Spotify fits in with all of this. Here’s what we found out.

-

1) Where did you find out about us?

Other: 36%

On a music blog: 32%

Music Industry or tech blog: 17%

From a Friend: 13%

Comment: We probably should have provided more choices here but we wanted to keep it simple. We think that a majority of the Others are Aaahh Records and other Creative Commons music related sites.

-

2) Was that via a social network, by email or in person?

Directly from the blog / website: 59%

Other: 15%

In a real life conversation!: 11%

Twitter. 5%

Email: 3%

At a concert: 2%

Other social network: 2%

Google+: 1%

Facebook.  0%

Comment: It’s interesting to note that no one discovered us on Facebook. Facebook is a great place to interact with people when you already know them, but it seems that it’s probably not a great discovery tool.

-

3. Did you listen to our music online before downloading it?

Yes: 89%

No: 11%

Comment: we didn’t ask if people thought they would have downloaded it without listening to it first. Perhaps we should have.

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4. If so, where did you listen to our music before downloading it?

Our website (bandcamp): 81%

Music Blog: 8%

Other: 8%

iTunes: 2%

Spotify: 1%

Deezer: 0%

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5. What made you decide to download the music?

I wanted to sample the music before buying a CD/Vinyl: 28%

I wanted to sample the music before paying for the MP3’s.: 22%

I wanted to own the music but couldn’t afford to pay for it: 22%

I don’t really know. I just clicked the buttons!: 19%

I wanted to own the music but I don’t think music is worth paying for: 4%

I wanted to write a review about your music: 3%

-

6. Do you have any idea how many times you have listened to our album(s)?

More than 5 times: 45%

2-5 times: 30%

More than 50 times: 15%

Once: 7%

I have no idea: 3%

I didn’t even get past the first couple of songs, you guys suck! 0% (thankfully!)

-

7. What made you decide to pay for our music? (multiple responses ok)

(Only people who had made a purchase were asked this question)

I wanted to support the band: 100%

I wanted to own the music: 61%

I wanted to own a tangible version of the album (CD/Vinyl): 61%

-

8. Do you have a Spotify account?

No: 65%

Free Account: 31%

Unlimited Account (4.99): 2%

Premium Account (9.99): 2%

-

9. Do you have any suggestions for us? 

1) Keep up the good work. :)

2) You guys are awesome! Suggestion: Come to America to tour :)

3) You guys are a pretty rad group and I really appreciate your enthusiasm at getting your music out there.

4) I didn’t recognize me in that survey : I discovered you with aaahh records. As I only listen to free music (ie under CC or Art Libre license), I download a lot, delete a lot too… and when I love an album I give some euros to the band or artist, but I can’t do that more than 4 or 5 times per month :-( … and it’s your time soon !! ;-)

5) Made me feel guilty that i haven’t paid so far:)

6) Put more songs into Rock Band, that’s where I first heard about you guys, the song was “roll over” and it made me check out more music by you guys!

7) Keep interacting with the fans just like you’re doing now!

8) stay as you are! your music is beautiful!!!!!!! :)

9)Keep product such a delightful music and come back to Paris!!! (Not at the International.)

10) it was me who filled out the wrong survey, i wrote that you’re great and that I bought the beautiful vinyl. sorry :) but you’re great!

11) congratulation ^_^

12) Keep up the good work! And thanks again for sending me the missing CD.Yes, I’m the annoying guy from Bordeaux. ;o)

13) Keep up the great work. I’ve turned some friends on to your music.

14) Keep making music

15) can you make more music! Love Storm eye and The black box.

16) Keep on rockin’ :)

17) I found you in Aaah Records

18) Keep doing that great work!

19) Keep on doing what you do! The pay what you want/can is a great example of creative ways to reduce piracy and still get paid for the music!

20) Just keep the good work! It is difficult to find really good music today and I was very pleased when I find your band.

21) give me cheese! some Roquefort would be good!

22) You are on Bandcamp (available worldwide) and were recommended by Frostclick. You are doing everything perfectly!

23) I usually dislike doing these surveys–but yours was short & to the point, so thank you.

