The Planet Money radio show and podcast, a favorite NPR podcast second only to This American Life, recently did a story on how the Internet had changed the music industry forever.
It’s not a new theme, of course, but one part of the show caught my attention. They profiled independent musician Jonathan Coulton and talked about how he sells nearly $500,000 worth of his music every year on his own website and without a record contract.
Many of the things he talks about work just as well with other types of content as they do with music. Particularly the part when Jonathan talks about how his relationship with his followers and fans is the fuel for his sales. Without it, he acknowledges he wouldn’t be nearly as successful.
As an entrepreneur, I always start a website with the exit in mind – how will I be able to sell this to someone else down the road? But the problem then becomes trying to build a site where we as the content producers aren’t front and center and built around our personalities. Trying to do so will usually result in failure because even the best content available won’t sell if your audience doesn’t feel some sort of connection with you personally.
For now, we’ve decided to be front and center in order to have success and make money. We’ll just have to figure out how we extricate ourselves from the site when it’s time to sell. There’s no easy answer, but since the sales must come first, it’s the only choice we see for now.
Let us know if you have new ideas about this.
For now, here is the audio clip of the segment and a transcript below.
1) Listen to the audio here (click on the triangle play button):
2) Download the mp3 file here
3) Read the transcript:
All right. So the story that I guess the record labels want us all to believe is that we’re all in trouble because it’s impossible to sell music for a fair price these days because it’s so easy to steal it, right? And the idea is that Napster made this all possible and now we’re all used to it, there’s no turning back.
And the argument is –
And the argument from the industry’s point of view is that this makes it incredibly hard to sell records when anybody who has a broadband connection can basically just go in the internet and get them for free.
The idea being that we have devalued music.
I see. And what do you guys think about that argument?
I think it’s probably fairly accurate. I mean I’m not sure that the price pre-Napster was entirely fair and the way that the money broke down certainly didn’t always benefit the artist.
But we’re all used to getting it for free and or for 99 cents a song or maybe, you know, 49. And I think that that ultimately does hurt the artist.
All right. So, the rest of this podcast is a counter argument to that sentiment. The man I’m going to introduce you to is basically a one-man refutation of that argument and let’s meet him now. Most people listening probably have not heard of this man. His songs never get played on the radio. He doesn’t have a contract with any music label and yet he makes a lot of money doing music, a lot of money.
This is a spreadsheet of my income over the last four years, so 2007 through 2010.
And I’m looking at the total net, are you prepared to reveal those figures?
You know, it’s — I don’t know. It’s always — it’s embarrassing to talk about that.
Ladies and gentlemen, Franny, Jacob meet Jonathan Coulton. He is a singer/songwriter in Brooklyn and I, unlike him, am not embarrassed to say what he made in 2010. He actually authorized me to tell everybody. He brought in almost half a million dollars. And since his overhead costs are very low, most of that money goes straight to him.
Which is crazy. It’s just insane.
Did you ever imagine yourself making this much money off of your music?
Of course not.
This is absurd. It’s an absurd situation. Look at me, this ridiculous office here in the parlor of this Brooklyn brownstone. This is the business that I’m doing here, it doesn’t seem right.
Read more…
creating content, selling content online
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The Interview Income blog is written by Tim Bourquin and Emile Bourquin, brothers and owners of Ideas For Download. The Interview Income Blog is your front row seat to see what we've done that worked and failed in selling content online. Thankfully, we've been pretty successful but we promise to always show you the reality of building an online business.
