One other thing to factor into this is that equation is that studio time used to run into hundreds of thousands for an album. Digital recording helped ease that pain. A bad patch can be punched in and fixed now rather than having to run the song all the way from the head if there was a flub. Labels used to front bands $250,000 or more to record the next album. That wasn't a gift, so the first $250,000 in sales paid for the studio time. Then the label ate the rest. The labels want the publishing rights, and half the writing royalties.

I saw an interview with Dolly Parton. When she wrote "I Will Always Love You" (which I hate, but that doesn't matter), she got a call from Col Tom Parker because Elvis wanted to do the song. Parker said that the usual deal with Elvis was that he got half the publishing. Dolly dug her heels in and said "Well we have a problem there. I keep my publishing or we have nothing to talk about." And Elvis never did the song.

Now many of, if not most of, the bands not in that rarefied air of major act, self publish. One less layer of lawyer involved that way. Most now also self record and self publish. Those recording budgets are LONG gone for lower tier acts. And the business, like most of the world, is more corrupt than ever.

I think it is Matt who is on Spotify or one of those stream services, and he may be willing to enlighten us, but the last thing I saw I think it was some ridiculous figure like .0004 cents per stream. THEY make a lot of money from sponsors, but THEY also keep most of it.

The musician has to be happy with patiently adding up nickels, dimes and quarters. Enough Xs and Ys can add up to a nice Z over time.

There is money to be made somewhere, but it is almost funny to read articles in different places where one says "You don't make any money on record sales anymore. You make money touring." And the next one says "You don't make money touring anymore. You make money on record sales." Another will say "There's lots of money to be made in merchandising." Those people really need to talk and get the story straight! The "you and me" level artists don't tour, don't sell records, and nobody wants a t-shirt or cap with my ugly mug on it, so merchandising is not the key.

Also remember that "money" is relative. $1000 means something very different to a millionaire than it doe to a guy living in a refrigerator box on the street. I remember seeing Joe Walsh say "You can't make any money in music anymore." Well Joe, maybe what is "any money" to YOU is very different than the rest of us. When the Eagles last played Cleveland, the cheap seats were $200 a ticket. They played Quicken Loans arena, which holds 21,000 for concerts. It was sold out. Even if ALL the seats were $200, that is $4,200,000 in ticket sales alone. And I am thinking a lot of people bought the $60 t-shirts. This from a has-been, hanger-on type act. And I don't even remember when their last new work was released!! I didn't (wouldn't) go, but I was told that there was a half dozen Henley tunes, a half dozen Walsh tunes, a couple from Tim Schmidt.... that's like half the show. So for that $200 people got half Eagles songs and the other half solo artist material.

So, which part of that triangle is the money coming from? Sales, touring, or merch?