Slashdot Mirror
A Music Industry Case Study
spmkk writes "The NY Daily News has an uplifting look at the fate of a (hypothetical) 4-piece band "making it big" in today's RIAA-driven music industry. The condensed version: A band that sells 500,000 records for $8,490,000 gross ends up (after a few iterations of the new math) with $161,909 in their pocket. Split four ways, that's a whopping $40,477.25 each for a record that probably took close to a year to produce. And this is for a record that goes gold (as per the article, only 128 of some 30,000 records released in 2002 were so privileged). And I bet you wanted to be a rock star when you were a kid..."
"Blame it on piracy! Piracy, robble robble robble..." - Hillary Rosen
even when i was little i never wanted to be a rock star, there was something always seeming that much more special about being underground. yay for punk rock
Todays rock bands don't even get the supermodel girlfriends, they get goth chicks with piercing in 7 different places. And Heroine, Cocain and LSD aren't even socially acceptable among rock stars anymore! Bah!
To the problem with music, an insightful insider's look on this exact same subject with more analysis and perhaps less solid figures.
It is written by Steve Albini, who produced (besides a few bands you maybe might have heard of) a little no-name act called Nirvana. Everyone should read it. Of course, most people have, which is why i predict it will be linked at least three more times somewhere in this story discussion.
Really, who's to blame here? Is the lack of income by the individual the result of the large share the recording label takes?
No one said the music business was easy either, and we all know the success stories are certainly the far and away cases.
I wonder when they'll get it all fine tuned to the point where successful bands actually go bankrupt from attempting to make and sell an album :-P
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Disclaimer, I don't really understand the pop industry so this is probably obvious, but...
Why is the negotiating position of these bands so weak that they end up with such a shitty deal?
Is making music really that much harder than, say, being an ER technician? Why should musicians feel automatically entitled to millions of dollars for a year's work? "I played a guitar for a few hours in the studio, travelled around being treated like a god for a month, had sex with a few groupies, and I only earned $40,000." Cry me a river.
this lack of funds is what must be driving good bands to produce loads of crap filler all the time.
yeah, and first to make it to the bottom of the list when modded for being an idiot
Touring and playing live where most musicians really make their money.
Don't buy CD's from a record store. Don't pirate music - it only increases the popularity of the people you shouldn't be buying CD's from.
Go see live music. If you live in a city larger than 50,000 people, there should be a few bars that get live music. Go see them. If you like them, buy their music. No record company required. No inernet piracy required. Just good music.
If they wanna post stuff for free on the internet, more power to 'em. I'll download that. But I don't expect them to.
No, I haven't read the story yet :)
:)
I came across this the other week, it's a long but very good read. I honestly don't know how true it is, but I read it all anyway
It's the story of a guy who's mixing a band for a big label, and his trials and tribulations.
The Daily Adventures of Mixerman.
--- There isn't any problem that can't be solved by a small, low yield nuclear device, is there??
Get the hell out of the way.
And don't forget the artists. Attend local shows, support Independent acts. Buy merchandise, hell, mail a check, but find other ways to support your favorite musicians without giving a tithe to the RIAA. It can happen.
*looks at his warehouse full of pirated music* ill bet i get blamed for this :-(
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
That's where the real money is. Go on a multi-city tour and you make major bucks. Just look at Paul McCartney. He sold out each show and tickets were going for $200 +. That's some major cash.
Only oversight I saw was what the money from touring? Supposedly that is where a band makes all their money.
Also there is that little thing called the record contract. Most bands sign away the rights to their songs, so they don't own the original masters, the record companies do.
Someone forgot to mention that bands really make their money off of touring.
Veni, veni, veni.
That most rock bands make most of their money from playing shows. A concert that is sold out and has lots of merchandise sales could mean big profit for the band itself. As an added bonus, the band also meets many groupies eager to have sex with them all night. That's something you DON'T get from being a sys admin!
Stanley Feinbaum, professional journalist and master debater! God bless the USA!
2) Concerts - Depending on if they go on a small club tour or open for a bigger act (they only went gold, and it's their first album, so they're probably not ready to headline a major arena tour yet). If they do their own promotion and hit the club circuit, they're bound to make some money that way (and hit it with enough groupies to make the bus trips worthwhile).
3) Definite follow up deals - Since their first album went gold, they're definitely going to be making follow up albums. They can probably score a deal for two more albums, and as they've already had one hit album, they'll probably be able to get a better deal the next time.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
You can read her manifesto about this at http://www.holemusic.com/speech/
It's more in depth than this article and comes from someone who has been there, a good read..
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Oh bother.
still very accurate. once upon a time, i lived next door to one of the members of drivin 'n cryin, at the height of their popularity, and this is EXACTLY the situation they were in- and they were on the more artist-friendly island records.
it seems you either have to do it all yourself, and jam econo a la mike watt, or become huge. i'm glad more bands are realizing that jamming econo will enable them to keep going.
google for steve albini's math if you don't know what i'm referring to.
stored on computers from birth to the grave
being famous, that is! A musician in today's pop-industry has become a tool to promote various related products like clothes, jewelery, cars, food, etc. An "artist's" income is not restricted to record-sales alone, they are just a way to rate his popularity and as such his value.
Damn and I was all interested in posting/whoring it. This artcle (I even read it) is just a poor rewrite of albini's.
I think it's relatively common knowledge that even if an album "goes gold" or such it still isn't the primary source of income for a group. That's why most decent groups have things called concerts where they charge money to attend.
Hey, at least they have a job $40k is more than unemployment.
This makes me want to produce records, not make music. The music industry is caving in on itself, because of itself, nothing else.
But golly, where does all the money go if the artists don't get it? Gee, do you think the record industry is pocketing it?
Always remember that the record industry is a machine for making money for the executives there, and that they will do or say anything to bring themselves more money. They've reshaped popular culture to do it, and they're more than willing to turn every PC into a data gathering television to do it.
I guess I'm puzzled by the attitude displayed here on /.
On the one hand I'm told as a software developer it's not about the money. I should code just for the love of it!
On the other hand I'm supposed to be outraged because a rock star only makes $40k off a record deal?
And the rock star get's groupies, whereas the programmer just has pr0n.
In this case, each band member got 0.476% of the total gross of the sales of the album they worked on.
At my job, I get approximately 0.307% of the total gross of the sales of the software I work on.
I spent 21 years in school working to get my job (which wasn't cheap), and I've been working in my industry for 8 years.
I also work well over 40 hours a week, and I'm never, ever going to get a product endorsement deal. (They probably won't either, but if they do, it's extremely lucrative.)
I'm not saying they're not getting screwed, but I do want to try to keep things in perspective.
Education is the silver bullet.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
This is an argument for freeing music if I ever saw one. The biggest complaint with online music seemed to be that the "artist" never saw the money- but it doesn't look like they do anyway. Why not simply acknowledge that the times have changed, technology has changed and that things aren't what they once were. Musicians can make a living from performances and the love of the job. Same with programmers.
Synergies are basically awesome, and they're even better when you leverage them. -PA
sounds about as profitable, on average, as being a producer of a Linux distro.
In a 2000 speech to the Digital Hollywood online entertainment conference. It shows how a million dollar advance and a million copies sold can equal zero dollars.
People who disagree with you are not automatically evil, greedy, or stupid.
1) Radio monopolies. As has previously been discussed on /., this means that few bands ever get play time on the radio. In fact, radio today pretty much sucks unless you really like "Top 40" music. Now, there's a reason that Top 40 music used to be Top 40 -- it was popular (and usually fairly good) music. But that's not really the case anymore.
2) Paying artists. The Music Industry can whine all it wants about "artists getting money" this and "artists getting money that" but the truth of the matter is, Item No. 1 makes the music industry so competitive that, after all the marketing is finished, they can't really afford to give any money back to the artists. Artists in today's music industry are somewhat like the sweatshop girls who make Abercrombie and Fitch cargo pants (or Nike shoes, or you name it): they produce a product sold for an extreme premium but are poorly paid. Incidentally, the premium goes not directly into the pockets of the responsible corporation, but instead into marketing and promotion -- but only of the artists which the record company likes.
I firmly believe that we're about to experience a paradigm shift in entertainment delivery. The era of free music -- as it was in the 16, 17, and 1800s -- will once more be upon us. Recorded music will be free, and niche internet radio/community music sites will be responsible for the creation of new hits and pop sensatia (remember Michelle Branch? MP3.com, not the radio, was instrumental in her stardom). Artists will instead earn their money as they did 100 years ago: in concert. Ticket prices will skyrocket (and fans will pay), and probably move to an auction-dominated system -- which will equilibrize ticket prices. Some artists might be forced to get day jobs. But art, music, etc., they will all move onward...
Statistically speaking, there's a 99.998% chance that my IQ is higher than yours. Get over it.
Definitely worth using one of the two posts you're undoubtedly allowed per day.
I think all the bands should get together once their contracts end to formulate a joint force against the greed of the music companies.
The artists deserve a bigger cut. The music companies spend a great deal to promote a band and get their music played on the radio but ultimately they end up taking most of the profits and force the band into debt! They thrive on chewing up bands and spitting them out afterwards! There's a lot of talent out there but all they look for are the handful of one hit wonders they can exploit.
If the artists could bypass the music companies and create their own music company to promote the collective bands they would be much better off. Such a collective would have to be non-profit and funded by the musicians.
The collective would need to release music digitally for a reasonable fee. They could partner with large Internet players that can handle the bandwidth. CD's can indeed be produced rather cheaply. The need for studios to record the CD's is not as necessary as it once was. I've heard CD's produced in sound altered homes and accoustically sound structures that is as good as the professional studios. There is no need to pay thousands a day to record an album!
Unfortunately, most bands are currently under contract with the music companies and breaking their contract would open them up to legal attack.
The artists should not be put into debt when the music company makes 8 million in profits, spends 2 in promotion and keeps the remaining 6 million for themselves. Allowing only a piddly sum to the artists. No wonder the artists have to tour to make any money!
I was in bands. For many years. Some of my good friends were in bands with deals for many years.
95% of the time, you LOSE money on the road. Remember, you don't get to keep all that money. You have to pay for food, gas, roadies, hotels, the inevitable replacement gear (when yours breaks, is stolen, or left in Missouri by the drunk-ass drummer).
And that's assuming the venue owner decides to pay you at ALL, and not pull the ol' "how about we give you food and beer?" switcheroo.
Often you don't get to sell CDs at your shows (often due to contractual issues). In many cases, the merchandising company makes ALL the money on your T-shirts, buttons, etc. (the band gets about 5% of "profit").
