Is anyone in Grime/NUKG/Garage actually making any money?

The thing with the 500 copies angle is misleading.

Most of these 500 copies are sold from about five or ten shops - distribution is only just starting to span out a little with boomkat showing some records. Secondly, it is strictly vinyl, which encourages all those people who look for CDs more than happy to acquire the music online because it isn't available in their immediately preferred format. Third, there isn't really the press for the scene yet - as Sov started to get press (I know how this name will upset some folk, but...) sales went up to 3000 or so.

Generally, the signs are that given the opportunity, it could become viable.

I'd be curious to find out how many copies the mix cd's/dvd's do. I think the vinyl sales are really low because the status of the dj is below that of the mc for the first time in the whole London continuum (I think the big jungle releases used to do tens of thousands of copies).

Plus vinyl prices have increased by a lot more than inflation. When I started buying records (late '95) they cost about 4.50 a shot, now it's like 7 standard. Big price jump.

u should def upload that set!!!

Wile does around 2000 whites per release.

Most good tracks do between 750 and 1200 units.

DVDs get sold to shops for between 6 and 8 pounds each and sold on for 12-18 pounds. So the makers and the shops make a lot of profit off DVDs

Between 2 and 8 thousand units of DVDs

Mix cds is a bit different.

They have just started selling Guns n Roses in HMV so that should skew the figures in a positive direction

Tactics said:

8000!!!! F****** Hell!!! Do you how they got it in HMV cos I remember when UK Hip Hop companies like Fast Forward (R.I.P) were struggling to get stuff in there - I mean im sure it is illegal cos have ruff sqwad got the necessary license to duplicate thousands of units aswell as sample clearance for some those beats...I doubt it...

pls see my other thread cos I would like to hear Target today....

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HMV can carry bootlegs & other copyright-infringing material with impunity because they are so large an organisation with so much power in the record industry and financial resource at their disposal that no one is able to sue them for it

profit margin

so what's the profit margin on a 12 inch that retails at 7.99?

the store presumably takes it at 4 or at most 5 quid. if there's a distributor in between that lessens what goes to the producer/label

with a pressing of 1000 or less, the per unit cost of production must be quite high

seems (from my gueestimates) the producer could make between 1000 quid and 2000 quid per release tops

what about MCs, do they get a cut for their performances? how big? is it a one-off payment or a cut based on sales?

DVDS --what are the per unit costs of a DVD? do the dozens of performers and producers involved all get paid?

i can see why the scenes churns out stuff, it must be the only way to see any $$$

hard graftin!

Profit margin on vinyl is not great, especially on runs of 500-1000 copies (above that per unit cost goes down, economies of scale and all that). I think that's why so many of the grime guys distribute their stuff by themselves, because it takes the middleman out of the equation and means more money for them.

I know a guy who runs a hardcore label and generally he presses about 500 copies per release, and then presses another 500 or sometimes more as demand dictates. He does the distribution himself, but production costs eat up over a pound per release. He sells a lot of his stuff directly off his website, which keeps him breaking even, but there isn't much profit in vinyl, it all just goes towards other releases.

I'd be surprised if many of the grime guys made money off of vinyl releases. I think they serve as calling cards more than anything, and that there's more money to be made in mix cd's and dvd's and from licensing fees for tracks being played on the radio and being licensed to legal compilations.

Yeah, I was thinking of dance music in general (where the big money is in events and compilations). Grime/whatever hasn't had many compilations, and what has been released has been ruthlessly pirated. Plus there don't seem to be that many events, certainly far less than jungle events when jungle was at its height both of popularity and notoriety, plus there's so many more mc's these days than then.

What is interesting is how much we all talk about it versus how big it actually is in reality. I guess its the potential, plus the fact that its new, so there's new shit to say about it.

Like yer style

My calculation:

RRP: £8
Dealer margin: 40%
Retained margin: £4.80
Distributor commissing: £1.50 (but I think most of this is done direct)
Pressing: £1 (could be easily be more like £1.50 -- I'm assuming they buy in Poland)

Net for producer £2.30 X 500 = £1,150
Net for producer £2.30 X 1000 = £2,300

Assume you go direct and the net is £3.80, which = £1,900 to £3,800 for 500 / 1000 units.

As for DVDs, dupe and on body print for 1000 will cost around £2 a unit. For 8000 I reckon this would drop to about £1.60. With a dealer price of between 6 and 8 pounds each and a sell-through of 8,000, retained margin would be between £26,400 and £51,200 assuming they go direct to the shop and they make it themselves. Now, that's more like it, but you can't sell that many a year, not in volumes of 8,000, and you'd probably need to split the take between a number of people. (I presume there's lots of different artists on each... you could pay the performers say £200 a time for rights in perpetuity...)

BTW I can't help thinking that a retail price of £8 puts a pretty stringent limit on the market...

[But you have to account for cashflow especially VAT, on dealer price -- so if you do one 12" a month and sell a thousand of each, every quarter you need ready cashflow of £840 (3 X £4,800 X 17.5% = £840). That cash could be difficult for a small firm to find if the shops don't pay on time.]

minusone said:

HMV can carry bootlegs & other copyright-infringing material with impunity because they are so large an organisation with so much power in the record industry and financial resource at their disposal that no one is able to sue them for it

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I think it's more that responsibility for sample clearance lies with the producer and duplicator ("the publisher"), not with the retailer.

Tactics said:

to stop the piracy, I think, when promoting only hand out specials ie. tunes with the DJ's names featuring cos if someone boots it then at least you know who. Tough (you cant do every DJ) and time consuming I know but could pay off in terms of first week sales....

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On a RWD thread (I'll need to find it) someone (maybe Plasticman?) was talking about how a lot of the big dnb dj's do little tweaks for when they give out cd's to different dj's like adding an extra high-hat in certain places or taking out a bass not, things that people wouldn't notice, but so that they can easily find out who leaked the tune if it makes its way onto a p2p service well before release.

its true though - I was telling someone last week that London isn't entirely locked on to and supporting the sound yet so how is it supposed to go worldwide? It's not even at the point where there's a event every week...the only way its surviving is on pirate radio and whats gonna happen when they turn off analogue?

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I had completely forgotten they were doing the switch-over to digital. When's that happening?