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December 20, 2007
David Byrne Disses iTunes?by David Harrell
Former Talking Head David Byrne is a smart guy, but I'm a little perplexed by his take on iTunes in his Wired piece on Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists -- and Megastars, where he lists six music distribution models.
The only mention of iTunes is a somewhat negative one, with iTunes in context of a standard record deal. This large graphic shows that artists can make less from an iTunes album sale that from a physical CD.
That's certainly the case for a standard record deal. The same royalty rate applied to a record company's share of an iTunes album transaction (approximately $7.00 for a $9.99 album) results in less revenue for the artist than from the sale of CD with a higher list price.
But when Byrne gets to the business model at the end of his list -- the totally self-released model -- he makes no mention of iTunes as sales outlet, even though an iTunes sale for a self-released artist is fairly lucrative. A $9.99 iTunes sale for an artist distributed by CD Baby results in a payment of $6.37 and -- in an exchange for a small annual maintenance fee -- artists distributed by TuneCore can make approximately seven bucks for each sale.
For the self-distribution model, Byrne only writes about selling CDs at gigs and online, and downloads from your own website. Could it be that decreased royalties from iTunes sales of Talking Heads albums have simply soured him on the iTunes store, even for non-traditional models?
tags: digital music iTunes David Byrne CD Baby TuneCore
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It's written as a how-to guide for those looking to become music supervisors, but I found it to be a good resource for musicians (like me) who are trying to get their music used in movies, TV, etc.