If you're some huge band like Creed, yeah, you can make major cash. But even 1 or 2 levels down, you lose money. You have to have insurance, you have to pay the venue, you have to hire security guards...the list goes on and on.
SUCCESSFUL bands make money on the road. But most bands lose it. And lots of it. In the "old days" (pre-internet), everyone understood that you LOST money on the road, but it served to promote ALBUM sales.
Don't know where this myth got started about it being the other way around.
I think these figures are pretty conservative as to the amount of money that bands can make from online sales. I would much rather do business in this way than to do it the RIAA's way. And yes, this does nothing to touch the piracy issue, but we all know that whole Linux distros are freely available for download on the Internet; and this hasn't ruined Linux, has it?
Always look on the briight side of life! (whistle, whistle)
A major record label has a lot of resources that a musician needs to "make it big". They have the capital that is needed to produce albums.
Each album can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to record. Each music video also costs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Radio stations must be paid off to get a band's singles in the rotation. And the album has to be manufactured, which costs money as well. Then the album must be distributed, which costs money and requires a business relationship that labels have and most musicians do not.
There are dozens of bands in every city around the world that want to make it, but only a handful of major labels. This is why bands get the short end of the stick.
its about the chicks
-pM
And I bet you wanted to be a rock star when you were a kid.
Rock Star? I always dreamed of working for the RIAA. I started young, charging my first royalty at the age of six. One day I hope to have a global surcharge named after me. That would be the ultimate bragging right.
there should be a few bars that get live music
In the United States, the option of seeing a live musical performance in an establishment that serves more alcoholic beverages than food is available only to those people who have lived outside a womb for at least 662,774,400 seconds. Virtually no high school student qualifies, and neither do more than half of all undergraduate college students.
What do you recommend for those people who aren't 21 yet?
And how much do those live bands have to pay their songwriters?
Will I retire or break 10K?
...then why are musicians so eager to sign? This sounds like another example of people regarding the situation as crisis rather than opportunity. RIAA exploits musicians? Great! That gives you the perfect opportunity to build a distribution network that doesn't exploit musicians. You will even earn a fair profit for yourself. Can't do it? Well then, I guess it turns out that the RIAA has the best business model after all, sucky though it may be.
Of course it's so much easier to whine, I doubt anybody will ever topple the RIAA in a way that's truly creative and fair to all parties. Why innovate when you can legislate?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I had an idea a while back for a sort of 'aggregated patronage' for new
music: create a nonprofit org that runs a 'community' website. Interested
'patrons' would pay a small fee (say $5/month) to be a member. Bands upload
their MP3's for free, and members get to download, comment on, and rate the
songs. At the end of every month, the band that had the highest rated song
would be given the month's kitty: i.e. all the membership fees for that
month, minus a small amount for hosting costs, so the whole thing is
self-sufficient. With only a little over 1000 members at $5 a head, such a
site would be giving out a $5000 cash prize to a band every month, and I can
tell you as someone who's been there that this is usually more than even a
really decent local band would otherwise make every month. Of course this
also helps those artists like the techno types who don't get concert sales
because they don't really play out 'live'.
Of course, bands/musicians would love such a thing, why not upload your
stuff and get it in the running - you'll get exposure and feedback in any
case and you may just make some nice cash. The question is whether or not
you could get enough 'patrons' interested. There are some incentives tho -
like only members can download the music that's been put up there. Also,
while the critiques and ratings could be open to the nonpaying public, you
would of course have to be a member to actually write reviews and rate the
music. This might appeal immensely to all those armchair music critics out
there. Another source of members would of course be those bands who have
entered telling all their friends to sign up so they can vote them up. While
there's some potential for abuse there, it would be nice if every band had
around the same number of supporters signing up, meaning the kitty gets
bigger but the ultimate winner for the month is actually decided by a large
number (hopefully) of 'undecided' members, i.e. those who have signed up to
listen to and patronize new music rather than to support a particular band.
Another incentive could be to mandate that the winner release the winning
song under some sort of 'open-source' music license in exchange for the
cash. This would be an incentive insofar as the Slashdot types (myself
included) would like the idea of supporting the increase in the overall
supply of 'free' music, while also helping out those bands that are
open-minded enough to consider releasing their tunes that way.
Of course, if there is interest on the 'patron' side, and enough people sign
up, the kitty could eventually get large enough to be split into seperate
'genre' prizes, which makes more sense: Your underground hiphop head may
want to listen to, rate and award the latest dope offerings without having
much interest in doing the same for the latest country-rock ditties. Ditto
for death-metal heads vs. bubblegum pop, etc. Having a general 'all takers'
kitty only makes sense in the beginning when there's fewer patrons and thus
less patronage to go around. Of course, since the site software would be OSS
(GPL'd, ideally), there would be no reason that those who aren't happy with
the way the group votes couldn't start their own site, targeted to people
who are closer to their own musical tastes.
Actually, I wanted to be Liberace. I never made it.
Best Buy can have you arrested
Being I spend my first lifetime in the music business this isn't telling the whole story. They are not factoring in money from playing live. Also you know getting into the music business that you don't make a much of money in the early years of band. It take years for a band of gigging and recording to become the "hot new band".
Also there aren't "bands" these days mainly due to economics, everything is "projects" these days. A player will be juggling schedules rehearsing and playing multiple projects and doing side gigs to pay bills, hoping one of these projects gets signed, records, and tours. It's sad that players today don't know what it was like to be a band. To grow together musically, the family of band members and supporters. I still have a lot of friends in the business and it is way to commericial these days.
The supply is high (the number of folks that want to sign a deal) and the demand (from the record label's point of view) is low. That is, the record label will be happy to just sign a few new folks per year, a tiny percentage of the supply. Therefore it makes sense that these folks will get paid a shitty wage.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
They should release music the same way software should be released: for FREE, with no restrictions and no royalties. That way, they will make what a GPL programmer makes on every copy of his (or her) software. To paraphrase RMS, "Music wants to be free".
If you are a musician and want to get paid, you can always play music as a "service", eg, at weddings, bar mitzvahs, and funerals. Music should be a service industry, not a product industry. Or maybe there could be a "Musician's Tax", where the government doles out money to people who play music. Read the GNU Manifesto by Richard Stallman for more details.
And I bet you wanted to be a rock star when you were a kid...
And I wanted to be a software engineer....
then why are musicians so eager to sign?
Performing musicians sign contracts with record labels because the musicians do not understand the contracts. Musicians sign contracts that they do not understand because the A&R agent makes a limited time offer that expires once the agent walks out the door. Thus, if the musicians go to an attorney to have the contract explained, the offer will expire.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Just keep an eye on the exits...
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Ho ! and you think that RIAA administratives buy their music ?
A well managed and promoted tour can make a band a lot more money than records these days. I think our focus on recordings rather than showmanship and musicianship in our culture is what causes talentless hacks with lotsa money and technology to make it big. More and more musicians I know are glad to embrace their lives as part of the "minstrel class" and give up on selling obscene quantities of records.
Works for me.
_nfotxn
So tell me. If even gold selling artists take home so little coin, how come there are so many rappers and other artists on MTV Cribs that I ain't ever heard of that are showing off some serious bling-bling from green they made selling CDs?
The things add up until the $5,094,000 bit. After that everything is fishy and foggy and nothing adds up. What the heck is that bit about 9.99 + 800 thousand something about? Where do those 3.5 million come from? Sorry, find someone who knows how to use a pocket calculator and perhaps we can see some convincing arguent.
Other than that, artists are reaped off, is that news?
--
No Account, thanks
1 album @ $7.00 x 500000 downloads = $3,500,000
1 lawsuit from a songwriter whose publisher convinces a judge that your band stole his song = -$500,000. Even musicians aren't allowed to pirate, even if they don't know they're pirating.
Will I retire or break 10K?
This shit happens whenever there is a "middleman".
How is the recording artists' story any different from that of techies? The contracting companies pim^H^H^Hcontracting techies to big companies while taking a big share of the billing rate exactly do the same.
Even more eerie similarities... just as the music industry churns out whatever is available to them and package it as "the best of the breed", these guys also package whatever people they can get and project them as the best of the breed.
The notable difference is that the music bands get screwed by the recording companies AND the groupies, whereas the techies get screwed only by the contracting company alone.
S
I put out a record on a major label recently. Just finished a sold out tour of the west coast a week or two ago.
I have these thoughts:
1. The article is totally accurate.
2. Anybody who thinks successful musicians make it back in touring or merchandise is A COMPLETE IGNORANT IDIOT. Once you get close to going gold this might be true, but as the article pointed out, this happens to 138 of 30,0000 records.
3. My sold out tour of the west coast was the first profitable tour in almost a decade of touring. I made $80 a day once the profits were tabulated.
4. Merchandise sales are not major sources of revenue, but they help stem the bleeding. Less then half of that $80/day was from merchandise.
5. One word: EXPENSES. It's not just the money you get. It's also the money you pay out. And touring is expensive. Don't be one of those assholes who says "ah but the bands make it back from tours and merchandise"
6. A shitty sys-admin can do $30-40k a year.
7. A top notch musician who has practiced most of their life and given countless sacrifices for their job and has gone gold will do about the same.
8. A top notch musician who hasn't gone gold will be broke.
9. A shitty musician will be in debt.
10. Mama don't let your baby's grow up to be musicinas.
The collective would need to release music digitally for a reasonable fee.
Such "reasonable fee" would need to include at least eight cents per track to pay the songwriter, correct?
Will I retire or break 10K?
If you do not like the way a business conducts itself, then don't patronize the business.
That means if the entertainment industry cheeses you off, then you quit buying CDs, DVDs and stop listening to music radio. You then tell your friends why they should be doing the same thing.
Consumers in this country hold the purse strings. Stop complaining and vote with your dollars.
This also works for those of you upset over the outsourcing of employment to other countries. TELL those companies why you refuse to do business with them each and every time they approach you for your hard earned dollar.
Remember, you hold the purse strings. Of course, it's easier to moan about it on Slashdot and exchange goatse trolls rather than taking a stand on an issue in which you believe. I mean, you *can't* possibly live without your tunes, right?
There's no law against starting your own label
Yes there is. If you're not an established label, how are you going to survive lawsuits from songwriters who claim that your recording artists plagiarized their songs?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Umm, there was recorded music in the 1600's? Wow!
(sorry, couldn't resist, please mod me down as a smartass.)
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Bands do not make big money touring.
Bands do not make big money touring.
Sure, they make a living sometimes, but most of the time they don't.
Band's tour for two reasons: They love to play music, and they want to promote the sales of their albums.
