In an interview with Digital Spy, La Roux opened up about her experience and thoughts on the music industry, revealing that she never made any money from sales of nearly 8 million records. All the money she has made have been from radio. With the difficulty of breaking even, she expressed the importance in passion for doing what she does:
“…I’ve never made any money from record sales, and we sold nearly 8 million records if you count all the singles. There’s something not right about that…
“I spent two years on Trouble in Paradise and I most likely won’t make any money out of it. The only money I will make is from radio play. All the money I’ve had up until now is from radio… Until you start getting to much larger venues, if you’ve got a five-piece band like I have, you find it very difficult to break even. We don’t break even. Thank God we’re really passionate about what we do and we don’t mind when we lose money. We will try to make money by moving up to larger venues and building ourselves up as a live act, so that’s become unbelievably important, which has been great for the music industry.”
As it gets harder to make money from record sales, La Roux honed in on the need for strong live performance skills:
“In a way, with money not coming from record sales, live has excelled and there are a lot of bands who never used to have to rely on it as much as they do now. It means you really have to step it up. You have to be a reputable live act. I think that’s a good thing. It’s certainly pushing us…”
Go here for La Roux’s full interview about her opinion on music streaming and the current state of the music industry.
Photo Credit: Consequence of Sound