Thinking Aloud

The Future of Music Coalition’s Artists Revenue Stream project is the first ever attempt by anyone to survey as many US-based musicians as possible to find out how they derive their musical income and how that has changed over the last 10 years.  The goal is that it will provide the music industry, policy makers, groups supporting musicians, and many others with a wealth of information on what kinds of impacts the new opportunities technology has been brought to musicians.

In Part I of this interview, Thinking Aloud asked Kristen Thompson about the purpose of the ARS project.  In Part II here, the interview gets into what will happen once the results are analyzed.

Thinking Aloud: In what ways do you plan on using the results from your survey?

Kristin Thompson: We will likely release the results through a series of short papers that focus on particular findings, and rely heavily on visualizations. We’ll use the FMC website as our primary repository of papers, but I expect we’ll also be releasing findings at events and through journal articles throughout spring 2012.

Thinking Aloud: As you mention, there isn’t a past survey to compare the results from this survey to anything in the past. Do you foresee future surveys on musician revenue sources to see how things are trending?  How often would this happen?

Kristin Thompson: While there has been some great research done on specific musical genres or communities, no organization has ever tried a research project of this scope in the US. We’re keen on hearing from musicians working in any genre, playing any role, from emerging to professional.

We see this as a vital benchmarking effort — a snapshot of what it’s like o be a musician or composer in 2011. It’s our hope that it could repeated
five years from now, but the project would need some institutional support and funding for that to happen.

Thinking Aloud: How can musicians empower themselves with what you find?

Kristin Thompson: We’ve heard from a few participants that simply taking the survey was “enlightening” or “mind-opening”, which is a wonderful ancillary outcome of this work.

Once we get to the point where we’re able to release findings, we’ll make sure to present the information in ways that musicians can learn from it.
We’ll make it interactive, and provide musicians with some tools to compare themselves to others. We’ve also been testing webinars and presentations that can further educate musicians about all the possible revenue streams, and how to access them.  We hope to push ahead with all of these options in 2012.

Thinking Aloud: Looking ahead, are there other music surveys the team may be developing outside of focusing on income derived from music?

Kristin Thompson: We are always thinking about research projects that would benefit musicians and songwriters. That’s why we’ve done research in the past on musicians’ access to commercial airplay, and the barriers to getting health insurance. Artist Revenue Streams is our most ambitious project to date, and one that is likely to generate additional research opportunities.  We’re already talking with colleagues in Canada and the UK about replicating this study in their countries, which would provide an amazing set of comparative data. But for now, we are focused on finishing up ARS here in the United States and releasing findings in 2012. We hope that more musicians take the survey before it closes on Friday, October 28, so their experience can be captured in this important benchmarking effort.

You can take FMC’s Artist Revenue Stream survey HERE until Friday October, 28th when it closes.

Thinking Aloud thanks The Future of Music Coalition and Kristin Thompson for their time in doing this interview.