Tickets cost $200 sometimes because people are willing to pay it. If you can sellout a show at $20/ticket, then why not charge $30 (etc. etc.) and it grows from their. The money just gets spent making the show bigger, brighter, and louder.
The costs for putting on a concert are staggering. Just the local labor alone can be as much as $10,000 (or more) for an event. It costs $2/mile/truck to send the show down the road. Each truck. Each bus.
Why do you think some bands accept corporate sponsorship for their tours? Many (well-known) bands would lose money trying to tour if they didn't have the sponsorship money.
Merchandising? By the time the venue gets their 20%; the sales company gets their cut; the designers, manufacturers, etc. get their cut, there isn't much left for the band.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
I think that any band that signs up for a recording contract is committing suicide. How come so many bands won't think outside of the limited, furmula-based, corrupt BOX of expensive studio time, expensive post production, expensive MTV videos, expensive kickbacks to radio stations, expensive lame coreography, on-stage fireworks, etc. etc?
Compared to publishing your own books, quality recording, mastering and pressing 1,000 CDs or so to start is extremely cheap. Literally chicken feed. We've been enabled by computer tech which should have put the big studios out of business by now. Distribution is widely available compared to what the struggling self-publishing author faces in the book industry.
Maybe it is simply a question of aesthetics, but I'd rather listen to a straight-on live/studio without stupid 'major label' sound effects and extreme overdub overlayed. A good band can make good money selling their CDs at concerts, websites and through the many distributors. Musicians must think outside the box and drop the MTV videos and fake-sounding, expensive post production.
Out of the box means a band sells a high-quality recording of them performing their music. No record company is needed for something so simple. Courtney Love finally got free from her record contract, didn't she?
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
What's wrong with the music companies taking the cost of touring, recording, distribution and advertising from the revenue earned by an act? How else are they supposed to pay for it? It's a business, not a donation to the arts/
Musicians sign those contracts because they want to make money. What's left over after all the costs are paid is profit. Don't confuse that with the revenue generated by product sales.
People need to stop idealizing musicians and demonizing the recoding industry. They exist in a symbiotic relationship because both want to make money.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Heck, who was the clown for the Bay City Rollers, who got busted for child porn in England? At the time of his arrest, he was flying bedpans on the night shift in a rural hospital.
The folks who get rich are the songwriters who hang on to their music rights, the session musicians, and some producers.
An old timer like David Gates, who's in his early 60s and has his health and sanity, hung on to his music, is rich. The Wrecking Crew (Blaine, Osborn, Knechtel) is rich. Patsy Cline and LeeAnn Rimes were screwed out of their earnings.
Leon Russell did OK.
The guy who did Everyday People (the Toyota ad, Smokey Robinson?) is a crack whore living in the gutter. Michael Jackson owns the rights to EP, earned millions from Toyota, gave the songwriter zip.
It's a cruel business.
The thing that this, and most of, these articles leave out, is that most musicians make their money off of PUBLISHING ROYALITIES for their songs, not RECORD ROYALITIES from sales of their albums. A very crucial step was left out from the equation. There are also other sources of revenue that can be found. This article is not nearly a full picture of recording revenues.
They actually got paid $1.2 million. If they could find a cheaper way to operate (get rid of the manager, produce the record themselves, not spend $200K on studio time, pay their lawyer a flat fee instead of a percentage, etc.) they could keep the $1.2 million. Their lawyer should also have negotiated that the royalty was on the retail gross, rather than any sort of net. The royalty should reflect the popularity of the music directly, and not any machinations of the production process.
And if I wasn't hungry, I'd show you how the newspaper managed to double-count for some of the money, and lose some elsewhere, but it'd take a spreadsheet.
Bottom line, rock stars are dumb for thinking they're only making $40K on a gold record.
I've said it many times, and I completely support this effort (I practice what I preach, too). Because it's all about money, money is the only thing that will affect any real change. The absence of money (in the form of revenue) will be the only real influence that will change the current situation. I wouldn't worry about supporting your favorite artist, because all you're really doing when you buy RIAA-backed music is supporting their crack dependency (the reference to crack is a reference to the RIAA itself). Stop the cycle. Stop buying, and stop pirating. Support local shows and local distribution.
once upon a time, i lived next door to one of the members of drivin 'n cryin
If you see Kevin,tell that bastard to gimme my water bong back. Well, I should never have trusted him anyway! You know how marginal rock stars can be.I guess I am just scarred but smarter....
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Recently on slash we had an
article
about why nerds are unpopular. My super duper +5
comment
basically made the argument that there was two kinds of nerds, social butterfly
nerds, and the social outcast nerds. Read my comment for the whole
explaination..
The music industry is run by the popular crowd for the popular crowd.
Musical talent is irrelevant because of all the studio mixing that can be done
these days. Basically anyone can sound like what the RIAA can put out.
The RIAA is more than just records though, they are the pep rally at your high
school, they take the people who are most outrageous, ill tempered, and idiotic
and put them on display as a way of saying WTF is a matter with you, if this
idiot can be a star so can anyone!
That's the problem though, it's not just popularity that makes something
good it's talent, hard work and dedication that makes it good. For the last
100 years American society has downplayed quality over popularity in everything.
Now things are changing, the nerds are rising up against their oppressors,
and they are scared they are losing their power. Through a few lines of code, we
have basically destroyed their industry.
The next 100 years of music is going to look radically different than the
last 100 years. Music distribution will DIE. Music stores will die,
everything that was once a huge industry for popular bullies on campus is
useless now, because when it comes down to it, do you want a stack of 100 cd's?
Or would you rather have them all on 6.5 gigs of hard drive space that can fit
in a shirt pocket?
If you claim to love what you do money becomes irrelevant. I don't
make what I used to in tech, but I love it so much that doesn't matter.
Despite getting paid next to nothing to be a webmaster, IT guy to 2 different
jobs, it's what I love doing, so I got a 3rd job as a bouncer on Friday nights.
And if you're truly a musician, money isn't what it's all about. It's about
hanging out with your buddies or by yourself, maybe taking bonghits and trying
to find some new sound out of your instrument. Personally, i'm not a musician,
but working for zero magazine, I know plenty of them, they take side jobs to pay
for what they love. I know guys that will sit there practicing their
guitars for 5 hours a night until their fingers turn into hamburger.
No it's not fair what the record industry is doing to the musicians. But like
I said in the title of this post, we're going through the revenge of the nerds
period in human society now, prepare for the uprising of the minds has begun.
...at Discipline Global Mobile. Fripp et. al. has plenty to say about the "industry" and how actually wound up in the hole even when Crimso was (and still is) one of the world's most progressive virtuoso combos. I say death to the RIAA and all the conventional rip-off organs of the "music industry."
--- WWSD? What Would Strider Do?
The hottest cats in New York can't get gigs anymore. It doesn't help that Broadway producers are trying to reduce the number of music jobs by replacing live musicians with "virtual bands." Visit Save Live Broadway.
It doesn't matter if you play in night clubs or Carnegie hall -- this is a tough time for musicians.
There is a great deal of music that just doesn't fit in a small performance hall. The stuff that I like is fringe, and most of it has 20+ individual performers per disc.
It's great when a musical arrangement can fit within the constraints of a bar, but a lot can't.
I'm trying to think of another industry where the employees are given loans or are required to make initial investments and usually end up screwed. Hmmm... where else does this happen... In what other industry are the guys on the bottom so braindead they participate even though it's common knowlege they'll get the shaft?
Amway? Herbal Life? Yeah.
This nation is capitalist and if you are too stupid to ensure you are properly compensated for your efforts, you are giving work away for free. In this case the fools are giving it to record labels, and that's fine with me. When I buy something it's because I'm paying what it's worth too me. If the wrong people profit, too fricken bad... I still get what I want.
And you can't say "well people buy crappy music, thereby supporting an artificial economy perpetuated by marketing!!!" IF PEOPLE BUY SOMETHING THERE IS A MARKET FOR IT GOD DAMN IT! And if under the current system no music is produced that anyone wants, the system wont continue existing, now will it? Theres a reason labels continue to profit and it has nothing to do with them being bastards. Nearly everyone acts selfishly. The industry produces a product people apparently want and the competition to be an employee is so intense they aren't obligated to pay fairly.
Labels are trying some legislative things to prop themselves up (and they have the right to do so), but democracy has a solution for that: dont vote for the industry's lackies. And if they still win then the people seem to want the industry supported by laws. If you dont like it, too bad.
Artists never make money from the album. Nothing has changed. It's their merch, their ads, and their concerts
I know one barely platinum band that got paid $80,000 to play one concert. After payouts and taxes they each left with about $6,000 for ONE NIGHT.
also, when a band sells a lot of albums (500k, 1m etc), they get more money from the label and publishing (where most of the money is)
On the other side of the coin.. how many artists actually do a lot of commercials?? I am sure there is a rather large majority who do not get the lucrative sponorship deals.
any live band who has songwriters outside the band (aside from the occasional cover) should only be seen at weddings or graduations.
It's possible to having songwriters outside the band without knowing it, if the songwriters inside the band unconsciously plagiarize a popular song. So how can a live band prevent itself from inadvertently having songwriters outside the band?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Because a few companys control distribution and collude with each other to keep these deals so unfairly slanted towards them. The also conspire with each other to fix prices artifically high. If the consumer, who has a complete choice of buy the music or not, can't deal with the RIAA cartel, why would you expect a band that has to choose between take their deal, starve, or get out of the industry, can?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Go see live music. If you live in a city larger than 50,000 people, there should be a few bars that get live music. Go see them. If you like them, buy their music. No record company required. No inernet piracy required. Just good music.
Thanks to the joys of deregulated radio...
Clear Channel owns the air time.
Clear Channel owns the play lists.
Clear Channel owns the concert venues.
Clear Channel owns the concert promotion.
Clear Channel owns the ticketing companies.
So, unless you want to play in a bus shelter, unadvertised, playing songs that no one has ever heard of, guess who makes all the money?
Why do you think all those radio stations that sound exactly the same as each other have exactly the same bland "Front Row Seats!" competitions, the same bland "Sold Out Seats!" competitions and the same bland DJs who're supposedly on "Hard Rock" stations giving out tickets to go and see Britney Spears with them at the same three venues as every other gig you ever hear about? Clear Channel owns the entire chain from start to finish, nationwide. Even when there is a chink in their defence, the artists all know damn well that if they dodge Clear Channel in one city, they'll be blacklisted from every other one across the nation.
