How many CDs must be sold before production and distribution costs are covered?
I think the CDs you sell at a concert, for example, cost about €1. (Disclaimer; I don’t have a good source for this other than a blog https://blog.discmakers.com/2023/01/streaming-vs-cds/)
So, if you sell it for 10 euros, you make a profit of 9 euros. So 9 euros is equivalent to about 3000 streams.
The general ratio for streaming CDs to album equivalent unit is 1:1500. Even with this ratio, I think it is much easier to make a profit.
As an easy example we take Coldplay, because they are big so the numbers are known. They have sold over 100 million albums. So these are 1.5e11 or 150,000,000,000 Streams. Spotify’s most streamed artists don’t even come close. They don’t even get a fifth of that. (An error occurred in the calculation for editing.) It stops at 100 million per month, so it would take 1,500 months or roughly 125 years to keep up with Coldplay’s album sales.
By the way, the blog you linked states:
Which do you think is easier, generating 3,000 streams or selling one CD on your show? Physical media is the clear winner in the monetization game. Almost every independent artist I talk to tells me they can’t make money from streaming – There are not enough flows to generate any income.
[Reactie gewijzigd door youridv1 op 24 oktober 2023 15:05]
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