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Posted by: Kristofer Dahl Jan 19 2010, 10:08 AM

A new scientific research study from Swedish KTH (Royal Institute of Technology) shows that revenue of Swedish artists the last decade has increased with 35% while the record companies have lost big bucks.

Amongst the artists - the big winners are the ones that do a lot of gigging, as well as the ones that already had a name before filesharing entered the scene.

My own analysis of this is that music now is shared amongst more people - this results in more people wanting to go see the artists live.

http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/musik/artister-vinnare-pa-fildelningen-1.1012896
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dn.se%2Fkultur-noje%2Fmusik%2Fartister-vinnare-pa-fildelningen-1.1012896&sl=sv&tl=en (Google translated)

Posted by: sted Jan 19 2010, 10:33 AM

The music industry simply has to evolve, file sharing will never go away and they have to adapt to the situation! I think the upturn in gigging is a good thing though, music should be a social thing in my opinion, recorder music should only wet your appetite for seeing the real thing up close and personal!

Posted by: Staffy Jan 19 2010, 10:39 AM

Yeaaahhhh !!! The PROOF !!
That was really my own conclusion of the situation when we had that endless discussion in a thread Emir started a while ago...
Maybe this just applies to the Swedish situation, although I dont believe not, but if so time gonna change everywhere...

//Staffay

Posted by: Marek Rojewski Jan 19 2010, 11:05 AM

Okay, but how much could You buy for the same amount of money 8 years ago and now? Don't know how it is in Sweden, but in Poland the difference is noticeable.

Posted by: Staffy Jan 19 2010, 11:29 AM

It hasn't changed that much, but thats not the point, the music business turns around the same amount of money/value (i'm sure the KTH-guy's have calculated on inflation as well... otherwise it would be stupid) like for 10 years ago - the difference is that now the money gets into the artists pockets rather than the records companies who are the big loosers here.... and thats what I really was saying, there haven't been so much opportunities playing "live"-music like now since back in the early eighties.... and then one must consider that these KTH-guy's haven't probably estimated the "black"-market for live music, which is HUGE....

//Staffay

EDIT: I was NOT meaning that its a good thing to have a black market....(that can also be discussed) rather that its a good thing that musicians can now make a living of playing live music.

Posted by: Marek Rojewski Jan 19 2010, 12:12 PM

Actually I think they didn't calculate it, here is a quote from the translated article "During the decade that large-scale file sharing has emerged this artist revenues growing strongly, from about 786 million kronor to 1.058 billion kronor last year." As they base on such numbers, it is pretty sure they didn't use to much of their brains to think, because not thinking and writing something was much easier...

Not to mention, that what is the point of this at all? If artists earned 75% of what they earn now, but worked 30% of what they have to do now, do they are really "earning" more? The hour/money scale must have dropped significantly.

Just to make things straight - I am not a anti pirate zealot nor a pirate lover, it is just that it annoys me, when a supposedly important institution make "researches" that would be marked in a secondary school as childish try at copying wikipedia..

Posted by: Staffy Jan 19 2010, 12:36 PM

KTH in Sweden is similar to "Royal Technical University" and is considered to be one of the most trusted sources of information in Sweden, since they are independent from politics and is a University. I don't think they would publish anything thats not verified and thoroughly researched....

In Sweden we have minimum wages regulated by law for musicians, so they definitely not earning less/hour at their regular gigs. And as far as I know by speaking to my friends, the black market wages hasn't dropped either, so in my conclusion the musicians is playing more live = earning more money and can make a living, which was a lot harder 10-20 years ago. (I worked as a pro musician myself back then...) This fact is also confirmed by my friends and the numbers of Venues to play at. They haven't been playing live that much for years....

I dismiss the pirating strongly, Im just trying to analyze the situation here, and if You were in the discussion in the other thread, You can easily see my point (we were discussion alternative distribution way's amongst other things) - finally the musicians have the opportunity to get the power back from the record-industry, that have been living a good life on the customers & musicians behalf for years. Lets take our music back !!!!

//Staffay

EDIT: The article was written in DN, one of the morning papers and the journalist briefly just covers the topic (and has nothing to do with KTH itself, even the figures may be wrong, but the summing-up is correct). I will try to find the whole investigation from KTH and post the link here if I find it.

Posted by: Bogdan Radovic Jan 19 2010, 03:15 PM

This is so true an my vision of the current scene is the same. Artists are releasing free albums more and more and its getting hard to sell music online and offline that is so widely available. As its bad for record companies, its a good promotion for artists to get a bigger exposure. Artists then make revenue on gigs and more people come to see the concert...

I don't see any way of changing this in the future unless we find a new medium for music or way of distributing it...

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Jan 20 2010, 03:04 PM

My understanding was very much the same, but it's cool to have scientists support it to some extent with these studies. Take that record labels

Posted by: Daniel Realpe Jan 24 2010, 01:49 AM

I wish they would start doing this with food.

Food sharing so everyone could get plenty of it and the people who would get the benefits would be the actual producers of it, not the big chain distributors and marketers.

Posted by: Kristofer Dahl Jan 24 2010, 12:16 PM

hehe that's some very interesting thinking!

Posted by: Pedja Simovic Jan 26 2010, 04:16 PM

Very interesting research. It was actually very obvious that artist would be earning more but then today role of manager decreases in a way. If people find out about music via Youtube, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter or what not , then you can do the booking yourself without any extra fees and middle party. True story, Oliver Katic singer songwriter I am working with, got contacted from club owners in Montenegro and Macedonia to do gigs there. All thanks to internet marketing and of course appearance in final of I got talent show on TV PINK (he finished 2nd). So without those social based pages everything would have to go through record companies, management where everybody would get their cut and in the end you get your share. This way you are in direct agreement with owners and you get what you ask without any middle party interfering. I think this is a very good example how that could work for independent artist, but imagine doing 300 shows a year? It would be well worth having a management behind you that does all booking, merchandise, media appearances etc. All you would be focus on in that case would be writing music and performing. This is the way I see things anyways.