Here's the Thing! 13/06/24
Compact Cassette Revolution (Again)...
Here’s the Thing!
Let's get straight to the point!
Compact Cassette Revolution (Again)...
Mary Spender’s video is worth watching.
Especially check the maths regarding a musician's income from 100,000 streams on Spotify versus selling Cassettes to, let’s 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, you’d probably make more than from 100,000 Spotify streams.
For an independent artist, it’s worth thinking through.
My only doubt/question:
Does anybody actually own a cassette player anymore!!!
I don’t.
Some resources
1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly
High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape by Marc Masters
Cassette A Documentary Mixtape
Please note: I have another infotainment channel on Substack, called Unleashed & Unlimited, where I post podcasts, articles and content unrelated to music.🖋🎥🎙
The income debacle for musicians is shameful. Streaming business models have to be changed. Shoot, as little as artists make on Spotify, that company doesn’t even make a profit. Nobody is winning!
She makes a good point with the economics and the privacy issues.
I wonder about the economics of CDs and vinyl, and whether that's a possibility for a DIY artist (which most artists are today). A lot of us still have CD players, and records players have made a comeback. Some people have massive vinyl collections.
I regret loading my CDs onto Apple Music and then selling them. Mistake!