24) Gregory and the Hawk

25) Keep it up mates!

26) Keep on, keeping on

27) Nahh

28) You guys are awesome, keep up the good work!

29) keep making music!!!

30) Great work. I wish more people knew about bandcamp.com

31) Keep up the great work!!! Come to NYC or Brooklyn!!!

32) Keep up the good work.

33) Do a show in NYC

34) like it!

35) Keep making great music guys!

36) do more music

37) keep it up, everything sounds great

38) May be it does exist ? French translation for my who don’t speak English

39) Fuck the majors!

40) Keep up the great work…

41) keep the good job

42) you’re great! i bought the beautiful vinyl. hope to see you live soon..

43) keep going guys - you are doing an excellent work

44) Don’t send out too many stupid evil surveys.

45) You really don’t need any !

46) Keep communicating the way you guys are doing.

We’ll let you draw your own conclusions!

Comments

How to set up your own Kickstarter site.

Kickstarter is great but if you’re not a US resident, you can’t use it to kickstart your creative projects. They’ll take money from anyone, anywhere in the world, but if you’re not an American, you can’t be part of their club. Maybe there are legal reasons for this but it still sucks!

There are alternatives like Indiegogo, RocketHub, Funded by Me and many others but one of the drawbacks is that your fans might not be that enthusiastic about registering for yet another web account to support you. On top of that, they all take a percentage (generally between 4 and 8%) of the funds you raise. And there’s also the fact that you’re sending your fans to a third party site, and that you don’t have full control over the look and feel. Last but not least, you have to submit your project to them, and they can refuse it if they don’t like the look of you! 

In comes IgnitionDeck. 

Early October, I talked to Christian, from Aaahh Records, about our plans for One City Per Second. He introduced me to Shawn, from Virtuous Giant, who was developing a crowdfunding plugin for WordPress.  I dropped him an email and explained what we planning.

They were using their own software to fund their project. For $39.99 (instead of $49.99) you were given access to the software before everyone else and lifetime updates, etc…

Here’s a short overview of the features listed on their site that were important to us.

1) Simple Paypal integration.

2) Social sharing (twitter/facebook) - it’s really easy to add those Like/Tweet buttons!

3) Mailing list support - it supports MailChimp and Aweber so you can import emails directly to a list of your choice. We use MailChimp so that was really cool. If you don’t use MailChimp, well, you should because it’s ace!

4) Unlimited Products - this was key for us because we wanted to be able to run multiple campaigns for different cities at the same time.

So we went ahead and purchased the plugin, a URL for the site, some hosting from OVH (a French hosting company), installed WordPress, and waited for the beta version of the plugin to become available.

When it was ready, Shawn installed the first version on our site, and we started working together. He provided some great advice about how to make use of the plugin and we were a great beta tester for them because we had a real life project for them to get their teeth into. Their documentation was easy to follow and it didn’t take long to configure it. There were a few bugs of course, but that’s all part of the process, and a small price to pay to be one of the first bands in the whole entire universe to have their very own crowdfunding website.

After a few weeks of real life bugs, just over a month after being introduced, we were ready to launch the site.

If you’re interested in setting up your own crowdfunding site, you won’t have to go through all of that though because the plugin is pretty much bug free now! :)

Here’s a summary of the steps.

1) Purchase the URL and hosting (or use the one you already have)

2) Install WordPress.

3) Buy the IgnitionDeck Plugin.

4) Install the IgnitionDeck Plugin.

5) Configure your site.

6) Add a campaign.

7) Raise some money for your project!

It looks like the IgnitionDeck plugin is going to be available at the pre-launch price of $39.99 for another 2 days, as their campaign ends 14th November. So go and grab it now, it’s well worth the investment!

Clarifications.

It seems rather ironic that we got ten times more hits to our website yesterday than usual following an article we wrote about the economics of a DIY album release. Hundreds of people visiting our website the day we release our album just to see how much we would earn if someone actually bought it. We are grateful for the attention though.

We only wanted to provide our fans with the facts so that they knew how to best support us based on their music consumption preferences. 

