How much do music artists earn online?

I rediscovered some very interesting research published by David McCandless in April over at the Information is Beautiful website. They created a thought provoking infographic showing how much money musicians make in the new digital marketplaces. It’s amazing how non-profitable services like Spotify and Rhapsody are for anyone creating music.

The comments in the original post touched one aspect of distributing your music online that is close to heart for us here at Flattr — giving music away for volunteer donations. Essentially a pay-as-much-as-you-like approach.

Some big bands have done it (Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead spring to mind), tons of smaller, independent bands do it all the time in the hopes of getting more exposure, increasing their fan base, and getting people to come to their concerts.

It would be interesting to hear from bands who are using Flattr to get their fans to support them. Anyone willing to share their experience?

Tim Rutherford-Johnson took IIB’s numbers and added some more meat to the bones:

IIB’s chart doesn’t factor in the relative popularity of digital streams over physical purchases. You might need nearly 4,000-times as many streams on Spotify as you do physical purchases, but is that number achievable? How does it look compared to what is actually happening? “A deeper look at how much musicians make online”

The whole digital marketplace revenue share with the creators and alternative ways of getting paid for your content online is a topic I’ll keep my eyes on. Expect to see more.