I think as someone who's done A and R, which is artists and repertoire, for pretty much 20 years of my music career—in other words, finding artists—if I knew exactly the answer to that question, I would be a millionaire. But, I get where you're going with this.
I think one of the key factors that I alluded to a few minutes ago is that perfect storm, which is something that can't be created. That is, you take a song to radio. Radio picks it up and starts playing it at the same time that the video gets played, and at the same time as 10,000 or 100,000 kids are on YouTube searching the song out. Maybe you get nominated for the Polaris prize, or maybe you get featured on a number of TV shows at the exact same time, or you're touring at the same time. It's very hard to create those opportunities, especially at the same time. Sometimes it's very hard to create any of those opportunities. When they all come together at a certain point, generally you've created a perfect music storm that allows for the artist to get elevated to the next level.
People get attached to it. Yes, people still buy music, but not anywhere near the way they used to. They buy 10,000 copies instead of the 100,000 they used to buy. At least you've sold 10,000 instead of zero. Maybe they'll pay $20 for a concert ticket, or maybe they'll pay $20 for a T-shirt. Whatever the case may be, people start engaging in the music, and it builds. The word spreads, and it creates this opportunity for the artist to get to the next platform.
In my experience, if I can go quickly back to when I first started in the music business, I think it was one in ten artists was successful. Those were your odds, and that was a number of years ago. Now I think the odds are probably more like one in maybe forty-five is successful.