Since the article seems to have gone on a journey around the Twitterland, we thought we should clarify a few things.

First of all, the blogpost was not an attack on Spotify. We don’t have a problem with the concept of streaming music services at all. What we dislike about Spotify, is the lack of transparency in their business model. With Apple, it’s simple. They take 30%. With Spotify, we don’t know if we’re getting a fair deal or not.

With that being said, I personally know people who listen to our music on Spotify and who have purchased a CD, a 12" Vinyl or a PlayButton from us.

So Spotify is not the devil but unless they clarify the situation, I think a lot of independent bands will end up removing their music from the service. 

I read a few comments about things that were missing such as information on eMusic. The album hadn’t been released on eMusic when I wrote the original article but it’s there now so I’ve added eMusic to the original blogpost. We’ve been getting $0.26 per song, or $2.60/album (with 9 tracks) from eMusic.  I don’t have any information on MOG, rdio or Pandora, I don’t even think our music is on there. You need to have a physical CD for sale on Amazon to get your music on Pandora apparently. Maybe one day, we’ll get around to taking care of that!

Someone else mentioned that you can get your CD’s into record stores the DIY way, without a label. Well, we have actually been there and done that and come home without the t-shirt! Directly with a record store and via an indie distributor. It worked but we never got paid!!! Yes, that’s right. They sold our CD’s and kept the money. We could sue them of course. But it would cost more in lawyer’s fees than the amounts they owe us!

Someone mentioned songwriter royalties. We write all of own songs and signed with PRS for Music in the UK several years ago.

We know our music has been played on the radio, on TV, and on various streaming services who are supposed to be paying royalties for this.

We have never received a single dollar or euro, or even a rupee from PRS! Maybe the reason for this is hidden in this article about the Spanish equivalent of PRS.

I saw a comment about how we were paying too much for CD’s! We make 100 CD’s at a time, which is why they cost a little more per unit than when you press 1,000. Remember we’re a micro band, we sell a few hundred CD’s. Why make a thousand when you will only sell a few hundred? It’s a waste of money and plastic!

It’s cool to see how passionate people feel about music and we’re proud to have sparked off a few debates. Our intentions were much more humble.

However, we don’t want to be one of those bands people have heard of for all the wrong reasons. We’d much rather people talked about our music instead!

Thanks,

Uniform Motion

Release day economics

Update with 2011 numbers available here.

Our new record was ‘officially’ released today. This means that you’ll find the digital version on various different Digital music stores like iTunes, AmazonMP3 and eMusic, and you’ll be able to stream the music from services such as Spotify and Deezer.

The physical versions (CD and Vinyl) are only available from our Bandcamp site and at gigs. 

Unfortunately, you will not find our record in any record stores. The reason for this is because we do not have a record label, which means we have no access to distribution. Without a distributor, you cannot sell your CD’s in record stores. If you work for a distributor and you’re interested in carrying our CD or Vinyl, or both, feel free to contact us! 

If you choose to purchase our music or use one of the 'legal’ streaming services, here’s an overview of where the pennies go. 

SPOTIFY: 

With Spotify, we’ll get 0.003 EUR/play. 

If you listen to the album all the way through, we’ll get 0.029 EUR.

If you listen to the album 10 times on Spotify, we’ll get 0.29 EUR

If you listen to it a hundred times, we’ll get 2.94 EUR

If you listen to the album 1,000 times (once a day for 3 years!) we’ll get 29.47 EUR!

If you use the free version of Spotify, it won’t cost you anything. Spotify will make money from ads. If you use any of the paid versions, we have no idea how they carve up the money. They only disclose this information to the Major record labels…

DEEZER:

Deezer seems to pay a little more.

We’ve been getting 0.006 EUR/play from them. That’s 0.052 EUR/album play. If you listen to the album 10 times on Deezer, we’ll get 0.52 EUR. If you listen to it a hundred times, we’ll get 5.2 EUR. If you listen to the album 1,000 times (once a day for 3 years!) we’ll get a whopping 52 EUR! 

