How Much Brad Paisley would have Made on Beat-Play

Co-Host of this year’s 44th Annual Country Music Awards, Brad Paisley has reportedly sold over 10 million albums. Yesterday I did an estimation of How Much Eminem would have Made on Beat-Play(there’s a “b” in there). Since the Country Music Awards are tonight, I figured I’d do another estimation on Brad Paisley.

Brad Paisley has released 14 albums all together, with a total of 148 tracks. That gives him an average of about 11 tracks/album. On Beat-Play, if each on of those 11 tracks were listened to only 3 times by each of the 10 million people who bought a copy, Brad Paisley would have made $4,950,000 dollars, at $15/1000 plays (ad space price).

However, Brad Paisley has 148 tracks. If all of those tracks were available to listen to for free, all in one place (the conditions on Beat-Play) and each track were listened to only 3 times by 10 million people, Paisley would have made $66.6 million dollars at $15/1000 plays. The truth is that Brad Paisley probably has more than 10 million fans total, since he has 10 million that are willing to actually pay for his music, and I’m sure each of his tracks has been listened to more than 3 times on average by all of his fans.

Paisley is only estimated to be worth $22 million dollars right now, and that includes touring and merchandise money. The $66.6 million on Beat-Play was just music. Look at the difference! Beat-Play not only will distribute and promote the music for free by allowing it to naturally spread throughout people’s social networks, but it will give the artists the control over their income that they deserve, and give them the opportunity to make the kind of money they should be making, without dishing out huge portions to record labels.

Beat-Play will be released to the public as a social radio Facebook app in several months. If you would like to help us test our radio, please email me directly at Dante@musicwithoutlabels.com. We hope to hear from you!

Written by: Dante Cullari Founder & CEO Beat-Play, LLC

How Much Eminem Would Make on Beat-Play (Hint: there’s a “b” in there)

First of all, if you’re not familiar with Beat-Play or how artists will make money, I’ll give you a real quick run-down. Beat-Play will be a Social Radio App launching on Facebook in several months. On Beat-Play, you’ll follow people who you share a taste in music with(friends & favorite artists). The songs those people like enough to actually save to their own playlists, automatically get sent to your radio. If you like a song enough to save it, it get’s sent to anyone following you. So if the music is good, it will spread throughout people’s social networks like wildfire.

Now for the money part. Artists give away full quality streams of their music for free to the fans, and then artists are able to set their own prices for their ad space. There is a small “postage stamp” sized ad affiliated with each stream of a song (shown below). The artists will set their price/1000 plays, that the advertiser will have to agree to. Negotiations between the artists and advertisers will occur until an amount can be settled on. The more plays an artist gets, the more leverage they have to get more money for their ad space. Eminem gets a LOT of plays, so his price/1000 will be pretty high.

The immediately following calculations represent ONLY Youtube and Vevo plays. This includes mostly official music videos for Eminem’s singles. The thing to remember is that Beat-Play will not only include an artist’s videos, but it will also track each time an artist’s songs are played without videos. So this includes an artists whole catalog of music, plus any additional audio/video content that they generate.

According to Eminem’s “EminemVEVO” channel only, he has accumulated approximately 680,588,260 plays from May 11^th 2009 to Nov 7^th 2010 (about an 18 month time period). That’s approximately 37,810,488 plays a month and about 453,725,496 in one year. Again, this is only in official music videos and things like behind the scenes footage of the making of his videos.

Of course, this also doesn’t even begin to count the views on videos that were not uploaded by the EminemVEVO account. I tried to get an estimate on how many plays Em has gotten from other people’s uploads, and I got up to 216,670,668 only getting to page 5 of the search results for the search term “Eminem.” In actuality, that number is probably more the the 680+ million plays he’s recorded on his Vevo account, though it would be over a longer time span.

Based on the EminemVEVO account numbers, if Eminem were to have this content on Beat-Play, let’s say for a range of $17 – $21/1000 plays (considerably high, but it is Eminem), he would have made anywhere from approximately $7.7 million – $9.5 million in one year, off of videos alone.

Of course since Beat-Play will accommodate more than just his videos, let’s try to figure out how much Eminem would make with all of his content on Beat-Play. We’ll use simple logic to get an estimate.

The search for the number of albums Eminem has sold world-wide returns conflicting answers online, but let’s say 80 million just to be safe (the most commonly agreed upon answer), even though it is probably more since his newest releases. Remember, this ONLY counts the albums that Eminem has sold. This doesn’t account at all for any pirated copies of Eminem’s CDs floating around out there.

So, not including Infinite or the Slim Shady EP, Eminem has had 10 commercially released albums (also not including any mixtapes, leaked underground tracks or freestyles). For the sake of being easy, let’s say that’s about 200 tracks – 20/album (this is a low estimate for all of Eminem’s trackable songs).

If each one of these 20 tracks has been listened to only 5 times for each of the 80 million copies, at $18/1000 plays, that would mean Eminem, by himself, would have made approx. $144 million dollars since 1999 (11 years). If each of those 200 tracks were listened to only 5 times by 80 million people on a radio platform like Beat-Play where they can save songs into playlists to listen to anytime for free, he would have made $1.44 billion dollars, based on an ad price of $18/1000 plays. Of course, Eminem’s songs have probably been listened to more than 5 times by each person who has bought a copy of his CD’s, AND, the number of actual copies of his CD’s around out there has to be over 80 million, so there has to be more plays, which means more money.

Let’s go for a more accurate estimation of how much Eminem should be worth. According to MTV’s Discography of Eminem, including verified audio biographies, mixtapes, greatest hits and other works, Eminem has 50 albums available for purchase. If there was approximately 200 tracks on 10 albums, there might be close to 1,000 tracks on 50 albums, however, let’s be conservative and say 650. That would be an average of 13 tracks on each of the 50 albums.

If each of those 50 albums were FREE, and available in one place (the conditions on Beat-Play), and each one of the 650 tracks were listened to an average of 3 times by say…150 million people (a conservative estimate of Eminem’s word-wide fanbase considering he has sold over 80 million records, and p2p file sharing is now way more common than sales). At $18/1000 plays, Eminem would have made $5.265 billion dollars over his entire career so far, if he owned all of his masters (without a record label), and before recording and production costs. That’s only each of his songs being listened to 3 times, by 150 million people.

Also remember, with Beat-Play there would be no real need to market the music, being that the music spreads by itself throughout people’s social networks (as long as it’s good), and the music is free for everyone.

This also doesn’t include ANY of his music videos, interviews, freestyles, stupid videos of him playing basketball with Jimmy Kimmel (over 6 million Youtube views), ANY merchandise sales, ANY tour money, or ANY profit from ANY of the movies and TV shows he has starred or appeared in, or any other offers he’s gotten during his career.

According to CelebrityNetWorth.com and a number of other sources online, Eminem is worth approximately $115 million dollars. That estimate probably doesn’t take into account his most current releases, but that $115 million dollars equals about 8% of our first estimate of $1.44 billion dollars. I don’t even want to know what percentage $115 million dollars is compared to our (most likely more accurate) estimate of $5.265 billion, so I’m not even going to do the calculation..go ahead if you want to.

If you look at this commonly accepted chart of the distribution of money within the music industry right now, for an album that costs $9.99 in a store, with a high end royalty deal similar to the one Eminem’s label has with the distributors (who then have deals with the retailers like Walmart), the label would keep approx. $2.00 dollars from this $9.99, and the artists would get $1.00 (after they have paid back the labels for paying to record, promote and package the album). $1.00 is just about 10% of $9.99.

Based on this it’s not hard to imagine that if Eminem has himself made $115 million dollars, the industry(including distributors and retailers) has all together made approx. $1.15 billion dollars off of Eminem sales alone. Also, if $115 million is a low estimate of his actual worth, and that figure is 8% of $1.44 billion, our first estimation of how much Eminem should be worth, then the numbers seem to back themselves up pretty closely.

The fact that 90% of Eminem’s money has already been handed out to other people so that he could make 10%, because of a broken, outdated, and seemingly greedy industry model, is pretty disgusting to me, and it almost borders on crime, had Eminem not signed away all of that money when he signed with Interscope. This also shows that with this model, you don’t need to have 80 million fans world-wide to make a decent living from your music.

Finally, an industry model will exist where artists will independently get paid what they properly deserve, while gaining the exposure they need to gain, even if unknown, without having to borrow millions from record execs who want to charge huge interests in return. This is the beginning of real freedom for musicians and producers; of independence and victory, instead of dependence and misery.

This is an opportunity that has never before existed for independent artists, but with the right tools, the internet now makes this model completely possible. Beat-Play is planning on providing these tools. We’re getting EXTREMELY close now. If you would like to get involved and help us beta test our social radio, by submitting your music to us, please contact me directly at Dante@musicwithoutlabels.com and I will send you more information.

Eminem’s not the only one..at least his career 10% has more than 3 zeroes in it. We’re all in this together. The talent is there. The opportunity is there. It’s time we unite and get it done!

