In this clip from the forthcoming documentary Unsound, musician Zoe Keating speaks about the best way to support a musician. Sure, her music isn’t Metal but the message transfers across all genres.
The three key points made here are:
1.) The conception that one is helping to support an artist by listening to their music via a music streaming service is false.
2.) The best way to support an independent musician/band is to buy the album.
3.) A musician needs 10,000 – 12,000 hardcore fans to buy their album and attend shows in order to make a living.
Keep in mind that Zoe is a solo artist, so I would think that the amount of hardcore fans she needs is lower than the amount that say a five-piece band would need. So I would estimate that if you multiply 10,000 by the number of members in a band then that would give you an idea of how many hardcore fans a band would need to sustain a successful career.
When it comes to key point #2 made above, it goes much further than what the statement may suggest. While attending shows is a great way to support a musician or band, there are underlying benefits when it comes to album sales. Assuming that a musician/band has their shit together and submits their album UPCs to Soundscan, there can be underlying benefits to having a large amount of people purchase the album during release week; such as charting in Billboard and other industry charts. While the average music fan may not pay so much attention to these charts, people within the music industry do. So if a musician or band is making waves and spiking the charts…people in the industry will take notice and that just means more potential success for the artist(s) down the line.
Ok, enough of my jibber jabber. Watch the clip below.