If you use the free version of Deezer, it won’t cost you anything and Deezer will make money from the ads. If you use any of the paid versions, we have no idea how they carve up the money either.

eMUSIC:

eMusic is a subscription service. The cost of the album will depend on the plan you have. We get roughly $0.29/song or $2.60/album (9 songs).

AMAZON MP3:

You’ll pay 7.11 EUR to download the MP3’s. We will get 4.97 EUR of that. That’s a 70-30 split.

iTUNES:

The album will cost you 8.91 EUR to buy from Apple.

There’s a 70-30% split there too, so we will keep 6.28 EUR/album.

That being said, it costs us 35 EUR/year to keep an album on iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon (105 EUR per year for all 3 of our albums!) so we don’t make any money until 24 people have bought a digital copy of the album on iTunes, or 150 single songs, or if we get tens of thousands of listens on Spotify! In most cases, it’s actually more economically viable not to sell the music at all.

But what about if you buy the Digital version directly from us?

DIGITAL:

We allow people to pay what they want for the digital version. If you choose to pay 5 EUR, Paypal takes 0.37 EUR, Bandcamp takes 0.75 EUR. Uniform Motion keeps 3.88 EUR. it doesn’t cost us anything to have a page on bandcamp.

If you decide to pay nothing, well, we get nothing, but at least you didn’t give money indirectly to major record labels, which seems to be the case with Spotify!!

CD: 

If you buy a CD, directly from us for 10 EUR, Paypal takes 0.515 EUR, Bandcamp takes 1.5 EUR. So there’s slightly less than 8 EUR left for us. But hold on a second, it costs a fair bit to make the CD.

The CD itself costs 1.2 EUR, the booklet costs about 50 cents, the CD packaging is 1.8 EUR and the sticker on the front costs 35 cents.

That’s a total of 3.65 EUR

So in reality, there’s 4.34 EUR left for us.

VINYL:

If you buy a 12" Vinyl from us at 15 EUR, Bandcamp takes 2.25 EUR, Paypal takes 0.646 EUR so there’s 12.10 left. The cost of the Vinyl itself is 3.06 EUR

The labels cost 1.3 EUR. For a total of 4.36 EUR

So there’s 7.75 EUR left for us.

However, we had to press 250 of these (because that’s the minimum order), so it’s very unlikely we’ll make any money on them.

We need to sell 72 copies before we break even on the vinyl edition. We’ve sold about 30 so far.

If we break even, we’ll lower the price a little bit. :)

EDIT (14th Sept 2011) 

A few people have asked about the Vinyl numbers. Those numbers can be a bit confusing so here’s some more information on that.

We ordered 250 copies because that’s the minimum order for vinyl (the lowest quantity we could find at least). To keep costs down, we decided to go for a white sleeve with no artwork on it, and personalise the sleeves by putting custom stickers on them. There’s a sticker on the front with the name of the album on it. And we decided to put one on the back for the first 50 orders with the fans’ names on them.

250 copies cost us 775 €.

Black vinyl, full colour biscuit (Side1, Side2) White discosleeve.

That’s 3.1 EUR/copy.

The front sticker cost 0.60 EUR.

The one on the back cost 0.70 EUR.

The numbers look strange because we didn’t order 250 stickers. We’ll order more if we sell enough copies of the record, but if we’re only going to sell 50 or 100, why order more than we can sell? We didn’t have a choice with the vinyl itself, but we did with the stickers. So we only ordered 75 front stickers and 50 personalised ones. But my numbers were based on 75 of each.

775 + 45 (0.6 X 75) + 52.5 (0.7 X 75) = 872.5 EUR

872.5 / 12.1 (net price for each copy) = 72.107

So that’s where the number 72 came from. It should probably really have been 73 copies to really break even! But hey, I’m a musician, not an accountant! :)

How to produce a record on a low budget.

The music industry is in a mess they say. People no longer purchase music. Piracy is killing us all. Blah, blah. One way of making it all more financially viable is to control your production costs. 

We’re just about to self-release our third album. This means we have been through the process of recording, mixing and mastering a ‘collection of songs’ several times.

