Banking the Cents makes Sense
by TNGlive
Are you aware that people who want your music for free, are not necessarily the only people who want your music? If you don’t care about this, who’s the one really playing themselves?
The narrative that people in Africa do not have access to online transaction facilities, has been the backbone supporting the reason why some rappers release music for free, at least when one is starting out and trying to build a fanbase.
What happens when the music you first release is so good, you have made an instant fan? It’s logical that if this new fan wants to take things further, she’ll seek out more of your music and may be willing to part with her cash as a way of saying, ‘thank you and I believe in you.’
In a world in which we’re fast progressing towards, or arguably already living in, this process needs to be as frictionless as possible because, we all have stuff to do. You either really have to have nothing to do, or be a full time curator to go chasing through pages and pages on the internet to find more of a new rapper’s music. Alternatively one could weed through a list of songs on a poorly designed free platform to try figure out which music belongs to which body of work, all in order to listen to it in the way it was supposed to be experienced. Trust, the average consumer does not have the patience for all these steps.
There are services that are maturing in making this next step even less painful for the consumer.
Streaming services are providing a platform which your new, willing and able to pay fan is already acquainted with navigating around, allowing her to easily find more of your music.
You the rapper, get’s a central platform that is presenting your work the way you intended it to be experienced. Your new fan can play your music to her heart’s content, and so further strengthening your new relationship. You the rapper, receives royalties for the number of times your music is streamed.
One could argue that as a new artist you may only succeed in generating enough airplay to only earn cents. Well, if you simultaneously release your music to streaming services for those that want to pay, and ‘leak’ to your usual channels for reaching your ‘fans’ who want it for free, then what are you losing?
A handful of cents will always be worth more than a handful of nothing. If you need to ask why, think about it this way. There is a proposal underway to increase payments to USD 0.09 per 100 plays. So hypothetically, if your new fans collective play all your songs 100 000 times, that 9 cents becomes USD90. That's USD90 better than the 100 000 free downloads that generated a handful of nothing. In the bigger scheme of things, you'll be prepared for the unpredictable runaway viral hit that'll generate USD900 for every 1 million streams. Wait. What?
These numbers do not include actual individual song sales that may happen. And the opportunity to license your music to a third party who discovers it on the playlists some these platforms create.