Interview with Davey Puppet
Davey Puppet sees the industry from two perspectives – both in his pop-punk band Punchpuppet who self-released their EP a couple of years ago, and gave most of the copies of it away, and in his job sorting out royalties for a London-based music publisher. Davey explained the technicalities of the effects of music downloading on the industry side of things, then went on to describe his own personal experiences of free music distribution.
Click below to read the interview.
What is the difference in the royalties that artists get from sales of digital music and physical albums?
It all depends. generally in the UK publishers receive less on downloads than physical product, depends how they get paid out. Sometimes it is done on pro-rata share of total profits made from all songs downloaded from a particular service. In the USA the statutory rate is often the same for physical CD sales and digital downloads (at the moment $0.091 per song under five minutes long). At least bands can get music heard easier through downloads.
With the increase in people buying (through downloading) just one track of an album rather than the whole thing (as with iTunes, and the new Amazon music store), has this led to a big cut in the amount of money music publishers make?
Again I think some publishers don’t like the idea of tracks being split up. Depending on how royalties paid out, it’s generally less than physical product in any case.
Do you think publishers are feeling threatened by the rise of the internet in the distribution of music?
I think ‘traditional’ ways of making revenue are changing and now you get special physical products (such as USB sticks, or box sets with DVDs) to try and differentiate. It’s still a period of transition really. It’s hard to police illegal downloads, but lots of additional admin is involved in licensing for legal downloads, too.
Do you think that the online distribution of music is affecting the industry side of things (publishers, and other middle-men on the business side) more than it is affecting the income of individual bands?
To an extent. I mean the music business is a business at the end of day! Bands still need to get paid, but you still need people to keep the cogs turning.
How many copies of your EP did you give away?
Overall probably about 100-150 copies! Maybe more, erk!
Why did you decide to give them away?
Sometimes people can’t be bothered buying something even if it is only a quid. It’s a good way to get CD heard, a lot of people are generally happy about getting something for nowt (isn’t everyone?!)
Do you think the benefits outweighed the cost? Did you notice a big increase in people interested in your band?
Yeah definitely more people made it to shows or recognised us from the band. It helped us get on various compilations, got us a gig in Denmark and helped us to do basically more gigs! We made all the CDs ourselves but used money paid from gigs for the supplies to make them.
Do you think that smaller bands would still be able to flourish if bigger bands decided to give away their music?
The whole Radiohead thing where they asked people to pay anything they wanted for the new album obviously generated interest in them. But they also released a special edition box set (with a vinyl, limited CD etc.) that most fans will probably buy as well regardless. With the amount of ‘free’ downloading people do, I think it’s served to generate interest in them. Hundreds of other bands are getting ripped off on a daily basis through file sharing anyway! Obviously us publishers aren’t happy at digital downloads and the small percentage they pay compared to physical product – this is why smaller bands are touring more to rely on income from live performances and merchandise sales, generating awareness and so on. Smaller bands have to create a buzz to get recognition, a lot of it starting through social networking sites especially.
