Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[lb969]

I have in front of me a copy of Business 2.0(magazine) and on page 144 (next to last page) is a little blurb called:


A real indie. We've all heard of bands finding success without a major record label, but how about with no label at all? Amazingly, the self-produced, self-titled debut album from Brooklyn-based indie rock band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah has sold more than 20,000 copies and generated as much buzz as a beehive. In August, thanks to glowing reviews on the Web and brisk sales through independent local record stores, Clap Your Hands entered Billboard's "top heatseekers" chart at No. 34 -- the best performance in history for an album not backed by a label. That sound you hear? One band clapping all the way to the bank. Yeah.

[sjbrot]

That sound you hear? One band clapping all the way to the bank.

Hahaha. That's great. Couldn't you just imagine the band fanning themselves with the wads of ones and fives they must surely have accumulated from their 20,000 album sales?

[Merkava]

Who cares? They're awesome. Fuck you. And your mom. Concurrently.

[lb969]

sjbrat, lets do a little math shall we?

20,000 cd's at say... $10(minimum)

20,000x10=$200,000

say $20
20,000x20=$400,000


Thats pretty good for a band that only uses WOM(word of mouth) to sell its cd's.

[Everest]

What about various costs hmm?

In the end, their biggest achievement will not be their financial revenue, but their relative success.

[sjbrot]

I wasn't saying that their achievement was meaningless, just that the article made them seem like they would raking in all this cash when, relatively, it's not that much. Especially when they have to undertake all of the overhead themselves.

[stevethepirate]

Well, if you think about it, most record labels make up for the loss of money in production by hiking the price up on their albums. They then take the majority of the profit from them and give only a very small percentage to the actual band. And if you think about it all this band needs is a Computer with a CD burner and some really cheap writable CD's, it's almost pure profit, cause when you think, a case of like 100 writable CD's costs something like 20 bucks. Very inexpensive considering what most major labels charge. And now that these guys are on our forum some of us might even try buying there stuff, they could potentially go multinational or even sart there own music label. This could potentially turn out to be one of those weird, nothing to everything success stories.

[Johnny C]

20,000x10=$200,000

say $20
20,000x20=$400,000

You're simplifying a little. Unless the band self-manages, and the record stores operate without any take from the album, and they recorded for free, then they didn't make that money. They made something close, but they didn't make that money. And however many members there are in that band, then that would be an above-reasonable salary for one year for them.

What I'm saying here is that I'm glad they moved 20000 records, and I don't care how much money they generated. Go indie bands!

[dinosrawr]

nicely said, my pirate friend.

[sp2]

I also want to point out that they've moved 20,000 records in less than a month.  Word of mouth works more or less exponentially.  That is, it starts out slowly and then speeds up rapidly.

So, you never know.

Plus, everyone knows bands make money off merch and touring.

[sjbrot]

I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think that record labels work by increasing the price of the CD in relation to how few albums have been sold.

The truth of the matter (or what I have skimmed off of Dig!) is that major labels lose money on nine out of ten albums released and only recoup on the big sellers, the 50 Cents and the new Good Charlottes of the world. The way the bands get payed (from what I can remember from So You Wanna Be A Rock and Roll Star) is that they are given an advance, and from there the money they get from albums is minimal unless they are able to sell enough records to recoup the money they spent on recording and mastering and doing videos.

They also get some money from tours and merch.

Of course, that's with majors. It's a whole different ball game with independant labels, I assume.

The problem with just going the CD-R route is that you don't have the distribution network. You can sell at shows and over the internet, but your local HMV isn't going to be putting your album out anytime soon at that rate. Plus, I own a few albums that were only released on CD-Rs, but on the whole, I need a product that has a bit more polish than a bunch of guys at home with their computer, and there are others as well.

CD-Rs are a good way to start out. Devendra Banhart was discovered while selling CD-Rs of his music after one of his sets. But they don't work in terms of careers.