CDs Want To Be Free

Dotnaught writes: "An article that I wrote about a new music promotion service called fightcloud.com and CD pricing in general has just gone up on Salon. And heeding the advice of Dave Winer, I also posted the full transcript of the interview on my Web log, Lot 49, for those curious about what got left on the cutting room floor." Rather than complaining that Big Recording's CDs are overpriced, it sounds like this company is simply demonstrating that music (even on physical media) just don't have to cost that much.

Comments

Re:NOT FREE.....

[User 956]

OK, so that all costs some money, right? Well, that's NOTHING compared with the cost of food, travel, housing that many recording labels provide their artists while they are recording.

You know jack shit about the music industry, my friend. All those things are what are called RECOUPABLE EXPENSES.

When a record label advances money to an artist, or spends money in certain areas, to make, market or promote a record, the artist must pay back that money before the label begins to split the profits with the artist. Paying back that money out of record sales is called "recouping." If the record stiffs, even at the fault of the label, the artist of course owes nothing. But if the record sells some units, and the label decides to put out another record, the debt is NOT wiped clean if the artist is unrecouped. This nasty little fact is called "cross collateralization" and what that means is that if the artist makes Record Number Two for the label, but hasn't recouped from Record Number One yet, the back owed funds come out of the sales from the new record before the artist ever sees a dime from the new record. So you can see how difficult it is to get ahead...which is how a label (meaning Def Jam) would explain why Slick Rick is unrecouped after all these years and 5 albums later.

As an example, let's say the artist has an unrecouped balance of $200,000 on the day his record drops (his advance and recording budget were $150,000 and $100,000 was spent on the video for the first single, half of which is recoupable--that's $200,000). Let's say the label did its job properly and had a good four month set up on the album (set up is the amount of work that goes into a project to build awareness prior to its release), and the artist has a strong buzz in the marketplace. So pre-orders are looking good (the amount of records the retail stores ask for, based on the anticipation of sales for the release) and the label decides to ship 300,000 units initially. If the label is in the Universal family, for example, and offers a sales discount because it's a new artist, a $16.98 anticipated retail price will position this CD at $10.78 wholesale. So the label can anticipate an income initially of $3,234,000 (300,000 x $10.78). And by the way, the label feels as though it has already lost $189,000, because the full retail selling price of $17.98 would have brought the label $3,423,000 (300,000 x $11.41) and since they discounted the record one dollar, they're already losing money. Here's the ugly side of label accounting and recouping: the artist's contract stipulates that the artist's share of the back end is 12 points, which really means 12% of the retail price (less a whole bunch of stupid provisions for breakage, free goods, return reserves, and container charges, producer royalties, etc) which leaves the artist about $1 a record. That means that the artist's share of the income from one record sold at $16.98 is roughly $1. Recouping means that the artist has to pay back the money spent out of his share (which is $1 a record sold). So in order to pay back that $200,000 spent prior to the record even coming out, 200,000 units must sell.

After the initial order is shipped, the artist incurs promotional costs which the label advances to him. The independent radio promoters, video promoters, tour support, remixes, etc, are all shared expenses that come out of the artist's money. So you can see how easy it is for an artist to remain unrecouped. If he finishes his project two or three singles deep, it's easy to come into the next project already at a high negative balance. The artist is artificially unrecouped, however, because the label has made back the money it spent off the top. Let's look at our above example. Let's say the label gets paid (meaning every retail store sells every copy with no returns) for every copy of the initial 300,000 units it shipped at $10.78 a copy. And let's also assume they did not spend any additional money to sell those records (also highly unlikely). The label has made $3,234,000. The label has also recouped $200,000 from the artist for the expenses, so that $3,234,000 is almost pure profit (except for the unrecouped costs of running their business and the overhead of running their business). Meanwhile, the artist has made only $100,000 (less the artist's overhead costs). According to my calculator, that's only 3% of the share.

And the massive screwjob doesn't stop there, not by far. Labels pay royalties on 90% of sales which assumes 10% breakage, a holdover from the vinyl days. From that amount is deducted the advances and recoupable expenses such as studio time, engineers, producer, etc. However, a distributer is often given 15-30% of his albums free on which there is no royalty. Overseas sales and sales to military stores are at a greatly reduced royalty. Some Talent may be more popular overseas than in America which means they see very little royalties. If albums are returned and then sold at discount, Talent receives virtually no royalty on those sales.

The Big Difference

[irix]

You can charge whatever the market will bear. So, game producers charge $50 (at least for a few months) for a new game.

How is that different from CDs? Well, the game producers didn't have to settle with the FTC because they were conspiring to inflate the price of CDs. Retailers wanted to sell them cheaper, but the middle-men wouldn't let them!

Even with the antitrust allegations settled, I wouldn't be surprised if this kind of crap still goes on. The RIAA members are effectively a monopoly on the music industry. As a result, the market isn't dictating what price a CD will go for, they are.