Donation Model Much More Difficult for Indie Artists

When both Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead decided to offer their latest albums online for free, with the option for a donation, both made tons of cash. NIN in particular claimed to have made over $1.6 million in the first week, with Ghosts, while Radiohead said they made more money off their latest album than all their previous combined. That’s a little hard to believe, but if true, it further reinstates just how greedy the goons at the record labels are.

Well, not surprisingly, it’s pretty easy to make money by selling your music online if you are an already-established artist, and I doubt there’s much dispute that both NIN and Radiohead have massive fanbases. In all reality, moving to an online model really wasn’t that much of a risk for either. If you are an indie band trying to create a fanbase, it’s much, much harder.

P2P-tracking site TorrentFreak took an in-depth look at the music collaboration site Jamendo, which allows artists to provide their music online and offer a donation button, while users can go on and listen and donate directly to the artist if they enjoy the tunes. Well, the results from this have been a bit lackluster, to say the least. The top artist on Jamendo cleared $1,000 worth of donations in three-years… and that about says it all. For those who don’t mind not making a living off music, getting your music out there is only a good thing. It seems it’s still the live shows that are going to remain the main source of income for most any artist, even the largest ones.

The top grossing artist on Jamendo is Rob Costlow, with just over $1000 in donations over three years. On Jamendo, his two albums were downloaded more than 50,000 times, and over half a million people have streamed his music on the site. Jamendo currently has close to 10,000 artists (not all of them accept donations), and 648 of those received at least one donation.