It also means we have had CD’s duplicated, burned our own CD’s, ordered different types of packaging, purchased instruments, software and services, worked on promotion, etc…

The purpose of this article is not to try and tell you all how to record and release a record, but rather to share our experiences and to provide a few tips. For large bands with 10 musicians, or electronic artists who don’t use acoustic instruments, it may not be applicable, but for a small indie/folk band, the information could be helpful.

We’ve made a few (read 'lot of’) mistakes and learnt a few (read 'one or two’) tricks along the way too. So here it is.

1. Recording.

Depending on the kind of music you make, recording can be more or less difficult. In our case, we record drums, bass guitar, acoustic guitars, samples, virtual instruments, vocals and various other bits and pieces like clarinets, glockenspiels, percussive instruments and whatnot. Some things can be easily recorded at home, others require a more sophisticated set-up and quite a few microphones (i.e.: drums).

- Our first album, Pictures, was part recorded at home, with other parts (drums, vocals and some guitars), recorded professionally in a recording studio.

Since it was done in a professional studio, it cost a fair bit to record but also because we didn’t really know what we were doing and wasted quite a lot of time.

Cost of recording 9 tracks = 1,200 EUR

- Our second album, Life, was recorded exclusively in a home studio environment. We used a drum machine instead of a real drummer to avoid having to go into a proper studio, to save a bit of money, which is understandable when you see how much money we lost on the first record! 

Cost of recording 9 tracks: 225 EUR.

Our third album, One Frame Per Second, was recorded in a sound engineering school, which cost us nothing. The drawback with this kind of thing is that the sound engineers are not seasoned professionals, they’re students, but if you’re lucky, and you know what you want, you can get some really good results. We rehearsed a lot before going there, so we were well prepared, and we knew what we wanted to achieve. And the lads we worked with were top notch. So it worked out really well for us.

Some will argue that the microphones, and channel strips, and compressors, are much better in recording studios, and they are right. The question is, are you paying for the equipment, or the expertise of the recording studio, or both? And in which case, can you really afford to? If you’re only going to be selling a few CD’s to your parents, your cousin’s best friend, and some bloke down the pub, is it really worth spending thousands to sing into a Neumann microphone?

Tips: 

Find a sound engineering school and see if they’re looking for bands to record as part of their curriculum.

To save time and money, rehearse a lot before going to the studio to make sure you’re not wasting time, and money. 

2. Mixing.

- Pictures was mixed in a professional recording studio. The advantage of a professional recording studio is that they generally have expensive equipment, lots of monitors and plugins, and whatnot.

However, if you want to get the best out of a mixing session, you have to be present at the mix, which means it is a time consuming process whether you mix it yourself, or not.

Cost of Mixing 9 tracks = 1,200 EUR

- Life was mixed at home using Pro Tools LE. We obviously did not have the same means as a proper studio, but modern Digital Audio Workstations come with some pretty good plugins and presets, so with a bit of work and research, you can get your music to sound pretty good. BUT….it will never sound as good as it would if you had all the right gear. That’s a fact… BUT who cares? As long as it doesn’t sound terrible, and it doesn’t make peoples’ iPods or loud speakers explode, it doesn’t really matter that much. Unless you have several thousand euros to spend, and it which case, good on ya!

And there are lots of tutorials out there (some really nice individuals who put videos up on youtube explaining how to mix drums, and vocals, etc… It’s a lot of work, and it will drive you crazy but you’ll get to say “Wow, I made that all on my own” at the end.

Cost of Mixing 9 tracks = my sanity.

- One Frame Per Second was mixed at home using Pro Tools LE. It was a lot harder this time as we had real drums to mix. Once again, type 'mixing drums’ into youtube and you’ll find a bunch of tutorials explaining how to do it. You won’t get a magic recipe for making your drums sound great, but you’ll get an insight into which buttons to press to try and make improvements ( I decided to invest in a plugin to help “tighten up” the drums, and opted for iZotope Alloy, a virtual channel strip including EQ, compressor, limiter, etc..) Then, trust your ears. Or trust several pairs of ears, which is what we did. Check Mastering below for more on that.