Everyone criticises the RIAA on slashdot. After all, they're the evil monopolies, making all the money at the artists' expense. The problem is, to get their product out, they have to deal with a monopoly. I'm not defending them but they're also not making money hand over fist either - not because of piracy but because Clear Channel squeezes every last penny out of music, shoe-horning it in to an easy to sell, nationwide generic sludge. Bad as the RIAA are, perhaps it's worth going after the real culprits.
Yes, I somehow don't understand why "artists" get away with claiming that the music or books they create are not "work for hire", while software development pretty much always is considered that, no matter how innovative it may be. The attitude by many musicians, visual artists, and writers that they are "the creative people", while software professionals are "just engineers" is also kind of annoying. But maybe the solution to that is for software professionals to become more vocal.
... even if the entire music _industry_ goes bankrupt and dies, people will still be creative and make new music. I might not even be such a bad idea if the CD-labels did go down, as it might make way for something new (or something old, like the already mentioned music download services).
if you make money entertaining people you are selling out. - it's that simple.
if you play music just to play music then you are an artist.
if you play music just to play music and happen to make some money you are a lucky artist.
in response to a gold album making ~$one-whatever-thousand, you must remember that the album sales are not the only contributer to the bands income. there are also concert ticket sales, t-shirt sales ect...
tho bottom line remains that the music is what matters, but if money is that big an issue, than drop the labels alltogether and distro. your tunes on the web... no going gold to repay the label, and ticket ect... sales are all gravy.
In the 21st century, no successful business model will be constructed based on the sale of recorded music for any price -- without the widespread implementation of DRM technologies which will surely be rejected by the body politic. If DRM isn't rejected, well then, it's a whole new ball game...
Statistically speaking, there's a 99.998% chance that my IQ is higher than yours. Get over it.
This is a thought that's been running around in my mind for quite a bit, and it might be considered apropriate in this discussion (while a tangent to the actual story).
/Ex
I was discussing with a musician friend of mine the situation with the radio industry, and how musicians can't make a living as a musician these days. We were thinking of ways that we could get the music we want, and support the acts without the acts being impoverished.
Note: This should be seen as "when the RIAA finally goes away, Payola is done for, and music adverts are limited to when/where they're playing", in other words, no time soon.
What I came up with, was a basically stock system. This is very rough, I've no money to implement it, so I didn't do any research, thus I'll be using round numbers for it.
The overall company would be responsible for basically nothing, except keeping cds on the shelves, and would be paid a pittance per cd (5-10%, but for taking such a little cut, they would have no sunk costs (besides immaterial expenses, paperwork and button mashers time).
Okay, say it will cost a group $100k (probably a gross underestimation) to live comfortably for 9 months, and create a CD (including a first limited run of cds, enough to pay back all the "stockholders" if the cds sell). Group A is fairly popular, but is still mostly poor, so they get in the system. THey release 10k $10 stock, and it goes onto a "musicians stock exchange", or I guess a futures market is more apt). They then sell however many shares of stock they want/can. Each piece of stock is equivalent to a percentage of the proceeds for the album (minus touring, the musician should keep that). Thus, if they sell 100% of their shares, they get no profit from the cd, *EXCEPT* name recognition, increasing their fan base, and having a cd under their belt, and have been fed/clothed for 9 months.
Group B is well off, so they can put out a record with very little or no stock sold in it --keeping 100% of the proceeds after the supplier and resellers take a big wet bite out of it. In reality, they'll probably recieve 5-6 dollars per cd, possibly more, if it's sold mainly through a website run from the umbrella company.
Group C is willing to live a little less well, and do the cd a little faster, so they manage to cut their living expenses in half. Perhaps they get a day job, or make money playing gigs. the since all these groups are the same size, they are all expected to have the same amount of living expenses, thus they all require $100k of capital.
In order to cut down on fraud, everyone is required to use the umbrella company's recording studio, so this band sells $50,000 to cover cd creation costs, and a pittance to live on (50% of the stock from the above groups) THey then recieve 50% of the net proceeds, and whoever put up the money for the other half would get the rest.
I could imagine groups giving away a cd with two shares of stock, or a t-shirt with 4 shares of stock, or something like that. It would mean that fans would have a reason to try and get other people to like the music of the bands they support, it would mean more money per cd going to the ones supporting the arts, rather than marketing and promotions-- hell, 50k rabid fans are much better than any marketing plan ever devised.
The copyrights would lay with the "shareholders", thus, if the shareholders want to give away the mp3s free, more power to them. The band would be given unrestricted rights to play and re-make songs, so long as they pay a percentage of the proceeds of any new cd back to the group backing the original cd (think punk bands that put out 12 cds and only have 80 unique songs)
Okay, you can mod me down for being off topic now, I'm just glad you got to this point.
This is NEW? Chicago producer Steve Albini and Front person for Hole, Courtney Love both did this analysis years ago! To quote Steve: "What each band member made is about what they would have made working at Dunkin Donuts".
Sales from an album: $3 Million
Amount given to entire band: $100,000
Amount given to band member: $40,000
Ability to have sex with tons of hot chicks whenever you want: Priceless!
So what is the problem?
Writing royalties: the 15% deal doesn't include writing royalties. If you are a musician then you probably know that the big money comes from royalties (radio play, selling rights for advertising, etc.). That is why copyrights are important to artists. In this hypothetical deal I doubt the band would sign away their ownership; if they did then they are probably idiots. There are plenty of previous examples to learn this lesson from (Bruce Springsteen, the Beatles). In a few cases it is worthwhile - to get a song recorded by Celine Dion the writer must give up 50% of the royalties, but there is almost a guarantee of sales, so it can be a winning concession. Just ask Dan Hill, writer of "sometimes when we touch"
"The record company keeps the packaging and "free goods" funds. After collecting a $9.99 wholesale price, it also reaps an additional $829,900." The article gives the impression that the record company is keeping all this money, but it is going to pay for manufacturing, distribution, advertising, rent and salaries, all the same costs a computer company has, or a software company, or a fast-food company. If a group of musicians wants to take on all these responsibilites and release their product themselves, they can do it, and many have, successfully. (Barenaked Ladies - who moved on to working with a major record company)
Live Performances: for an up and coming band, performing is simply advertising, so touring is not a typically big a money-maker, but if well managed then it can bring in some money. The bigger the band is then the more likely they are making money performing.
The Benefits of Being Self-Employed: If these hypothetical guys are smart then they have an accountant writing off everything under the sun as an expense and they aren't paying much tax.
I've already read a huge number of replies ranting about the greedy music industry. While I agree that there are plenty of creeps and dick-wads involved, that goes for the musicians too, and as I mentioned we are talking about a business, which exists to make money. Yes, they have made and do make bad business decisions, but all areas of business do. Anyways, calling the companies greedy for charging too much for music is really calling the kettle black. They are not witholding air, water or food. It is just pop music, and insisting that you have some sort of basic human right to those recordings regardless of any investment made by anyone else, that is greedy. You don't need it; you want it.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
pyrotechnics!!!!
*ducks*
http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html
The "fair use" exemption to (U.S.) copyright law was created to allow things such as commentary, parody, news reporting, research and education about copyrighted works without the permission of the author. That's important so that copyright law doesn't block your freedom to express your own works -- only the ability to express other people's. Intent, and damage to the commercial value of the work are important considerations. Are you reproducing an article from the New York Times because you needed to in order to criticise the quality of the New York Times, or because you couldn't find time to write your own story, or didn't want your readers to have to register at the New York Times web site? The first is probably fair use, the others probably aren't.
Fair use is usually a short excerpt and almost always attributed. (One should not use more of the work than is necessary to make the commentary.) It should not harm the commercial value of the work -- in the sense of people no longer needing to buy it (which is another reason why reproduction of the entire work is a problem.)
Note that most inclusion of text in Usenet followups is for commentary and reply, and it doesn't damage the commercial value of the original posting (if it has any) and as such it is fair use. Fair use isn't an exact doctrine, either. The court decides if the right to comment overrides the copyright on an individual basis in each case. There have been cases that go beyond the bounds of what I say above, but in general they don't apply to the typical net misclaim of fair use.
The "fair use" concept varies from country to country, and has different names (such as "fair dealing" in Canada) and other limitations outside the USA.
They also make a small cut off of merchandising, concerts, random junk, paid appearances.... etc..
Still doesn't add up to much though.
It's illegal to "pay off" a radio station in exchange for airplay. It's called "payola" and the record companies would NEVER think of doing something illegal.
Though my wife was a music director for several years and I know that it happens all the time.
Interesting double standard, heh? Don't copy our music, but somehow's it's OK for the record companies to break the law to get that music played.
Admittedly, a gray area, but an interesting one...
?SYNTAX ERROR IN SIG
READY.
So what if the record company takes a fortune? The band AGREES to this. They sign a CONTRACT. So, unless the band is made up of all illiterate people who also can't afford a lawyer to read it for them, who cares? That's what a contract is. It's an agreement. If they don't like it, they shouldn't sign it. I've never heard of a band being forced to sign a contract under duress, and if they do, the contract is null and void.
I don't mean to stray this thread back to /.'s topic of geekiness, but the exact same statement can be made about coding.
I learned to code BASIC at 8, and started releasing software to the public 4 years ago when I was twelve. Along the way I first dumped DOS, then BASIC, and finally Windows, but I still code just because it is fun.
Over the summer I tried "selling out" by taking a summer job in Java programming. It was still fun; I was still programming. But it wasn't the same and I didn't continue on over the summer.
I still plan to go into programming for a career, but hopefully for some OSS project rather than just for profit.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I don't know that I have ever seen a 'rock star' driving a really nice car. You know who I see with lots of money? Rap artists. Anyone care to venture a guess why there are rap artists that make a shit load of money?
They have their own labels! Death row, murder inc, I could go on and on. These guys were smarter then whitey from the get-go. They produced their own music, and sold it themselves. New artists get picked up by these labels and make ridiculous amounts of money because these labels know how easy it is to market these albums. All you need to do is have a video filled with hot chicks and some Bling, have music that doesnt suck(Doesn't have to be good, Ja Rule sucks heavy fucking ass and is really rich), and the white MTV watching yuppie kids will go out and buy that album in droves.
There is no shortage of smaller record labels that will sign interesting groups. If not, create your own label! Swollen Members did it with Battle Ax records, and the beastie boys eventually came out with Grand Royal as a record company. Hello Nasty sold a shitload of albums, and wasn't promoted by RIAA tools.
If more people followed this business scheme (Basically invented by Puff Daddy and Russel Simmons) when they went for a recording contract, they'd be rich. (See Bow Wow, but it helps that Snoop Dogg was in his corner.)
I don't feel sorry for Idiot Band A when they sign with Mega Asshole Company B, without taking into account whats going on. That's just stupid business practice.
