Corey Legge Pens Open Letter: 'This Is Why The Music Industry Is Broken'

Bega-born, Wollongong-based country singer Corey Legge has written an open letter for fans and peers about “why the music industry is broken”.

Taking to Facebook on Saturday (11 October), Legge revealed that for over 30,000 streams of his most popular songs on Spotify from 2019 to 2023 – Friday Nights with over 13,000 plays, Driving Out Of Eden with 5,600 streams, Cemetery Kids and Fireball with over 4,100 plays and Love You & Leave You with almost 4,000 streams – he’s only received $154.54.

“This is why the music industry is broken,” Legge wrote alongside a screenshot of statistics for his most popular songs and his calculations. “This is why it is so important for people to buy CDs and merchandise directly from the artist; otherwise, we operate at a monumental financial loss.”

Legge continued to write that between recording, releasing and promoting albums to a professional standard, it can cost an artist “well over” $30,000 AUD – an unattainable amount of money if you don’t have a side hustle actually paying the bills. “I work five days a week as a high school teacher to essentially fund my music career, as my gig and CD/merchandise income simply doesn't cover costs,” Legge wrote.

“Not many people openly talk about this stuff, but I feel like the general public needs to know about the terrible state that the music industry is in.”

At the end of his post, Legge asked his fans if they’d be interested in supporting his upcoming fourth album – recorded at Kasey Chambers’ The Rabbit Hole Recording Studio on the Central Coast – through a crowdfunding campaign. You can read his entire post below.

Legge has received support from people in the industry and fans alike, with singers Áine Tyrrell and Emily Wurramurra sharing his candid post.

In September, Countrytown premiered the latest single from Legge, Friday Nights. We described the song as “an upbeat, uplifting new song from Legge that you need to add to your campfire-ready playlists.”

The first song released from his forthcoming album, due for release in 2024, was engineered, produced and mixed by Nash Chambers, co-produced and co-engineered by Syd Green, and mastered by Matthew Gray (Matthew Gray Mastering).