Quote:
Posted by Delthefunky:
These pop artist try and make us feel so quilty about downloading music, but they're still making millions of millions of dollars.
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Remember though, if you're talking about artists, they only get royalties, which can be pretty low (like 5%). The record labels are running away with most of the money. Some of it goes into things like packaging and marketing. Packaging, for example, is often subtracted from total sales
before they calculate royalties.
So if a band sells a CD that is lucky enough to go platinum, which is extremely unlikely, the total sales (if it's $18 each) is $18 million. If you assume that they calculate royalties off that number - probably in reality it would be less - the artist makes only
$900,000. Not chump change, but good luck writing an album that goes platinum.
Thankfully, there are other ways that bands can make money, like touring.