If you want to take the risks, produce your own album. Borrowing someone else's money without providing them with collateral in case you fail is expensive. Go figure.
What percentage the artists (or you) make of the gross is completely irrelevant unless they or you signed a contract based on gross sales.
Why is the negotiating position of these bands so weak that they end up with such a shitty deal?
Negotiating strength is dictated in large part by your BATNA. (Best Alternative To the Negotiated Agreement - no I didn't make that up, it's a standard term in negotiation) If you have other options besides the one offered to you, you have a strong BATNA and have little reason to compromise.
In this case the record labels have literally thousands of bands who would dearly love to have a record deal, but there are only a few record labels. (and they essentially collude) No one else has the same marketing reach so the labels. If one band realizes their deal is shitty, the label doesn't care because there are a thousand other bands out there. The labels have a strong BATNA.
This is the same reason why Wal*Mart can get better prices on merchandise than your local mom-n-pop store. Wal*Mart has thousands of vendors (none of whom are more than 2% of sales) who would love to sell through Wal*Mart. But since Wal*Mart has other vendors they have a strong BATNA. Chosing an alternative vendor doesn't really hurt them.
I hardly think borrowing a chord progression or snippet of melody counts as copyright infringement
The case I refer to is Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music . George Harrison lost over copying eight notes. This and other music copyright infringement cases can be found at Columbia Law Library.
Will I retire or break 10K?
There was free music back then. Not if you went to a concert, but if you had any friends or neighbors, there was plenty of free music. Haven't you ever heard of barn dances? They didn't charge anyone, they just used someone's barn, and a few farmers would play the fiddle.
City dwellers would play the piano in their parlor. That's what the room was for--entertaining guests. Music was part of the entertainment. They usually didn't hire anyone, because so many people knew how to play musical instruments. Did you think they went to see movies or watched tv? Those didn't exist.
Television, movies and recorded music has made it so very few try to learn how to entertain because someone else does it for them. Entertainment has become a niche market. There are people who want to entertain (for free), but pre-internet they didn't have any way to distribute their recordings to the masses. Just look for the stories, movies (not much of this, but wait until real broadband comes alive), and music--there is a lot of it out their. Yes, most of it is not polished (I think only superficial people really care about that anyway). Yes, lots of the stories and movies are fan based fiction, so the characters are not compeletely original, but most of the story is. If you call what they do "stealing", then Disney and most of the parody producers belong in jail for a long, long time.
its a good thing that musicians make their money by touring
If the average rock star only made $40,000 per album, MTV's "Cribs" wouldn't exist. Most bands get their money from booking sold out tours. Think about Phish. Out of like 15 albums, not a single one has gone gold, but they're still filthy rich because they put on a damned good show.
All these comments claim that the band members are idiots who sign a contract without knowing what's in it. But in the (fake) example in the article, they paid over $100,000 to a lawyer who got them the contract!
How do you explain how they got into such a terrible contract if they paid that much money to their lawyer? This isn't a case of some greenhorns who didn't know anything about what they were signing. They had a very expensive lawyer to advise them. Did the lawyer simply shirk his business ethics? Did he fail to protect his clients' interest?
Or, more likely, is this just a bogus example whose numbers don't add up, intended to stir up anger at the "evil" record companies?
not to say that bands shouldn't make more money from their albums, but they also make money touring. And i think bands are making more money touring these days because ticket prices are up and because of musician run fan clubs selling their own tickets with convenience fees...
http://www.vanillaafro.com - take me seriously and I will shoot you
RIAA = Rip-off Industry Association Assholes
HDGary secures my bank
Damn, deja vu.
Well, I guess that's corroboration. B)
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
To make any real money, you gotta tour. That's where the actual money gets made for an average band. I remember reading an interview with CC Deville of Poison where he says he only got 20K out of their first major album.
This space for rent.
Clear Channel does make a fortune promoting shows, but Live music is still where musicians make their money, not record sales. If you buy a $20 ticket, $10 goes to promotion, tickets and expenses, and $10 goes to the band.
Pretty much any live show ticket is split 50-50, with the venue paying expenses out of their half (musicians always pay record companies out of their tiny percentage). Keep in mind that touring musicians have a expenses for things such as roadies, sound engineer(s) and promoter(s), but usually those jobs are also based on percentages - so out of the 50% the musicians earn, 10-20% goes to roadies, 15% to manager/promoter, and 15% to sound engineer. None of it goes to power for the venue, ordinances and licenses, ticket printing and distrobution, promotional advertising, etc., all of which the record company would add to your half.
You might think that the venue loses out, because 50% probably doesn't pay for everything, and you're right - but venues make up the other money (actually pretty much all their profit) with concession sales and a percentage on T-Shirt and CD sales in the venue. I think the fact that record companies don't have this second source of income is why they expense everything to the bands. Bands usually make some profit on CD and T-Shirt sales done through a venue (my band did, at least - actually, almost all of our profits were through T-Shirts, because ticket costs usually only covered our touring expenses), but all concession sales go to the venue.
"as per the article, only 128 of some 30,000 records released in 2002 were so privileged"
How much money did the record companies actually make when they probably lost money on 29,872 albums? Record labels take all the risks on new bands. They deserve the money. Once you have a gold record, you are in a better position to negotiate a better contract for your second album. What's the complaint anyway? The band accepted the contract voluntarily? No one forced them.
Vote for Pedro
This is proof that the RIAA's alleged lack of profitability is their own fault for being ridiculously inefficient in their expenditures. A record can easily be produced and promoted for 1/10 to 1/100 of what they spend. Instead of working efficiently, they just give the artists the financial shaft in order to maintain profitability, and it's no suprise that we end up with CRAP since the corporations are the only ones making much money, not the artists, so there's no motivation to produce anything decent. The RIAA is a destructive monopoly, and in economics terms, a "market failure". Contrary to the opinion of conservative laymen, unrestricted monopolies never represent the most efficient way of doing things.
Repeal the DMCA!
Almost all proceeds of live gigs (that is, their fees for appearing) go straight to the band basically (and its management). It is there the bands can cash in on their fame. It is also there where it becomes blaringly obvious it was all worth it.
I don't give a flying possum about the fact someone is only going to cut me $40k, if i'm standing infront of 30,000 people I'm going to be feeling like a million dollars (especially since I probably would have had a line or two of coke before for ultra uber rockstar performance value).
Bullshit!
Their 40K a year must go a lot farther than my 40K...The 7 cars in the garage of the huge mansions with 2 or 3 swimming pools that I see on MTV cribs looks not much like my domain.
Just watched the show last week and some band I had never heard of (Blink 192 or something) was rolling around a spread like described above.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
what happened to being in the stupio for a week, or a month?
out of all of that money, what percent of it is totally wasted on the lifestyle of being a pop star?
I don't see what the issue is, they still make a profit in that model - if they aren't making "enough" profit, then that is a sign that one of the variables in the mix is off.
They are assuming that the variable that is off is the sales - the easiest one to point the blame on - but as in all business, perhaps the easier way is to be introspective - look inward and see where to cut costs.
There are a crapload of bands out there that make albums faster and cheaper than that.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
So don't steal songs!
What part of "they don't know they're pirating" didn't you understand? How do you suggest that a songwriter prevent himself from stealing another songwriter's song?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I am one of the original operators/founders for a free music site on the web in 1994. The second largest music archive of the time (next to IUMA). And a technological trend setter with the use of incredible MP2 (yes two) technology. My view of the current state of the music industry is this: Bands/Artists who continue to rely on industry to make money and not MUSIC will always get fucked and deserve to be fucked. They place their value in their relationship with the record companies and the RC's assests and not their fans. It's common business sense to make your CUSTOMER happy (fans), focus on your product(MUSIC, PERFORMING) and your relationship with your customers (FANS). SO WHY would a band give away control of their most important assests for PENNIES? Because they are stupid and they are greedy. Which is funny since in return for their greed they get the opposite of what they lust for. It's not very different than a small software company selling out completely to investors who steer the company first into disaster and then recover large amounts of money at the expense of the original upstart. The alternative is CLEAR. Why bands don't see this i really don't know and no longer care. The alternative is to PLAY fucking music. PLAY ALOT. PLAY in front of crowds. That's how a band gets paid. That's how a band develops a "customer" base. Don't waste ALL of your time and effort copywriting songs that suck.. MAKE MORE SONGS. LOTS OF SONGS. And play them. Make copies of your music. Let people listen to them and use them and make copies of them. This will widen your customer base. This will open more opportunity to PLAY more and make more music. THEN and ONLY then will people MAYBE be willing to pay for your Music. The REAL drive of buying art is the support of the expression in the hopes that the expression will continue to grow. Two examples of bands that have made this incredibly SIMPLE process work are the Grateful Dead and PHISH. Not to mention hundreds of DJ's and electronic acts who are driven by their love of PLAYING and PERFORMING music. If a band or artist does not love music and performing enough to do it everyday they will be pushed out of the market by ones that are. Just like in ANY business. Bands should look at performing and making music as their job. Not something they do as part of their Music career and inbetween being famous and broke. I'm not as big fan of those bands i mentioned. I do like them but it is funny how their lifestyles and business plans resemble eachother. Do you think bands that tour 325 days out of the year make money? Fucking A right they do. And if they love doing it they are fucking lucky individuals. As for the RIAA, why sit around and whine at them? Why should they give away all their assests? Why should they let people steal their money? They won't. And people won't stop stealing it. The whole fight is a stupid waste of time for people who want to make music. Placing SO much emphasis on the RIAA is admitting they hold some supreme power over artists and art in general. And if you think that is the case then you don't understand anything about real music or art.
bands shouldnt just make money from record sales. if they could sold 500.000 copies, then could probably sellin tickets touring and doin live concerts from coast to coast. not to mention some clothing,merchandise and product endorsement.
d035 7hi5 100k 1ik3 4n l337 5i6 2 j00 ?
I knew that there were plenty of good bands that go indie, but I never thought they actually earned more than the commercial guys.
No hypocracy here... Go PAY to see them live. They get paid for the work they do that way... Download the music for free, and if they are any good, they'll draw large crowds when they come to town.
They won't get royalty checks for 20 years on the recording session they spent a few months on, but what's so bad about that? I don't get paid for 20 years for the network I spent 6 months perfecting.
The recurring theme around here seems to be 'update the business model'... How about a business model that doesn't include money for recordings anymore?
No hypocracy involved...
The Steve Albini article is of course, spot on. The fact that it is almost 10 years old is remarkable, and it's a shame that things haven't changed much since then. The flagship punkrock fanzine Maximum Rock 'N' Roll devoted an entire issue to this topic back in 1994, in a groundbreaking (at the time) issue entitled, "Major Labels: Some of your friends are already this fucked", and it should be required reading for anyone who wants to resist the corporatization of music.
