I'm indebted to <a href="http://www.theleftroom.co.uk/" target="_blank">Steve Mosby</a> for the following. As books steadily work their way into the digital realm we're constantly told that ebooks, self publishing and -- who knows? -- one day book subscriptions (aka streaming) will come to take the place of conventional publishing.

For readers... maybe. But what about authors? How are they going to receive some reward for the vast amount of work that goes in to writing a book?

Musicians have gone through this pain barrier already. Now someone has worked out how much you need to sell in a variety of musical media in order to earn the US minimum wage. It doesn't come as a surprise to me to learn that 'old' media win the day hands down over new, but the gap in earnings is simply breathtaking.

In a nutshell you can get to that pauper's wage through 143 self-pressed CDs, 155 general CD sales or 1,161 through a major label. To get the same amount of money you need a staggering 1.5 million plays per month on Last.fm or more than 4.5m on Spotify.

The full graph is below but make sure you read the article too at  <a href="http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/"><cite>How Much Do Music Artists Earn Online?</cite></a>

<!--more-->

<a href="http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/" target="_blank"><img class="noborder" src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/how-much-do-music-artists-really-earn-online.png" alt="How Much Do Music Artists Really Earn Online?.png" width="550" height="3178" /></a>