Cost of Mixing 9 tracks = 222 EUR for iZotope Alloy and a boatload of sanity again.

Tips: 

If you’re mixing an album yourself, you’ll want to learn some basic principles first. Use youtube to learn about compression and EQ. They’re the most important ones. You can go far with EQ, comp and reverb.

Don’t overload your project with too many tracks. Limit yourself to a small amount. It’s a lot easier to mix a song with 8 tracks than it is to mix one with 64 tracks!! Ask yourself, do you really need that 7th backing vocal?

Take your time. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Mixing is a profession. It’ll takes years of practice before you’re half as good as a professional sound engineer. Just because you don’t have an Opera singer’s voice, doesn’t mean you can’t make music, right? 

3. Mastering

Many don’t really understand the benefits of mastering but it is an essential part of the music making process. I wrote a blog post about the value of mastering a while ago, so I won’t go into detail here.

- Pictures was mastered in a professional recording studio.

Cost 500 EUR. 

- Life was mastered at home using the trial version (that lasts for 11 days) of iZotope Ozone.  That may sound cheeky but you’ll see below that iZotope got our money in the end! Cost 0 EUR.

- One Frame Per Second was mastered at home using the full version of iZotope Ozone. 220 EUR.

The major hurdle to mastering on your own is that you only have one set of loud speakers to test your music on. We solved that problem by adopting the beta testing method that software companies use to test the quality of their products. We offered 'beta listeners’ the opportunity to listen to the album before it was released in exchange for their help with the mastering process. Each person was asked to provide feedback on the sound quality, and to provide us with the list of equipment they listened to it on. The feedback was all great and enabled us to considerably improve the overall sound of the record as well.

Tips: 

Before forking out a wad of cash for mastering, download a trial version of some mastering software, ask your fans/friends with sound knowledge to help you out by beta testing your mix.

Most mastering engineers will do a test track for a small sum, or even for free. Have a professional master a song, and then do it yourself, and ask your fans to listen to them both and rate them.

Last but not least, if you decide to do it yourself, read this first. 

It’s a guide to mastering. It was written by the folks at iZotope so it’s obviously going to be geared towards their software, but even if you don’t use Ozone, it’s worth the read.

4. Product / Release.

- Our first album was released on iTunes as a digital download. We made a CD + DVD + Comic book edition, which was available to buy on our website.

We decided to burn the CD’s and DVD’s ourselves, and have the comic book made by a printing company. The comic book was expensive to make and we had to order quite a few of them. The CD packaging came from Stumptown Printers. It comes flat (unfolded) and requires no glue to fold it into the shape of a CD case so you can print the artwork on it fairly easily.

Each CD required us to fold the packaging, burn a CD, a DVD, print the artwork on them, and put all the various elements in the packaging.

We sold very few copies of the physical album, and not that many of the digital one either. We sent a bunch of CD’s to magazines, radio stations and only received a couple of responses. So we decided to cut our losses and make the digital version available to download for free. 

The album was later released by Aaahh Records, as a free download as well, which sparked off a few more physical sales. We hired a publicist to help us promote the record and to pave the way for the release of our second record a while later. That was a really expensive investment but we thought we’d give it a go. Financially, the album release was a failure. In total, we spent about 5,000 EUR on our first record and we generated less than a thousand euros in sales. Yay for us, what shrewd businessmen!

- Our second album was released as a digital download on iTunes and our own website. We made a CD and poster pack edition available. This was really easy to set up with Bandcamp as well.

After spending hours burning CD’s, we decided to have 100 CD’s manufactured instead. No more burning and printing all evening, and it ended up costing more or less the same. We used the same packaging  as the first album (just a different colour) and no longer needed to print anything on the Arigako Paks from Stumptown, because we had found a new solution for that! We offered custom drawings on each CD. The idea first came when our printer broke down just before we went on tour to Germany. We just took blank packaging with us and offered to draw a picture on the CD after the show. People loved it and we’ve been doing it ever since.

