Music Income 2.0: Cover Videos
Music sales income may be in the toilet, but new revenue sources are popping up everywhere. Fans posting cover videos is the latest new source of tangible cash for a few lucky artists and songwriters.
A typical radio station plays 12,000 pieces of music in a three month period. During the same time frame on services like YouTube, royalty and rights organizations like MCPS-PRS will analyze…
two billion performances of 14 million different videos. According
to Andrew Shaw, Managing Director of Broadcast and Online at the
Alliance, "The trend for posting self-made videos is driving the number
of performances on the websites we license. Hairbrush divas are not
only helping to generate royalties for the writers of their favorite
music but could also prove to have the X Factor themselves and be our
stars of tomorrow."
I’m not so sure about the last half of that statement, but it’s a a trend worth watching.
Today, artists must look to aggregate as many revenue sources as possible in order to actually profit from their works. While cover songs have long been a source of license fees for artists, technology today enables virtually any musician to record a cover and make a video. For this, compulsory license fees are owed to the original artist. But, for these youtube videos that aren’t sold and are posted non-commercially, can an artist actually collect? Seemingly less, but will the cover artist have any money to pay?
Finding the perfect balance between revenue collection and allowing free use for exposure purposes is critical. This is paramount in battling the flatness of the long tail…
http://evolvingmusic.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/long-tail-is-flat/