It's well known that hollywood has some ...unique book-keeping (to say the least) and the music biz is no different. I'm sure members of bands like No Doubt, Limp Bizkit, Foo Fighters (all of whom have gold albums) are living well. So even if they are making $160,000 above board, they are getting some gravy somewhere. To live well in CA takes a buttload more than 40K annually. So this math doesn't work.
So you want us to reward artists for making bad decisions. That money is how much an artist makes for an album that goes GOLD, piracy or no piracy.
But then, I'm not cashing a fat IT paycheck, either.
Now, let's rework those numbers, assuming the RIAA decided to stop taking an adversarial position against their own customers.
If they cut the price to $10/CD and sold a million, that'd be $10,000,000 gross. Assuming no other changes in the production process, that means $1,510,000 more for their pockets, or an extra $377,500 each. That's over $400k each, for only a year's work. Truly a paycheck befitting a rock star.
Now, of course this assumes it's possible to sell twice as many CD's. A stretch? Maybe a little, but if you don't think a drop in price to $10 will entice more people to buy, just remember: many of us are actively boycotting the RIAA! We're assuming the RIAA has decided to stop taking an adversarial position against their own customers, remember? So we can expect conscientious consumers to get back into the market, and more kids can afford it, so one way or the other, sales climb.
I have omitted the issue of manufacturing and shipping twice as many CD's, but accounting for economies of scale, the dent in the profits should still allow plenty of moolah for motorcycles and high-grade heroin and whatever else rock stars get into these days. Maybe the same results could be realized with an $11 price tag, thus adding another cool million to the money pot. The numbers can be adjusted for optimal profits, but the key is that giving consumers a fair value usually results in both sides of the market being satisfied.
I thought this was about the USC Marshall School's Case Competition. This year's case was on what the response should be the IP violations on the internet, and how to form a viable business model in the new industry structure. The teams did well, but one obviously didn't have a good grasp of tech cuz they couldn't tell if their solution was P2P or with a centralized server.
You guys are going to love what I've designed. A new way for music. Of course, I can't say anything til it's patented. And let me just put it this way: I'm not patenting it for the money. No one else is to be trusted with this idea, no one else would have the integrity to do it right. Yes, the big record companies could snatch my idea up and waste it, or I can keep it to myself and do it right. Be aware folks, the revolution is coming, and modern musicians are going to be snatching their rights back.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
How about a business model that doesn't include money for recordings anymore?
Begs the question. I don't really want to see any but a few bands live. I don't want them to reshingle my roof. I don't want them to wash my car. What I want are recordings of their music. There's a lot of money in sales of recordings; surely more of it could find its way to artists.
It's just the counterculture version of plastic, look and act like all the other subculturians, so we'll know who's cool. Punks and alternatives are even more slow-witted about this than even the hippies were.
Daily wage: $80
Pro diem: $20/day
Blowjob from strung-out 16-year-old who thinks you're the most exciting thing EVAR in her one-horse town: Priceless.
$40K - even before taxes - is more than I ever made...
While it's hard to live on that in the big city, you can do in a smaller town...
It's called "making a living" - as in "too busy making a living to get rich"...
Personally, I would find making $40K a year to sit around and play music to be not a bad job (if I had the talent to do it of course - actually, even if I didn't have the talent, as many musicians don't...)
Anything over $40K would be a great bonus...
Not to mention the fringe benefits (groupies)...
Jodie Foster makes $15 million a movie. She points out that the average actor out of 40,000 or so actors makes less than $10K a year.
Welcome to the real world of art...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I went through this entire process in the mid-90's playing guitar in a band that was on Columbia records. The thing that the NY Daily News in forgetting is that the band won't get ANY money beyond their initial signing bonus unless they recoup the money that the label has put into them. My old band, Howlin' Maggie, needed to go at least gold (500,000 copies) in order to recoup. That means that we got NOTHING since we only sold around 50,000 before we were dropped 3 years later. The real bummer is that we recorded the record ourselves pretty cheaply so our tab at the label could have been much higher.
Screw Hillary Rosen and all the whiney asses that complain about piracy ruining the music business. It was ruined long before the Internet was even an issue...
Andy Harrison
"And I bet you wanted to be a rock star when you were a kid..." Yeah sure. I only played my guts out twelve hours a day, day in, day out until I got REALLY good. (I once played a gig and had an audience of mostly other guitarists and their girl friends LISTENING [you could have a hear a pin drop, even the waiters weren't making any noise,] scared the living crap outta me. I was GOOD!)
Then I was led to the same conculsion as Gary Numan. The music industry is first about profits and then about product. YOU don't even enter into the calculations.
If you love music, do not try making any kind of recording. Just play... Live music performing is the only way...
Otherwise you'll end up running a placement agency in some god forsaken little town (okay Montreal ain't so small,) if you were smart enough and hung on to what ever cash you managed to squeeze out of the pipe and remembering your glory days.
I chucked it all in and went into software development (yeah... big mistake,) and now I'm into getting drunk, smoking my brains out and bleeding my life out my ass-hole.
Same ol' same ol'...
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Okay, bands don't make money touring.
SO DON'T TOUR!
Instead, set up deals where you go play for people who are willing to pay to see you play and where you do not have to spend a fortune on some venue that rips you off.
I read a book on making your own music one time by some babe called Jana whatever, and she made $30K/year or whatever playing her music and selling her CD's at her appearances. She played for anybody who'd pay - corporate sales meetings, organization events, Kiwanis club, whatever.
She didn't get rich, but she made a living, had fun playing her music, got paid to travel all over the country, and generally regarded herself as a "star" - without waiting for the music industry to call her a star, as she put it.
Now, on to the 21st Century...
THE NET REPLACES THE TOUR!
You set up a streaming site, you charge subscription fees per month (cheap, like $10), you play live (or prerecorded live) in the studio which is streamed to the subscribers, say once or twice a week. Maybe you even have jam sessions the subscribers can listen in on.
The point is, in essence you are "touring" (i.e., live performances) every week without moving from your studio. Your only "tour" expense is your bandwidth and IT support and marketing.
If you have 10,000 fans paying you $10 a month, you make $100K/month, $1.2 million/year. If you net 15% profit, you net $180K/year. Spread over your 4-man band, you make $45K each.
And you haven't moved an inch and you paid nothing to a record label or anybody else but your bandwidth supplier and IT support (and maybe an advertising agency).
If you're Metallica, the numbers get bigger fast. One million fans paying $10/month is $10 million/month, $120 million/year. I suspect the profits scale faster than the expenses on the Net (unless you're a "dot.com" of course...)
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
"Because they are playing local clubs for $200/night"
I played in a band back in the late 70's and we were getting more than this 25 years ago.
Seems hard to believe that's all they get.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The music business is is undeniably a horrible uber-competitive backstabbing industry. Why? Because a) playing music is fun b) people will pay some amount of money to hear music. What results is a bunch of people going to increasingly ridiculous lengths in order to make it in the music industry. A lucky few will make generous amounts of money, while the rest will scramble to survive.
Such is the case in any industry where the work is a lot of fun, and I say this as a warning because the same thing can easily happen to computer programmers. Why? Because programming is a fun and rewarding job, and as soon as the general public figures this out you will have a situation where a) a lucky few get to be paid as programmers b) a lot of programming work gets done for free by the many trying to "make it" in the business. "Oh, but programming is hard", you say. So is being a top-flight musician, and there are plenty of those who have to hump day jobs because there just aren't enough paying positions to support them at what they would like(and are highly qualified) to do.
So while you sit there posting to slashdot, saying "oh well, they can make their money through concerts and selling t-shirts", just remember, the same thing could happen to you one day. Hope you're good at self-promotion. Or that enough people never figure out that programming is fun in a similar way that music is fun. I wouldn't bet on the latter. It doesn't take a genius to coorelate the fact that people already produce a ton of code for free to the speculation that they could get programmers to do their bidding at very generous rates.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
500,000 albums sell at $16.98 = $8,490,000 Okay, so that says: Total Earnings = $8,490,000. Now let's work out who gets what out of this.
... reaps ... $829,900
B = Band, R = Retail, S = Studio, Packaging, production costs, A = Advertising, L = Lawyers, T = Total Left to record company, M = Manager
The Grunts' royalty is 15% of retail. Now, if we take this at face value that means.
B(OfRetail) = 15% * 8,490,000 ~= 1.3 Mil. But since we know this is wrong, let us continue.
"packaging deductions" of 25% So, this translates into, or means that
S = $2,122,500, T = $6,367,500
now we also have, That's a "free goods" charge of 15% So that gives us (since this is advertising)
S = $2,122,500, A = $1,273,500, T = $5,094,000
Okay, now we are getting somewhere. Now the band gets from this. So, the band's royalty is actually: $764,100
B = T*.15 = $764,100 - Yep!, S = $2,122,500, A = $1,273,500, T = $5,094,000 - B = $4,329,900
Now, The $3,500,000 balance goes to retailers So, we have
R = $3,500,000, B = $764,100, S = $2,122,500
A = $1,273,500, T = $829,900
The record company
R = $3,500,000, B = $764,100, S = $2,122,500, A = $1,273,500, T = $829,900
Okay, our numbers all make sense thus far... now things get weird. Because the band was hot, they got an advance from the record company of $300,000. They spent $200,000 of that recording the album, which included a $50,000 advance to the producer. They pocketed the remaining $100,000.
So this means that the band got $200,000 of their royalties early, and spent $200,000 on recording costs, and the band kept the $100,000. So we have
R = $3,500,000, B = $764,100 - $200,000 = $564,100, S = $2,122,500 + $200,000 = $2,322,500, A = $1,273,500, T = $829,900
Now as well, we have more advertising (the video). So here we go. the label spent $100,000 making the band's first video Which was expected to be paid back
R = $3,500,000, B = $564,100 - $100,000 = $464,100, S = $2,322,500, A = $1,273,500 + $100,000 = $1,373,500, T = $829,900
Whoa, now our numbers aren't lining up as well. Where the problem? The article says: So the royalty drops to $364,100.
For some reason the writer of the article decided that the $100,000 that the artists kept wasn't really paid out to them. Even though they "pocketed the money" or kept it, or however you want to put it. They made $100,000. That's the deficiency. They do fix this later on. Now, let's finish.
But the band's producer also earned a 4% royalty of $203,760, of which he already received $50,000. So the band has to pay him an additional $153,760, reducing their royalty to $210,340. Let's put this as production costs. Since the producer must be paid as well.
