Proud to pay? 

When paying for music becomes a question of honor…

What is the problem?

How about stopping complaining about sales numbers? By now, we all know, it’s bad.

Music has become less cultural and much more of a product. But I can hardly think of another product that great, but still not valued enough by far.

How can we make people want to pay for your music?

This is always the question at the end of thinking about the worth of music these days and the changes in revenue streams for artists.

When doing training in advertising I learned that it’s most important to ask the right questions to get a focused result. Only that can lead to taking the right actions to reach your goals.

That being said, which label or artist is not concerned about the decrease in income from album sales?

We already know that performing is saving music artists these days, besides sponsoring etc., but I think there wouldn’t need to be saving if the artwork were appreciated again.

Music Is Not A Product!

Marketers these days tell us we have to think of music as a product to reach a bigger audience. All efforts seem to target numbers, not people.

If numbers are what counts, how could we expect our audience to ignore their own numbers? Meaning, how and why do we expect people to pay, if they can get it for free and save that money for something else?

Maybe people just changed according to this attitude and business ethics.

Before the digital age we paid for music (or recorded it from the radio, fun memories ?) and discovering new music was not that easy. Today the choices are endless and instantly available.

In my opinion there’s just one resolution to the problem, which luckily comes in various forms;

Make your audience proud to pay!

How could we do that? Creating something we ourselves can be proud of is of course the primary directive. Quality counts for all sides.

But why should somebody pay for what they can get for free and on top of that, do it proudly?

  1. Because they are happy to be a member of your audience /movement, because of who you are and what you do.
  2. Because they feel like being part of the creative and or productive process.
  3. Because your fans matter to you and they know it by experience.
  4. Because they love independence from majors as much as you do.
  5. They like knowing where their money goes.

To make a long story short, if we as artists value our work and don’t handle it like a product, the right people will love to stick around.

Artists like money, but I think we like genuine appreciation even more.

Love, Esther

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