How much does an artist make from a vinyl record? (2023)

How much do artists make off vinyl records?

Under the traditional recording agreement, recording artist royalties usually range from 10% to 25% of the suggested retail price for top-line albums (although many record companies have begun to compute royalties on the wholesale price).

Every time a record is played on the radio or sold in a record shop, or sold online now, they get a percentage of it, the artist gets a percentage of it, and the writer gets a percentage of it.”

As a quick reference, record labels can keep a cut anywhere from 50-90% of your earnings. It is an industry norm for a new artist to only receive 10-16% of their sales.

Singers should receive the same or a comparable per-song rate as the other musicians performing on the track. This can be anywhere from $50 to $300 per song. Generally, $150 per player per song is an acceptable rate. Not all artists will pay their employed musicians the same.

Pressing vinyl isn't cheap, but fans are willing to pay more for real records that they can hold in their hands. Expect to pay anywhere between $1000-$3000 for a pressing of 100-300 copies, depending on if you include artwork (jackets) or spring for colored vinyl!

Indie record stores typically mark up their new album selections somewhere around 20% to 30% at most.

Although the number is constantly fluctuating, in 2022, Apple Music pays 0.00783 per stream on its platform. With this in mind, a song will earn $1 after streaming roughly 128 times.

With vinyl, you get an analog sound that reverberates and creates a warm sound you can't find in any other medium. The music and vocals or closer to the way artists sound live, with a lossless format that isn't overly compressed.

Some of the more common types of royalties are book royalties, performance royalties, patent royalties, franchise royalties, and mineral royalties. Book royalties: They are paid to authors by publishers.

What is the lowest salary for an artist?

Artists on the lower end of that spectrum, the bottom 10% to be exact, make roughly $42,000 a year, while the top 10% makes $110,000. Location impacts how much an artist can expect to make.

Assuming you sell the album for the typical price of $9.99 and you hypothetically get to keep 90%–100% of your revenue, selling 1 million records would generate you anywhere from $8,991,000 - $9,990,000 from the album units alone.

How much does a Music Artist make? As of Jan 23, 2023, the average annual pay for a Music Artist in the United States is $51,586 a year. Just in case you need a simple salary calculator, that works out to be approximately $24.80 an hour. This is the equivalent of $992/week or $4,298/month.

How Much Does A Rock Band Make Per Concert? A rock band typically makes anywhere from $500 to $5,000 per concert, depending on the size and popularity of the band. Larger, more popular bands can make upwards of $10,000 per show. Musicians in the United States earn an average of $35,000 per year.

What is this? In mechanical royalties, artists are owed a certain amount of money every time their songs get played as per the Copyright Act. For songs under 5 minutes, the mechanical royalty rate is 9.1 cents per stream and 1.75 cents per minute for songs over 5 minutes.

Now that modest growth has turned into a boom, with sales up over 60% between 2020 and 2021 and up another 22% at the 2022 midyear raking in $570 million, according to the RIAA, and vinyl plants are running at full capacity across the country.

There are, of course, expectations to this. The average eBay selling price for vinyl records is around $15, though values can range from 50 cents to $50 or more. Some vinyl records command spectacular fees.

Pressing vinyl is delicate process, and there are many moving parts involved – both literally and figuratively. And each of these parts comes with a price.

Starting a vinyl collection is a lot of fun! The hunt for the records you're looking for is half of the fun and experience, and spending afternoons flipping through records, in a used record store, is an almost-extinct activity worth reviving.

Who pays the best for vinyl records?

The best places to sell vinyl records online are eBay and Discogs. These are the two big 'go-to' platforms. The eBay vs Discogs debate is a big one amongst record collectors, with pros and cons to each.

As for how much Spotify pays per stream, they pay roughly $0.04 per 10 streams. So, 1000 streams would be around $4, and 100,000 streams would be $400.

Spotify keeps a playlist of nearly all songs with over one billion streams. As of January 2023, a total of at least 357 songs have reached this milestone.

A Business Insider report from 2020 found artists earn as little as $0.0033 per stream. The streaming service does not pay per stream, instead using a system that pays artists based on "streamshare." This payment could vary depending on how music is streamed or agreements with licensors, Spotify says.