Written by: Dante Cullari Founder & CEO Beat-Play, LLC

A Look at New Artist Revenue Model: The Social Radio – By the Numbers

For those that don’t yet know, Beat-Play will be introducing the first ever social radio to the web in a few short months. It will run off of Facebook and will be fueled by social recommendations. With this radio app, if you like a song, it will automatically get sent to your friend’s radios, if they are following you. If they like it then, they pass it on to their followers.

Not only is this an awesome (free) form of viral promotion and distribution, but it can also be a completely new revenue model for artists as well, and I believe it’s a model worth looking deeper into, and worth doing some comparisons with what else is out there right now.

In this new model, the music is free for the fans. The artists will get paid based on ad revenues generated from their popularity. The artists essentially get paid from their plays. The more average plays/day they get, the more an artist can charge for their ad space (artists set their own prices).

Let’s get right to the numbers. We’ll start with an artist having an average of 20,000 plays/day. This may sound like a lot, but you must remember the environment that this will be in. With this viral automated word-of-mouth system, a steady supply of great music will always be fed right to the users without them having to search, and being filtered through people they trust, so the chances of them liking the music are greater as well.

With this system, the playing field would finally be leveled: If the music isn’t good, it won’t spread very far; if it is good, it will spread like wildfire.

As long as the artists pump out a steady supply of great music themselves, with even the smallest pre-established fan base to start with, I think building up to an average of 20,000 plays/day can be pretty achievable in not such a long time, with the right amount of hard work being focused to where it should be: on the music.

An ad appears every time a song plays. The ads themselves are unobtrusive and not interruptive, although they could be quite interactive and engaging if clicked, instead of damaging to the user’s experience. So say an artist has an average of 20,000 plays per day for a whole year, and the average price for their ad space is $6/1000 plays. At this price, the artist, in that one year, would make approx. $43,800.00 before taxes. Of course that also doesn’t include any merchandise or tour money.

That’s not too bad at all! Let’s compare this model now to some other artist revenue models out there.

I’m sure you’ve seen the following chart at some point before. I will use their averages because I feel they’re still pretty accurate.

So in the new social radio model, to make $43,800.00/year, the artist would need 7.3 million plays in that year. (Think about artists that get millions of plays in a day)

For Last.fm, according to the chart, to earn just $13,920 in one year, which is the US minimum wage, an artist would have to have 18.5 million plays in that year. To earn $43,800 on Last.fm, they’d have to have almost 60 million plays in one year!

It’s hard to compare this model with CD Baby or Itunes, because these 2 models are based on sales, not plays, and there will always be more plays than sales, but let’s try to compare anyway:

For an artist to earn approx. $43,800.00 on Itunes, they would have to sell over 450,000 singles; On CDbaby, over 75,000 singles. That’s a lot of credit card transactions no matter which site you choose.

Think about this too, when you make your money off of downloads, your only getting paid to sell a copy. That copy will get listened to hundreds, or thousands of times after the sale, but you only get paid once. Now I hope you can see the potential in the opportunity to monetize the plays of songs, with a proper ad model, instead of just selling copies to fans who love to share.

With this new model, the artists may finally be able to make a decent living off of just making and circulating their music, without having to kill themselves to market and promote their music, without signing away their souls for a distribution deal, and without having to worry about piracy taking all of their money! Maybe, with this new system, artists will be able to make the kind of money they should be making when they factor in shows, merch, music licensing, and any other opportunities that a model like this could potentially present.

I urge all independent artists to consider supporting a model like this, and to think about the kind of effect this model could have on your career. I’m an indie artist myself. It’s about time we start using a model that works for us.

If you would like to help us test this model, right now we need artists and music to be submitted to our social radio so we can continue testing internally. We’re getting really close to our Facebook launch.

Written by: Dante Cullari – Founder & CEO Beat-Play, LLC

The Problem With Music – Awesome Rant by Steve Albini – independent and corporate rock record producer most widely known for producing Nirvana’s “In Utero”.

Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed. Nobody can see what’s printed on the contract. It’s too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody’s eyes water. The lackey shouts to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit. Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there’s only one contestant left. He reaches for the pen, but the Lackey says “Actually, I think you need a little more development. Swim again, please. Backstroke”. And he does of course.

Every major label involved in the hunt for new bands now has on staff a high-profile point man, an “A & R” rep who can present a comfortable face to any prospective band. The initials stand for “Artist and Repertoire.” because historically, the A & R staff would select artists to record music that they had also selected, out of an available pool of each. This is still the case, though not openly. These guys are universally young [about the same age as the bands being wooed], and nowadays they always have some obvious underground rock credibility flag they can wave.

How much do you musicians really make? – Reblogged from theroot.com

Article found here.