A cheque from MP3.com, nothing from the label

The first contract came before the first hit. On 18 October 1998 the band signed with Frontline Music Publishing, which took the rights to "Fragment of Time" and "Virtual Love". The same week it published two pieces written for PK2oons, a freeware game by Third Eye Entertainment.^1,2

Free downloads, paid CDs

On MP3.com the downloads were free, and the money came from CDs. In September 1998 the site had started Digital Automatic Music: it pressed a band's CD when someone ordered it, shipped it and paid the band half, without taking ownership of the music. In its annual report for 2000 the company set that "at least a 50% royalty" against the 10 to 15 percent it believed artists usually earned from a label.^3,4

The band's demo CD, the.demo.cd, went on sale there on 10 January 1999. When Atomic Dance Explosion reached No. 1 in March, the band wrote: "The pay check for the CD sales just arrived and we're gonna use the monney to rebuild our garage and turn it into a studio as a tribute to our fans." Beyond 2000, an album of the MP3.com tracks, followed on 16 August 1999 (in March 2000 MP3.com sold it for $7.99), and on 7 November the band reported: "In total we've sold 1550 CD's and that figure is still increasing."^5,1,6,7,8

MP3.com also paid for listening. From November 1999 its Payback for Playback shared out a sum each month, $1 million a month from May 2000, by how many different users listened to each artist, with at least 15 such listens a day needed to earn. By its annual report the company made $9.2 million available this way up to the end of 2000. ABC News reported that 39 of its roughly 150,000 artists made more than $20,000 each from it that year; the top earner, the Houston act 303infinity, made $165,392.92.^4,9,10

Labels

Labels noticed. In November 1999 the band wrote that it had turned down an offer from Amped Records in the USA "for a number of reasons". Another offer it later counted as a mistake: the German division of Universal Music e-mailed to sign the band, and Alexander, by his own account of 2004, asked what kind of label Universal was. He knew it was one of the largest in the world, he wrote, "however I didn't reflect over it until it was too late".^8,11,12

In 2000 the band did go with a label, Strictly Hype Recordings in the United States. In April its vinyl imprint Flash Traxx put out the 12-inch Health Warning, and on 22 August its Sunrise label released the album Beyond 2001 – the Resurrection. That autumn listeners wrote in the guestbook that they had seen the new album at the record store, or were going to the mall to get it. The band's biography of 2005 says the album sold about 18,000 copies in the United States and Canada, against the 3,000 the label had projected. A remix of MOVE's "Rage your Dream" came out on Avex Trax in Japan the same year.^{5,13,14,15,12,6}

The money never came. In February 2004 Alexander answered a listener in the band's guestbook, in Swedish: the first album released through a label sold about 20,000 copies, which should have brought in about 200,000 kronor, but the label went bankrupt and the band got nothing. Warlock Records bought the bankrupt label's catalogue and reissued Beyond 2001 on 24 September 2002, and the band's second album there, OUT THERE (2002), was listed in 2003 as "Discontinued due to label crash".^16,13,17,18

In the same answer he set it against MP3.com. The CDs the band sold there came to about 4,000 copies and brought in about 160,000 kronor, and the downloads were paid for as well. The band, he wrote, had probably done far better as internet artists than it would have done with a label. Other chances slipped: in 2001 Sony approached the band about music for the PlayStation 2 game Frequency, and by the band's account the contribution did not go ahead because its manager at the time did not follow up.^16,12,19

Try before you buy

Royalties were a small part of it. When a listener in Korea heard a cheap copy of Atomic Dance Explosion on the SBS news in October 2003, Alexander answered that "1% of the airtime we get actually ends up paying royalty to us". His own rule ran the other way from the labels': "As for your theory on try before you buy - it's been my motto all the way... And yes, it works well for us."^20,21

After MP3.com closed, the CDs moved to Ampcast. MISSION 2002 Vol.3 went on sale there on 30 April 2004 for $13, with Vol.1, Vol.2 and OUT THERE reissued the same day, and "a CD via ampcast pay us 2-3 times as much as we would earn from a regular CD via a label", Alexander wrote. In June the paid part of the Vault opened, "Due to intense pressure from people who scream for VIP Access", at $12 a year: a retail CD bought in a shop left the band about $1, he reckoned, and a VIP subscription about $10.^22,23,24

“Naturally our dream is to get back to where we where and again make a living off of our music...”

Vinyl again

Vinyl came back through London. The band's second night at Heaven, on 17 December 2004, was billed as the launch of Massive Trax, whose first 12-inch would be the band's "Sunrise"; promo copies went out to DJs and radio, but in February 2005 the band wrote that the sale had been put off until the Winter Music Conference in Miami in March. Another record did come out: "Heaven", written for the London nights, was released by Black Tiger Recordings as BTR-005, and on 14 June 2005 the band's news list reported it at No. 1 on DJMR's trance chart.^26,27,19,28

Then and now

When Alexander upgraded the studio in 2012, he announced that the year's music sales would pay for it: all revenue would "go back into the project instead of spending it on coffee and pizza". The terms had changed since MP3.com's half of a CD. Bandcamp takes 15 percent of a digital sale, 10 once an artist has sold $5,000, plus card fees, and says that on average 82 percent of what fans pay reaches the artist or label. Spotify pays no fixed rate per stream: it says rights holders share about two thirds of its music revenue according to their share of all streams, and that in 2025 one stream in every million was worth $11,000 on average. Since 2024 a track there earns nothing until it has had 1,000 streams in a year.^{29,30,31,32,33}