The world's top-earning music stars are still struggling to make significant earnings online, with the majority of artists’ profits coming from live shows, according to Billboard's Top 40 Money Makers report.
Only 25 artists made more than USD1,000 in the year from on-demand music streams, while just 13 artists generated digital download sales of USD200,000 or more over the course of the year.

This is a similar topic to the recent Spotify / Lady Gaga story, and shows the sad reality of digital distribution as measured in hard $. It does make you wonder why not more artists understand that their destiny is in their own hands, and start to sell direct from all channels available, be it website, fansite, concert, flyer etc. It is super simple with a solution like our own STARtxt to get lots of different types of digital assets out there, from downlads to mobile tones and video. Yes it does take some effort, but at least it delivers a decent margin per sale and ownership of the ultimate customer, for follow-on sales.