Here’s how this scenario may turn out for one artist.

In speaking with my friend the songwriter, we discussed the success of his last album selling it off the stage at shows. Although he loves to play gigs, he has primarily done in order to connect with more new fans and sell cds to sustain his career. With that said, the numbers fell like this:

$1000 - studio time $1500 - cd replication and printing

His album has been out for 3 years and he has sold 600 copies at $10 apiece out of an original pressing of 1000 units.

So this album, so far has made a net profit of $6000 MINUS the $2500 in costs for a grand total of $3500.

I put it to him like this - if we take a modest number of internet listeners - for sake of argument we’ll say 5000. Let’s say that only 14% of those listeners chose to pay only half the suggested price for his new cd according to the SPEAK philosophy. That means that only 700 of those 5000 new listeners chose to pay $5 for music that they loved which made the artist the same $3500 he made on his last album.

But now his music has 5000 NEW FANS and a monster mailing list on which he can market his merchandise, his fanclub, his tour and his future albums. Since he knows these people already dug his music, logic would dictate that he will get a greater return percentage on his next album - maybe 25% will then pay that same $5 next time around!

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