#makemusicyours

So it’s time to face the facts that being a musician as a career is a really difficult (nearing impossible) goal to accomplish. The fame and recognition we all aspire to achieve is drowned out by the realities of declining record sales, shady record label deals, and a devaluation of music that puts a cup of coffee on par with the latest Beyonce single.

Yet despite all this, there are still 18 million music instrument players in the U.S, 200 million amateur musicians worldwide, and 12 hours of audio being uploaded to Soundcloud every single minute.

So, why are people still pursuing music? The straight answer is that it’s downright fun and personally rewarding. The issue is that rewarding doesn’t necessarily lead to cash in your pocket. So for the musicians that do have cash in their pockets, where are they getting it? According to the chart below, as of 2013, 28% of musicians’ revenues were being sourced from live shows, with music teaching accounting for 22%. This may sound encouraging, but let’s be honest: it’s way easier to upload songs online than it is to start a teaching career or earn significant money from performing live.

This is precisely where ‘Pickasound’ steps in. As a music social network dedicated to making online collaboration more efficient, we ask ourselves:

What if musicians had a platform that built sustainable revenue streams through content creation, where they could earn money from their contributions, remixes, and shared works? Wouldn’t that be better that trying to sell music to consumers who are already used to getting it for free?

Driven by a need for perfection; most musicians’ only ever release a tiny portion of the songs they create. Yet for all the time and effort it’s worth; sound-recording sales make up just 6% of a musicians income. But what if we could put a price on any piece of music an artist created? Could there be more opportunities out there to generate revenue simply by remixing, sampling and creating musical ideas?

On Pickasoud, we believe that the value of your music is equal to the level of creativity it brings to others through sampling and remixing. Today artists have fan bases that consist of both listeners and creators, and in order to understand what makes Pickasound truly valuable, it is important to first know how these groups interact with your music differently:

To a listener; your music is the fuel that allows them to carry out their day, performing other activities while your melodies play in the background. Your song is as important as the feeling it provides at that very moment, but a moment can only last for so long, and the listeners playlist is filled with thousands of songs that could just as well take them through any moment of their day. So how is yours any more valuable?

To a creator; your music is more than just a fuel to carry out the day. It’s an inspiration to create more! As creators, we love to look deeper into the sounds and melodies of a song because we have an inherent need to contribute to it. To the beatmaker; a single 5 second segment of your song can be enough to spawn a brand new song with a totally different vibe. Or an instrumental can appear as an open canvas to the singer/songwriter as they fill up the empty spaces with their vocals.

This is a perfect example of what we call active versus passive engagement. When it comes down to which group is willing to pay more for your music, it should be no surprise that those who actively engage with your content place a higher value on it.  

Pickasound is establishing an open and collaborative culture amongst both professional and amatuer musicians, making it easier than ever for you to monetize your songs from every stage of the creative process. We believe that this is the future of the digital music industry, and we are very excited to take you there!

Subscribe here to become an early beta tester of Pickasound: