Hereβs the Thing!
Let's get straight to the point!
Compact Cassette Revolution (Again)...
Mary Spenderβs video is worth watching.
Especially check the maths regarding a musician's income from 100,000 streams on Spotify versus selling Cassettes to, letβs say 1,000, True Fans.
Spotify = $0.04 per 10 streams,
so 100,000 streams = $400 (less aggregation costs)
Mail-order cassette album or EP at $10 per cassette, plus packaging and postage.
This is $10,000 gross profit. At between $2-3 overhead cost per cassette (for duplication and artwork etc), it is somewhere between $6,000 and $7,000 net profit.
Even if you only made and sold 50 cassette albums, youβd make more than from 100,000 Spotify streams.
For an independent artist, itβs worth thinking through.
My only doubt/question: does anybody actually own a cassette player anymore!!!
Some resources
High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape by Marc Masters
Cassette A Documentary Mixtape
1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly
Please note: I have another infotainment channel on Substack, called Unleashed & Unlimited, where I post podcasts, articles and content unrelated to music.ππ₯π
Pretty darn cool.