In total, we spent about 2,600 EUR on our second album and made about 1,600 EUR. Not as catastrophic as our first venture but we were still losing money.

For our third album, they’ll be a digital download on iTunes, on our website, a CD edition that comes in a dark brown digifile, and a PlayButton Edition. Once the record was mixed, we offered our fans the possibility of pre-ordering the album to help us pay for the cost of mastering, and the initial CD duplication and blank PlayButton orders. We received enough pre-orders to pay for the first 100 CD’s and 10 playbuttons, but not quite enough to pay for professional mastering, so we went for the DIY approach discussed above. Since we have already covered all our costs, we can now make the digital album available for free at its release date without having to worry about getting a return on investment. 

A few people enquired about getting a vinyl version of the album on facebook. We told them that if they could find enough people to cover the cost of making the minimum order of 250 copies, then sure, we’ll make 'em. 

So far, 28 people have pledged to buy a copy, so it’s looking like me may be able to go ahead with it, which is rather cool. 

Tips:

Don’t press 1,000 CD’s unless you know you can sell them. Otherwise, you’ll just end up with a box of CD’s picking up dust. Try limited-run CD duplication with people like TuneCore for instance. Same thing goes for t-shirts, posters, what have you. Just because the per unit price is lower, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to order 1,000 of them!

With a bit of work and creativity, you can find ways to make a really nice physical object. People appreciate the personal touch so don’t worry too much if it doesn’t look quite as professional as that Lady Gaga CD in its jewel box.

Don’t spend a fortune on PR companies. How many music blogs do you read? How many music magazines do you buy? We use Google Analytics and we can safely say that reviews do not drive much to our website. We wouldn’t spit on a review on Pitchfork though!

Beware of the post office! When you sell a poster pack for 24 EUR, make sure you’ve calculated the shipping fees correctly before selling anything. Because if it costs you more to ship the package than you actually charge for the product, well, you’re a bloody idiot! (yes, we’re a bit dumb sometimes!)

5. Initial investment

Our home studio is composed of bits and pieces picked up over the years, and regardless of whether the music is produced at home, or in a recording studio, it’s an investment that was made mostly before Uniform Motion saw the light of day. Musicians self-producing records probably have most of these things in their home studio.

Monitors: YAMAHA HS50M: 300 EUR

Headphones: SONY MDR-7506 - 150 EUR

Static Microphone: AKG C214 - 340 EUR

Sound Interface: MBOX 2 MINI Sound Interface: 300 EUR

DAW (Digitial Audio Workstation): PRO TOOLS LE 8 (comes with MBOX 2 MINI)

Midi Keyboard: M-AUDIO AXIOM KEYBOARD: 200 EUR

Sampler Plugin: NATIVE INSTRUMENTS KOMPLETE ELEMENTS: 100 EUR

Total investment 1,390EUR

Exceptions:

Apple iMac - this is a home computer used for other things as well, so it probably should not be considered as an initial music investment.

Live gear. There are thing you need to play live performances (amps, guitars, effects, etc…) but we’re not focusing on concerts here. I’ll write another blog post about that some other time!

6. Conclusions

Although a home studio can be a fairly high investment initially, in our case, it cost a lot less than producing an album in a professional studio. So just imagine how much you could save over the course of 4,5,6,10, 50 albums. Aside from travel costs, and a few software related costs, our latest album cost almost nothing to make.

Not everyone is cut out for mixing, recording and mastering. It’s bloody hard work! But when you set up a company, you start by doing everything, from answering the phone, to doing the books, to selling the product. When your company grows, you hire people to do specific tasks and you build a team of qualified people around you to support the project. Having yourself done all of the jobs you’re asking them to do, you can set expectations more easily. The same goes for making music. 

If anyone has any questions, shoot us an email at andy@uniformmotion.net

CD and PlayButton Editions ready

The PlayButtons and CD’s are ready folks. Here’s what they look like.

We were thinking we might order another batch of PlayButtons, but unfortunately, the company who provides the blank PlayButtons has run out and won’t have any new ones until October. Thanks again to all those who pre-orded and helped us fund all of this.