Artists fail because the lifestyle is lonely, insecure, and the hours are long. Artists also fail because they're dreamers and think that good art sells itself. Artists fail because they don't know how to market their work and run a small business.

Making a living as an artist is impossible for all but a few high-profile practitioners, and the lack of sufficient financial remuneration for artistic labour is the dark reality at the heart of the contemporary art world.

The more you use your records, the more they will deteriorate. Like anything physical, the friction between two surfaces will gradually add wear and tear (in this case the contact of the stylus on the record's grooves).

The environment your records are stored in has a major influence on the longevity of the record and its sleeve. High humidity and fluctuations in temperature can lead to mould growth and accelerate deterioration, sunlight will fade sleeves, and extreme heat can warp vinyl, so there's a bit to think about.

Vintage vinyl is quite likely to contain cadmium or lead – both toxic to humans – and even some new vinyl might still contain lead. With certain additives no longer allowed, substitutes and new compounds have been devised.

Do royalties ever expire?

For artists in the US, the copyright protection of a song lasts for the lifetime of the copyright holder and an additional 70 years after their demise. This law applies to all bodies of works that have been published since 1978. The payment on these royalties also lasts for the duration of the copyright protection.

Royalties last their entire life of the songwriter and another 70 years after they have passed away. This can result in well over 100 years of royalties. This is why some songwriters have one huge hit song and the royalties they continuously earn can sort them out for life.

The length of ownership for a song copyright depends on whether the song was copyrighted before or after 1978. If a song was copyrighted in or after 1978, the copyright is valid for the life of the author plus 70 years.

Being able to support yourself as an artist, and maintain a high-quality life through finances generated from your artwork, can and does happen all the time. But rarely does it happen overnight, and realistically, until your career gets rolling, it is necessary to earn a living through other means.

Michael Jackson's Thriller, estimated to have sold 70 million copies worldwide, is the best-selling album ever. Jackson also currently has the highest number of albums on the list with five, Celine Dion has four, while the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Madonna and Whitney Houston each have three.

Elvis Presley (USA) is the best-selling solo artist, with 1 billion sales worldwide (129.5 million in the USA).

Depending on the type of gig, an average musician can earn between $50 and $1000 per night playing cover bands and or wedding bands. A local singer-songwriter performs for a small audience if the budget is tight, and the musician's fee ranges between $50 and $100, depending on the artist.

Musicians who focus on performance earn money from advances, merchandise, royalties, licensing fees and playing live music. If the artist works with a record label, they pay a share of their money to others involved, such as managers, agents, promoters, PR teams and sound engineers.

What is the highest price ever paid for a vinyl record?

The Beatles: 'Till There Was You'

In 2016, AFP reported that an anonymous British collector paid 77,500 pounds for the original vinyl demo record. Known as the “holy grail” of rock records, the 10-inch 78 rpm acetate record featured the namesake single on one side and the single “Hello Little Girl” on the other.

While ZipRecruiter is seeing annual salaries as high as $105,000 and as low as $11,500, the majority of Professional Musician salaries currently range between $25,000 (25th percentile) to $45,500 (75th percentile) with top earners (90th percentile) making $75,000 annually across the United States.

The average indie musician makes $5,750 per year. That's not much at all. But, sadly enough, it probably overstates the reality for most musicians. If you take the median from the responses, you're looking at ~$2,500.

As we've mentioned earlier, in most markets, both songwriters and recording artists are typically paid royalties any time their music is played on the radio.

1/ Thriller - Michael Jackson - 27 million vinyl records sold. Who else but the King of Pop for the top step of the podium? Only one year after its release in 1982, Thriller was already the best-selling album of all time, with no less than 32 million units sold in all formats, and 66 million to date.

All time. As of February 2023, Drake is the most-streamed artist of all time.

What artist broke the most records?

Ashrita Furman (born Keith Furman, September 16, 1954) is a Guinness World Records record-breaker. As of 2017, Furman has set more than 600 official Guinness Records and currently holds 530 records, thus holding the Guinness world record for the most Guinness world records.

The combined deal, which was first reported by Billboard, is estimated to be worth $500 million. Sony now owns all of Springsteen's original recordings as well as the intellectual property of the compositions.