Just in case anyone forgot, it's damn near impossible to make a living wage off music these days. Touring costs are through the roof, record sales are down, and streaming services aren't exactly putting lots of food on the table.
Cradle Of Filth vocalist Dani Filth recently spoke to Rock Hard Greece, where he discussed just how difficult things are these days. Filth also touched on the fact that some people think anyone in a big band is a millionaire, which he assures you the are (most likely) not.
"It's been deteriorating ever since… I think 2006 was the year that everything swapped from being comfortable for musicians — well, not necessarily comfortable; it was never comfortable. But [it went to] just being a lot harder with the onset of the digital age, the onset of music streaming platforms that don't pay anybody. Like Spotify are the biggest criminals in the world. I think we had 25, 26 million plays last year, and I think personally I got about 20 pounds, which is less than an hourly work rate.
"For example, the other day my girlfriend… She's got an ill cat; her cat's very sick and needed a life-or-death operation. She's a well-known tattooist, and she posted a thing online about… a GoFundMe for her cat, and she was gonna do a raffle and people could win a tattoo, et cetera, et cetera. The point of it is a lot of people were, like, 'Why the fuck should we pay for your cat? You're going out with a multimillionaire?' And she was, like, 'Excuse me, I don't think you understand how the music industry works nowadays. One, he's not a multimillionaire at all. Two, I'm my own person, and this has nothing to do with him.'
"I think people just have this amazing ability to [believe] that when you have stuff out there, like physical product, that you're earning a fortune from it. They don't realize you have so many people taking pieces of the pie — record company, management, accountants, blah blah blah blah; it doesn't matter. If you're not getting any money in the first place, there's not much money to share around. And nowadays, the reason why people put out limited-edition vinyls and stuff, it's for collectors — they're the only people that buy it; other people just stream it for nothing.
"That's why you're finding a lot of bands, since the pandemic, are not touring. Petrol's gone up. Tour bus hire's gone up. The cost of living's gone up. Yeah, it's very hard for bands at the moment. But it doesn't help when people just have this in-built idea that it's not a privilege to get music, that music is something that should be given away free. I mean, I don't walk into someone's shop and just pick up — I don't know — a pack of bananas and say, 'Well, these grow on trees. They should be free. I'm walking out with these.' I'd be arrested for shoplifting. But it's fine for people to download… Even before albums are out, you find fans, like, 'Oh, I've got a link to it,' and they put it up and then instantly any sales you're gonna get from people buying it for a surprise are out the window because they've already heard it and then they just move on to the next thing.
"Yeah, the music industry is on its knees at the moment. I still enjoy making music — don't get me wrong; I love it — but, yeah, the musician nowadays is finding a million things against them. It's a hard time."
On Filth's comment about "I think we had 25, 26 million plays last year, and I think personally I got about 20 pounds, which is less than an hourly work rate," it'd be interesting to know how much of the band's royalties go to their label and management before it gets to them. Though I'm sure it also doesn't help that Cradle Of Filth is a big band, with seven members.