R = $3,500,000, B = $464,100 - $153,760 = $310,340, S = $2,322,500 + 153,760 = $2,476,260, A = $1,373,500, T = $829,900
Good.. Good... After pocketing $310,340 (which includes the remaining $100,000 of the advance) All Fixed
the band has to pay their manager 15%, or $46,551, and give 2% of the total deal, or $101,880, to the power lawyer who got them the deal in the first place. That takes the band down to $161,909. Let's see now:
R = $3,500,000, B = $310,340 - $101,880 - $46,551 = $161,909, S = $2,476,260, A = $1,373,500, T = $829,900, L = $101,880, M = $46,551
Total = $8,490,000 - All is accounted for.
Okay, so now that we have all of the numbers worked out.. Whose coming out on top here.
Well, the Retail guys definitely make a pretty penny. ($3,500,000), but that has to be divided over all their stores, so it doesn't work as well.
Studio costs are really high. (Higher than they probably should be.) That would be something of note.. But most importantly... the record company gets T = $829,900
That's it... Sure they get "whatever's left over from packaging and advertising" but that's not going to be that much. So the record company is making very little off this deal.
Really, if this shows anything, it is that the current system is too cost intensive, and that if it were optimized, there may be a better way to save money, and make sure everyone gets paid. It's not a conspiracy people. It's just common sense. These fees have to paid somehow, sure they may be high, but they are still necessary costs.
Personally, I don't see a problem with the record companies persay. I see a problem with how the money is spent recklessly. If you like a song, buy the CD, sure the artist doesn't get much, but it will make sure that more music like it is made in the future. All of those other costs have to be covered as well. If the only people who pay for CDs are people who listen to Britney Spears or Enrique Iglesias (Not saying they aren't good singers), then the only CDs that will be made are those by B.S. and E.I. The artists people are willing to pay for, and make sure that the investments that these companies put into them are returned.
It's simple math, that's all it is, and that's all it will be. It's not a revolution, or a conspiracy.
~ kjrose
I think you're totally off. It's about the music, sure. But at the same time, it's a music industry or a music business, neither are music philanthropy.
I'm a student at Berklee College of Music, and a very serious musician. You do music because you enjoy it, but at the same time- by the time i'm outta here, I'll have over 60 Grand in college loans and i'll be damned if I just 'love music' and not try to pay that off, get a house, get a car, etc.
I really enjoy music, and so does everyone at Berklee. Who doesn't wanna be a rock star though? No, it's not all about money. But you can't live in a cardboard box and play in the subway forever, well some people do, but not me.
And have you considered that if you are a real musician out there doing it you better be making some money to pay the bills, even if you don't get any of the money for yourself.
Studio time is over $100/hour at anywhere decent. Guitars are $2000+ for ones of good quality. A drumset is gonna run at least 2000 also. Think about microphones, preamps, speakers, etc. Ok, that's just the items. But at the same time there's people that need payed. Your manager, booking agent, business manager, accountant, cover artist, web designer, producer, engineer, roadies, lighting designers, etc... They all need to live too, and if you are just playing at people's houseparties, you can't make the money to pay them, let alone you. And don't tell me that professional musicians do it all by themselves. Just open up any cd and look at all the credits. They need to get paid. Go to a concert, it makes money, but it costs money to start up. You need a lighting and sound system, tour busses, etc.
Yes, I love the music. But as a real professional, it's insulting to not try to get paid for your talent. Most programmers program because they enjoy it, but at the same time, program what the boss says, not whatever they are doodling away on randomly.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Most of these "labels" are just vanity imprints like you see in book publishing. The suits give an artist a varying degree of independence in exchange for past success. Also its not just rap groups, its everyone now. Practically every CD you buy from a big group after the first one has some kooky record "label".
IIRC:
Grand Royal was part of Capitol.
Death Row was part of Interscope
But:
No Limit was actually independent, which explains the big lack of air/video play. (It's either that or the fact that everything on it sucks)
This is not the greatest sig in the world, this is just a tribute.
..do you have to sell to have a sweet pad on Cribs?
I mean, how many albums did B2K sell? Most of those 18 year olds have about $400K worth of car kit.
At some point it must get a little more reasonable, but I agree the music industry exists to keep most artists down.
Hmm. I dont think Lars Ulrich, drummer of Metallica could afford his luxury mansion on that income, which makes me think: marketing. Big bands, and little famous underground bands rely a LOT on marketing their expensive knick-knacks to fans for the bread and butter income. T-shirt sales are the reason bands can afford to tour.
Do you need a website upgrade?
but as I understood it, Albini mixed In Utero, handed it back to Kurt, who absolutely hated it. IIRC, they re-remixed the entire album, and the result is what we're all familiar with.
I may be wrong, of course, but that's how I remember hearing the story.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
It was insightful the first time....10 years ago.
am I the only person who knows that musicians make all their money on concerts? many of these artists who only get 40K off their cd get tons more in performances and promotions. i still dont think it's right that they only get the 40K though....
Many bands stay in the bar circuit indefinitely. They arent all out looking for record deals.
It does, however, depend on the music you are referring to. For much rock music, this may be the case. But this is not the case for many other types of music, especially blues and jazz. There are several blues bands (and quite good ones at that) that have played at the local blues bar for twenty years. And you would be surprised how easy it is to like blues--after all, its what rock came from: rock borrows its scales and chord progressions from blues.
... they're only trying to milk the cow for all it's worth before they lose control utterly to their inevitable disintermediation via the internet. My suspicion is that rather than trying to stop present piracy of the records they produce for the short term gain, they are trying to hobble the internet and computers as a future distribution medium where they do not participate as brokers-cum-robber-barons.
In the 21st century, no successful business model will be constructed based on the sale of recorded music for any price -- without the widespread implementation of DRM technologies
Bullshit.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I'd have to think twice about those numbers. I'm no record insider or anything, but those numbers seem to assume the only money they get is from record sales. Let's not forget the money made on a tour and especially the merchandise sold. If I'm not mistaken, this is where a lot of artists make a lot of money. I believe they get the bulk, if not all of the money on those sales. But then I could be wrong.
Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful
Well, translating things to $AUD... here's my workings per 100CDs being completely independant:
100 good quality CDs with cases - $100
Ink Jet Ink + good Paper for cover - 100$
$4.20/disk postage Aust Wide for disks not sold at gigs.
Assume:
75% of disks posted (not sold in person)
Own web site for promotion
Owns PC/MAC w/ Burner + Printer
Owns instruments
Time Burning disks, printing & cutting covers etc is free*.
Time writing & recording music is free*.
The first 25 disks in each box that are sold at the door at gigs are going to cost me $2.00ea = $50.00.
The second 75 disks per box will have an extra $4.20 added - which is the cost of posting a CD anywhere in Australia via Aust Post. They will cost me $465.00 to produce.
Total cost $515, avg $5.15 per disk.
Charge $10 per disk at gig or over web, claim free postage for web customers.
For each box of 100 you sell, you get $1000 cash, $485 of this is profit.
So sure, I will need to sell 300 & 1/3 boxes of CDs to get the $161,909 that those guys got.
Here's the big difference to me: I have a nine to five in a good profession, writing and performing is a weekend interest. I never intend for it to make a single red cent, if it does well good. I always assume that any costs I incur in my music making is money on a hobby.
This has a distinct advantage or two, 100% artistic control, 0% risk as I am not relying on the cash for rent etc. I can take my sweet time and it never has to mean anything to anyone but me.
-Idiot
* - By free I mean that I am a hobiest. This is the time I was going to dedicate to the project anyway.
Is like saying how sucessful the dotcom economey was because of Amazon and Ebay.
..lots of it is simply phsycological. We tend to like music we think is supose to be good. And we tend to like music we've heard before. *shrug* most of us anyways
Both groups are very sucessful in their respective generes, however they are in no way represenitive of those generes. Many bands have tried things that the TGD and Ebay have, but most have simply failed.
As far as labels having it backwards.
No, they don't.
They know how to promote, get play on the radio, and get advertisments. They set up the system, so they *can* work it.
I know a great number of *extrmely* talented artists (the DC sceene is choke full of em, if you ask me) and unless they have a well known name backing em up, its dificult to get more of an audience.
Very few talented muscians will ever make it rich. But really, that's ok, because most very talented muscians I know of don't care so much about the money (that is to say care about money more than the average joe) as they do about playing. (And to a degree playing for others who enjoy it).
*shrug* just my view though.
...as many here keep saying musicians do it for the love of music, why then should it matter how much money that have in the end? If, as many here also say, it's ok for Red Hat to make money off selling Linux solutions, then why should it not be ok for the record labels to make money off the musicians? They are giving back to the community by paying artists some money and building an ever increasing stable of artists and musicians from every genre of music imaginable.
Without DRM, music is free. And the public will never accept DRM. QED.
Statistically speaking, there's a 99.998% chance that my IQ is higher than yours. Get over it.
How many musicians are in multiple bands? Max Cavalera is/was in Sepultura, Soulfly, and Nailbomb. Phil Anselmo was in Pantera, Superjoint Ritual, and Down. Dan Lilker has been in Anthrax, SOD, MOD, Hemlock, Nuclear assault, etc. That 40 G's per band adds up. Lets also not forget the fact that music is the work that keeps on working. Phil Anselmo is still getting royalties on Cowboys From Hell, and it's been what, like 13 years since that album came out? Now lets add in the money they get from DVDs, T-shirts, concerts, etc. I'm suddenly remined of that cartoon Ducktales, where Uncle Scrooge would swim in a pile of money.
According to the "only pay them for live concerts" business model, they'll have to go to every small town in the world to ensure that every customer pays their share. Then thanks to the expenses, I'll be paying $500 a pop for my personal Pantera concert, and Pantera will only get about 20 bucks out of it.
Then everybody will complain about how tragic it is that they only make a fraction of their ticket sales.
So here's an idea that works. If you like it, and they want money for it, give them the money. You're not their mommy. They can decide how their own business works. If you don't want to pay for the band, don't pay. But don't steal either. That's just not right. If a band wanted you downloading their mp3s, they'd put them on their website.
This merely confirms what we already knew intuitively. Musicians don't make money from records. In fact, a record can be viewed as an advertisement. They make money from merchandising, endorsements and ticket sales.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
That programmers need and deserve groupies as much as anyone else. They would revolutionize the industry.
My Blog
1 song @ $70000 x 3 downloads = $210000
Those 3 downloaders each sell to twenty CD burner companies at $10000/pop.
