It's not that simple... :)

Most are hobbyists who sell 2 copies to Mom & Dad -- which is wonderful, IMHO -- while a much smaller group of professional and semi-professional artists move a very decent number of units. And earn 70%!

this can't be said enough.

"The Revolution will be Unemployed!"

There are 45% less professional musicians in 2011 than in 2002.
There is NO digital empowerment for artists. There is  NO new middle class of professional musicians.

If the Internet is working for Musicians, Why aren’t more Musicians Working Professionally?

That is impressive considering that not long ago unsigned artists were unable to sell their music. The title should have read "Major labels lost more than $100 million dollars to itunes artists".

Bullshit.  Camper Van beethoven and hundreds of other bands in the 1980s were unsigned and started their own labels. They then distributed their records through very willing independent distributors.  By the 1990's it was 1000's of bands.  This is easy history to research.  I'm so tired of hearing the internet did things it didn't do.  Put down the crack pipe.

I am the first person willing to admit that I am not a fan of Tunecore in any way and that actually led to my business moving to Ditto quite some time ago, but I've got to defend Tunecore on this one and agree with the folks above.

Sure, that "average" number may have went down, but an average just does this no justice whatsoever. There is no depth to the analysis there. To really understand how well or not Tunecore is doing we would need to split this up to look at the top percentage of Tunecore artists, the folks that rely on this as a living. Then take a look at all the folks on the bottom rung who were just happy to be able to say, "I'm on iTunes!" (I used to be one of those back in the day). 

So I don't know what we can really take from this at first glance. This just gives a pessimistic view of the industry and that's not good for any of us involved in it. The number we should focus on is the '849,000'. That at least means more people are getting the chance and opportunity to live their dream. No one ever makes promises that the dream will actually happen.

Cheers,

Jordan Owens
President / Head Operator

Sour Mash Recording Industries
http://www.sourmashindustries.com

@jordanowens45 

These figures arent true and Tunecore's "we paid 100 million to artists last year" Is not backed up by any real facts or figures.

Tunecore charge $50 per year just for having an album (which is as little as 2 tracks) 

Am not buying into this one bit

"they've also helped to made it easier for millions just like you to get onto iTunes."

That's exactly THE main issue here.

Anybody can just pay and be on iTunes today.

Would be interesting to see stats on the "quality" of music catalogue available on iTunes, even though that's a kinda hard exercize as long as it would be based on subjective/taste-related criterias.

---------------------

www.jtvdigital.com

Have you ever heard of a bimodal distribution?

Your basic arithmetic skills are top notch though.

Am I misreading something here? Tunecore sent out an email just yesterday with the $101.8m figure, but that's year-over-year growth if I'm reading their graphic right.

No?

According to the note Tunecore sent us, it's $101.8 million for 2012 alone.  I'll cut n paste the text of the email when I,m back at my laptop.

/paul

February 6, 2013 – New York, NY: 2012 was an exciting year for TuneCore, but more importantly, it was a banner year for TuneCore Artists with $101.8 million earned in 2012 alone.

Since TuneCore’s launch in 2006, 1.8 billion TuneCore Artist digital music units have been downloaded or streamed and TuneCore Artists have earned over $250 million in total from the sales and streams of their music.

what are the stats for:

# of artists who sold:

1-5 albums/year

5-10

10-25

25-50 etc.

or dollar value: who makes

0-$10 month, $10-20, etc etc  

FWIW I've seen my montly revenue drop from on as much as $8000/year, to a few years ago suddenly $1000 a year and now about $400 a year... huge drop in the last 5 years...

We've earned over $500,000 over 6 years from Tunecore... so we are pretty happy...

songs? or those joke sounds? or funny ringtone voices? or those "meditation" albums? or are you a label?

details, details... or no one will believe you...

...or  generic covers of famous songs at faster tempos, churned out for use as fitness workouts. forgot to guess that one.

hope you're paying your mechanical royalties to the appropriate composers.

That's a weird comment...

...check out the cheeseball euro-accented funk and pop cover tunes where the bpm is the selling point. they (isweat) must release an album a week.  particularily funny is their workout version of dirty bit by black eyed peas, where the french guy (or german or swedish) guy really trying to sound american but can't pull it off. (if you thought the song was bad in its original state...)

all good they are making money, but don't mistake sausage disguised as steak. their motives are a lot different than the bands/artists who are creating music, not product; more akin to the guys selling fart and burp noises -- so i'm not sure if that # applies to the musicans who read this... but yes, they are making bank on itunes, so maybe that's all that matters for this article. (actually, i'd like to see data on the top earners selling sound on itune -- after the obvious hits, the workout/mediation mills that crank out cover or sound fx albums a few times a month probably make the most dough)

Do meditation albums really sell that well? The market is flooded with them.

This is an exciting time for the digital distribution space. I sincerely congratulate Tunecore (and CD Baby's recent $250M threshold) on their success.

I know on our side (Venzo Digital), we're also experiencing great growth since 2012 (though I'd rather show you here than to tell you. ). I look forward to continue to watch this market for new and exciting announcements. Great job guys! :)

Kevin Rivers

CEO, Xeinge Group

http://www.xeinge.com

One more note, it's free to set up an account.  You can set up an account, poke around and decide to go elsewhere without distributing anything so another reason to not go by that 849k number.