2026-08-09

Did the Project Pay

You counted the hours. This is what they were for: one calculation, per release, done once at a fixed point, that tells you something no dashboard will. For a related workplace reference on employee time clock software, see this resource.

The calculation

Income from the release, minus money spent, divided by hours spent.

That gives an hourly figure, and the hourly figure is the only number that compares a release against everything else you could have done with the time.

Compare it to your paid rate. Session work, teaching, a day job. Not because music should pay like a job, but because the gap is a fact worth knowing rather than avoiding. For additional current music-industry context, see Discogs.

What to include

Income: streaming, downloads, physical, merchandise attributable to the release, sync, and any bookings that came from it.

Money out: recording, mastering, artwork, distribution fees, advertising, physical manufacture, shipping.

Hours: all five categories — making, packaging, admin, promotion, and any paid work you turned down for it.

And a fixed horizon. Twelve months after release, or eighteen. Pick one and use it for every release, because a number without a consistent window compares nothing.

The two answers people avoid

One: it paid, and the hourly figure is low. Common, and it is not a failure — it is information. A release at a fifth of your teaching rate is a choice, and it is a better choice made knowingly.

Two: it did not pay, and the largest cost was promotion. Also common. Promotion hours are the most elastic item in the calculation and the least examined, because they feel productive.

Neither answer says stop. Both say which lever is worth moving.

What the number is not

Not a judgement on the music. Plenty of good records lose money and the calculation does not know or care.

Not a reason to make different music. It is a reason to make different decisions about time and spending around the same music.

And not comparable to somebody else's. Different catalogues, different audiences, different costs. Compare your releases to each other, which is the only comparison that controls for you.

What it changes

Which promotion continues. A channel consuming forty hours with no traceable follow-on is now a line item rather than a habit.

What gets outsourced. If mastering costs less than the hours it takes you, that is now visible.

And release frequency. Some people discover they can afford more releases done smaller; some discover the opposite. Both are findings, and neither is available without the count.

Doing it once

Half an hour, twelve months after release, once.

Not monthly — monthly turns it into anxiety and the figure is not meaningful at that resolution anyway.

Write the result next to the release in the same sheet as the hours and the saves-per-thousand ratio. Three releases in, the sheet starts answering questions you did not know to ask.

The short version