I’ve been surprised that no-one in recent years has decided to give the idea of subscription music a serious attempt. By that, I don’t mean the sort of thing that eMusic are doing, where you pay an an intermediary a monthly subscription for a fixed number of downloads from a plethora of artists. In fact, I mean the opposite end of the subscription spectrum.
The way music works most of the time is that a band works on an album, then puts it out along with some singles, and tours it for a year. Then they do another tour with no new released material, have a break, and repeat. The album-tour-break cycle for many bands is 2-3 years, in which the bands have a flurry of buying activity near the start (album release), that rapidly trails off for all but the biggest artists. Although they’ll get royalty cheques through the in-print lifetime of their records, the size of said cheques declines soon after release (unless you’re Nirvana, in which case it gets bigger year on year).
Bands are always going to have a number of hardcore fans who will buy or download anything the band puts out. Albums, singles, b-sides, bootlegged live shows, acoustic tracks, even demos; the biggest fans will lap it all up. I just wonder to what extent bands could utilise that to guarantee a relatively steady income.
How much money do artists generate just now? The album itself is probably £10, and the singles are about £3 for all 3 formats in a modern release (thanks to deals that people like HMV do). After 3-4 singles, the total amount generated per dedicated fan is around £22. (Note: we’ll ignore touring costs, t-shirts, and other merchandise, because that doesn’t change).
Imagine a service where the fans agree to pay an annual subscription of £20. For that price, they get access to all the music the band release in that period. If it’s an album year, they get a copy of the album (either digital only, or a real physical copy), and all the singles. If it’s not an album year, they get a deluge of other material: live shows, acoustic versions of favourite songs, demos, maybe the occasional new song too. This is not necessarily a huge amount of extra work for the artists; they’re creating the vast majority of this stuff anyway. They just keep it to themselves, or sometimes it gets bootlegged. Why not make some money from it?
The less astute readers may be thinking, “hold on – £20 is less than the £22 the band were making beforehand”. You’re absolutely right, it is. But that’s what they’re getting in an album year. Currently, that £22 is all they generate from releases for the whole of the 2-3 year cycle. Years 2-3 get them very little. Move to a subscription model, and that’s £20 every year, or £40-60 for the cycle. A significant increase.
Not only that, but it’s a regular fixed amount of income. If you’re a small and independent band, you no longer have to worry month-to-month about sales: you’ve got at least some portion of it forecast quite nicely.
As I say, the extra material already exists for most bands. Live shows are recorded, acoustic versions exist, and albums get heavily demoed before production. They just have to ensure that they keep a decent and consistent stream of music going to subscribers. That’s an album and singles one year, and a few live shows etc the next. It’s not a big burden.
Another benefit from a label point of view is that suddenly you have a very engaged audience: you have people who are actively waiting for what you will give them. This means you can easily cross-sell similar artists (subscribe to X and Y? We’ll give you 25% off Z), or promote new bands (you like X? Here’s some free stuff by this new band Y who’ll be supporting X on their next tour; if you like it, subscribe with a small discount).
Complications? Of course there are. For example, what happens if a band splits early? You keep the money in a holding account and only pay it out to the band every month or quarter, pro-rata, so you can give it back to the fans if the band falls apart. I think with a little thought, this is a workable system.