Post-Project Research Protocol April 19, 2010 February 2, 2011 October 2014 From 2010 to 2014, the US-based nonprofit Future of Music Coalition conceived of and executed the broadest collection of primary-source data from US-based musicians and composers about their income conducted to date. The Artist Revenue Streams project has published over two-dozen data driven memos that examine the factors that affect musicians’ earning capacity, available at http://money.futureofmusic.org. This document is a post-project version of the team’s research protocol. This includes commentary on some of the alterations we made to our methodology along the way. We hope that colleagues find this information useful in planning and executing similar research. This draft is for Vienna Music Business Research workshop attendees. We will incorporate any additional feedback received at the workshop into this document and make a final copy available. Table of Contents Purpose: The Value of Measuring Musicians’ Sources of Revenue................................... 3 Research questions .............................................................................................................. 4 Existing work in the field .................................................................................................... 4 Hypotheses .......................................................................................................................... 5 Research methods ............................................................................................................... 7 Population of Study........................................................................................................... 10 Partnerships and participation ........................................................................................... 12 Publication and dissemination strategies .......................................................................... 13 Objectives and Outcomes ................................................................................................. 13 Future work ....................................................................................................................... 15 Musicians as First Movers ................................................................................................ 16 Appendix A: interview models and pre-qualifying survey ............................................... 17 Appendix B: Musician types ............................................................................................. 20 Appendix C: Qualitative interview questions ................................................................... 21 Appendix D: FAQ for financial case study candidates ..................................................... 24 Appendix E: The 42 streams ............................................................................................. 26 Appendix F: Population definitions and sample size for survey ...................................... 30 Appendix G: Money from Music survey construction ..................................................... 34 Appendix H: Money from Music survey protocol/instructions ........................................ 36 Appendix I: Partnerships, Connectors and Advisors ........................................................ 39 Appendix J: Research Advisory Committee ..................................................................... 41 Appendix K: Timeline ...................................................................................................... 43 Appendix L: Project privacy and permissions policy ....................................................... 45 Artist Revenue Streams: post-project research protocol. Draft for VMBR attendees. 2 Purpose: The Value of Measuring Musicians’ Sources of Revenue FMC’s primary purpose for conducting this research reflected our interest in documenting how the changes in the music landscape were affecting musicians’ earning capacity. New technologies like digital recording studios, digital aggregators, online music stores, streaming services and webcasting stations have greatly reduced the cost barriers to the creation, production, distribution and sale of music, and a vast array of new platforms and technologies – from Tumblr to Facebook to Twitter feeds – now help musicians connect with fans. Many observers are quick to categorize these structural changes as positive improvements for musicians, especially when compared with the music industry of the past, in which access to commercial radio, mass media, and traditional retail was tightly controlled and difficult to navigate without major label support. A prevailing thought is that the barriers to entry are now so low (and so inexpensive), and the number of platforms through which musicians can create, promote, distribute and monetize their work are so vast, that these technological changes have had a net positive effect on the creative community. And it is true; musicians’ access to the marketplace has greatly improved. But how have they impacted musicians’ ability to make a living? Almost all analyses of the effects of these changes rest purely on assumptions that they have improved musicians’ bottom lines. A handful of social researchers, academics and organizations have published studies that analyze the earning power or social capital of certain segments of the US music community, or how much musicians have earned from some specific activities. However, there has been no comprehensive effort to directly ask a wide range of musicians – working in many different genres and locations, and representing an array of career arcs – how their revenue streams are changing, if at all. This is why Future of Music Coalition developed a multi-stage research project to undertake this crucial work. Artist Revenue Streams: post-project research protocol. Draft for VMBR attendees. 3 Research questions The Artist Revenue Streams project collected information from a diverse set of US-based musicians1 about the ways that they are currently generating income from their music or performances, and whether this has changed over the preceding five years. The fundamental research questions were: What percentage of musicians’ income comes from each possible revenue source? What is the ratio among different sources, whether it is royalties, money from gigs, t-shirt sales, or any of the 42 other meaningful revenue streams that FMC identified? What are the demographic characteristics or external factors that influence music- related earnings? Are the revenue stream ratios different for artists working in different genres and at different stages of their careers? In addition to asking musicians about the percentage of income derived from “traditional” streams such as retail sales, public performance royalties and live performance fees, we collected benchmark data about participation in new streams like digital downloads, digital performance royalties, and a myriad of new licensing options. Over time, as the research is replicated, this will help us understand whether aggregate income from these new revenue streams offsets losses of revenue resulting from the erosion of traditional streams, or which, if any, of the new models are having a net positive impact on musicians’ bottom lines. Existing work in the field FMC’s research was informed by the excellent work done by a number of US-based social researchers who have been examining US musicians, income, hybrid business models and community networks over the past ten years. In 2003, Joan Jeffri from the Research Center for Arts and Culture published Changing the Beat, a detailed and comprehensive ethnographic survey of jazz musicians in three distinct communities: New York, San Francisco and New Orleans. Her work, which was supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, serves not only as a vivid snapshot of jazz players, but also serves as an excellent example of the Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) model. Sociologist Daniel Cornfield from Vanderbilt University has done similar ethnographic 1 In this document, we use “musician” as an umbrella term that includes performers, recording artists, songwriters and composers. Artist Revenue Streams: post-project research protocol. Draft for VMBR attendees. 4 work, interviewing 72 music professionals residing in Nashville, TN, with a chapter in Steve Tepper and Bill Ivey’s 2007 book Engaging Art. University of Massachusetts’ professor Pacey Foster has been examining the hip-hop community in Boston. Maria Rosario Jackson at the Urban Institute has been studying arts, culture, community and hybrid business models from an urban planning perspective, and Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC), a US-focused national service organization for individual artists has issued a number of reports about how artists build careers across commercial, nonprofit and community work. FMC’s work built upon these studies, but added a significant quantitative aspect to the research; something that has been lacking in the social research field. In addition to academic sources, FMC examined the research published by industry sources such as Billboard and MiDIA Research, membership surveys of various organizations that serve musicians, and top-line data available from digital aggregators and rights societies that facilitate the flow of money to artists, including CD Baby, TuneCore, ReverbNation, Rightsflow, SoundExchange, CISAC, ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, Nielsen BDS, or Nielsen SoundScan. We also looked at NEA surveys,