Each CD burner company burns it on 10000 CDs and sells aboult half of the CDs at $1.50/ea, the other half at discount for $.50/ea. Of those, 2 of them also make MP3s available online, and sell those MP3s at $1 each.
The users exchange it freely on napster, and some people do get it for free -- others have to pay about $1.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
In a song called "Moneygoround" from Lola vs. Powerman and the Moneygoround.
For your listening pleasure:
Robert owes half to Grenville
Who in turn gave half to Larry
Who adored my instrumentals
And so he gave half to a foreign publisher
She took half the money
That was earned in some far distant land
Gave back half to Larry
And I end up with half of goodness knows what
Oh can somebody explain
Why things go on this way
I thought they were my friends
I can't believe it's me
I can't believe that I'm so green
Eyes down
Round and round
Let's all sit and watch the moneygoround
Everyone take a little bit here
And a little bit there
Do they all deserve money
From a song that they've never heard
They don't know the tune
And they don't know the words
But they don't give a damn
There's no end to it
I'm in a pit and I'm stuck in it
The money goes round and around and around
And it comes out here
When they've all taken their share
I went to see a solicitor
And my story was heard
And the writs were served
On the verge of a nervous breakdown
I decided to fight right to the end
But if I ever get my money
I'll be too old and grey to spend it
Oh, but life goes on and on
And no one ever wins
And time goes quickly by
Just like the moneygoround
I only hope that I'll survive
The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected. -- Will Rogers
Production often includes PR, M-tv model, leverage for cd space, etc.... Often it seems; it is instant band, just add people.
The advantage now is the one source model. In a few years the previous model may loss it's monopoly control and have to start selling to consumers who simply have more choices. Staying in step cost very little and you don't hang yourself in the process.
With the RIAA blessing, the pick of the crop can come from a weekly email (but outsourcing can become dangerous to the livelyhood of business models that use it-as history can attest). The M-tv and radio models still maintain the best selling practice and the mp3 habit doesn't necessarily get broken. Plus, gaining a wider base of artists allows flexibility and potentially legal/legit stats can be good.
I thought 12 channels of pure freedom was enough, but what do I know, lol. And thanks for the alternative spout.
I think the only way for us to change the system would be to bypass all the bad parts. Everyone should only download music from now on. And send a $3 check to the artist for the CD we downloaded. If you downloaded only one song, send one for 50cents. If everyone who downloaded did this, the artist we love would have their money. And the people we hate who get in our way would not. All artists should really setup a PayPal account so this form of micropayment could be possible.
Grassroots activism by superempowered individuals through the internet is the only way we are going to get our message across.
which is good and fine, but I also reccomend reading Diamond Dave's autobiography, Crazy From The Heat. Aside from being hilarious (he claims those kicks he did on stage were invented in feudal Japan when weapons were banned and they were designed to knock a guy off a horse), there is a very informative chapter on where all the money Van Halen made went.
Your trying to make it, and someone offers you $150,000 to make an album, when you been living on peanut butter and jelly (on the good weeks) You are probably going to take it.
When a lot of people don't realize is that the indepents are in the situation they are in because of the RIAA labels. The control the distrbution, the airplay (through payola), they control the gold records, (it took 5 years after John Denver's death for an accounting which award him 19 more gold records, kinda makes you wonder if he was paid for those)
No one forces you to borrow money from loan sharks either, or to pay 21% interest on credit cards, But millions do everyday....
Without getting into the RIAA vs. Privacy vs. Fair Use debate (which is so tried at this point) I think one of the best things to be returned to artists recently is the power to go independant. Independantly produced and released albums rarely gain acceptance the way main stream, and massively marketed music does, but it allows the artists themselves to stay true to their roots and develop a much more community oriented approach to music. It improves diversity and encourages competition on a local and global scale, something which is good for artists and fans alike. It is an exciting time in the music industry, perhaps even a time where the focus on music becomes more important than the focus on industry. Copy.
"I don't want to be
a loser...no!...
I don't want to be
an almost was
I don't want to be a white trash
Working class chump
I don't want to be a loser anymore
That's why I want to be
a rock star
I want to be the king
I want to be on top, yeah
I just want to be a rock star"
Everclear, Rock Star
Full Lyrics
This article admirably illustrates the difficulty of making money from record sales, but it fails to mention that making money from record sales is not the point of making records. At least not for musicians. For musicians the point of making records is to get Exposure. Working musicians make their money by performing, and exposure translates into gigs. With an album on the charts, the Grungenuts, or whatever the hypothetical band was called, should expect to rake in some respectable bucks playing large venues. That's what making records really buys musicians.
Really fun stuff, thanks for the link.
Even funnier, with some find-and-replace the piece looks strikingly similar to a software project diary. Same efficiency and same outcome. I guess.
Thanks to independent promoters, you can't get a song played on commercial radio or MTV without paying big bucks. It's possible to build up a following without these vehicles, but in practice it's very, very difficult.
Furthermore, the labels have learned that it's not in their best interest to be highly competitive over artists, except for the very few cream-of-the-crop megastars.
By presenting a united front, everyone makes more money.
Parts of the new business model: you pay for a CD, with pictures, lyrics, things like that. You can make copies for yourself and for friends. You can also share on the web. You can't resell for money.
You can sell concerts, since there's a big bouncer at the door who will rough you up if you don't pay. Some acts will let you tape or make videos. Again, same informal distribution. Big acts will put out great videos with directors which people will buy. Beginning acts, or anarchists, let people tape. Best cred you can get with fans. Better publicity than if you had, well, a publicist.
It's up to musicians to figure out what will get people to pay premium prices. Maybe the opera, or other long-form music, will come back. The three-minute jukebox hit parade payola machine is probably dying. Good riddance.
All music shared on the web is tracked for numbers of unique downloads. You pay an extra $5 (say) a month for copyright network sharing. collected at the ISP, and the artists get most of that. Why not? The label goes to no expense whatever. Keeping track of the popular downloads, and cataloguing all music ever recorded, can be done by a google appliance. SuperNapster.
With half the population of the world listening and sharing every week, that's a heck of a lot of money. Split it up as you see fit. Add in concert money, and, yes, CD, SuperCD, DVD Audio sales, and there's probably more money in the business than ever.
Oh my god. That post sums up the stupidity of most slashdotters.
Please, start this hypothetical database and let me know how you're doing in 10 years.
Service it doesn't provide? You obviously don't have a clue...
(I actually work for a record label, so I have a little insight..)
... in touring, anyway. CD sales are just promotion for the tours.
I've heard so many real-life stories like this, where record company execs get rich off of someone else's talents, and the artists themselves get very little. Most signed artists that I know end up owing money to the record companies (unbelievable but true)
I'm not a signed musician, yet last year, I made about $12,000 from my music. Whilst this was by no means a good salary, it is certainly more than any non-gigging musician that I know. The vast majority of that money was from selling homemade CD's directly to the public.
You don't need the RIAA in this day and age. With the power of the internet/mp3's & (god forbid) paypal, who needs a coccaine addicted suit to take the food from your mouth?
-- 7 string electric violin + live loop samplers
One big reason that musicians get screwed on record deals is because there is no shortage of good bands out there. Pretty much everyone knows a killer guitar player or song writer and probably have more then one on their block. The distribution channel and mediums for discovery are so limited that only a select few are allowed to take advantage of them. Thanks to the monopoly of the airwaves much of the talent in the world goes unnoticed. Don't let your taste in music be dictated by corporate greed.
If Pantera is charging $500 a pop for tickets, they need to re-evaluate where their money is going.
There are dozens of punk rock and smaller alternative bands that tour every year, with or without a big budget. Greedy whores like Bikini Kill won't leave home without a guaranteed $10k payout, but bands like Armchair Martians or Scared of Chaka will roll out for a few hundred bucks TOTAL. Sometimes things get fucked up and they have to play to a small crowd and get paid with beer and food, but that goes with the territory.
In the final analysis, bands don't really need enormous touring busses, 5 star hotels and new guitars for every show. They don't need their promoter taking 10% of their cut. If you cut down your overhead and subscribe to the DIY philosophy, you can make it on your own without a major label rolling out a magic carpet for you.
Remember, most bands you know and love probably started out in someone's basement or garage, and probably borrowed the minivan on the weekend to go to shows. Then again, bands these days are basically born from corporate labels and aren't as homegrown as they used to be.
Steve did much more for The Pixies than he did for Nirvana. And Nirvana's just a mediocre Pixies cover band anyway...
how about instead of 500,000 people buying the album, 1 million download it for free and 100,000 of these each donate $5 to the band thus leaving each band member with $125,000 each - instead of the $38 grand each with the current model.
For more details on a donation type music model go here and also suss out MusicLink and also Cringely article on the topic.
Isn't this Slashdot? Isn't this news for nerds? Everyone knows nerds don't become rock stars, Peter Gabriel and Herbie Hancock being possible exceptions. So, why is this news for nerds?
Hasn't this been covered before? I think about a year ago, maybe more, Slashdot posted a link to an article by Courtney Love that made a similar analysis with similar results.
the public will never accept DRM.
I certainly HOPE your right, but it is far from certain. There is an enormous TCPA rollout on the way that intends to make DRM a casual detail of everyday life. This is scary not just because of the staggering multi-industry backing it has, but because they have an extremely plausible path to getting it into virtually all computers and devices over the course of a few years.
Without DRM, music is free.
Music has been available for free ever since radio and tape recorders. The recording industry predicted cassettes would kill the industry. Movies and programming have been free since broadcast television and VCR's. The MPAA predicted VCR's would kill the industry. In both cases the industry made MORE money once they adapted to the new tech.
Just because the recording industry has deliberately CHOSEN not to compete in an online market for music certainly does not mean one cannot exist. The fact that the recording industry has REFUSED to sell music online has been the major driving force behind the explosion of the various P2P networks.
In the last few months the recording industry has made a pathetic token gesture at selling music online. They are selling DRM crippled products. They are offering limited selections (they withhold most popular music to avoid "competing" with their offline market). Their prices are unreasonable (purchasing downloads should be signifigantly cheaper than purchasing a packaged object from a retail store). And perhaps worst of all they have an uphill battle because they have handed P2P a FIVE YEAR first-mover advantage. All four handicaps are completely self-imposted.
Even with these four fairly severe handicaps I believe they have still managed to capture tens of thousands of customers. If they drop the first three handicaps they can still manage to overcome the fourth and capture a large and profitable market. The internet offers them access to an enormous market/distribution-channel with nearly 100% profit margins. If they choose to they can create/provide a service that would far outclass P2P is several ways. The longer they wait the harder it gets,
If you want links with even more support try this National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences paper and here, particulary sections 5 + 6.
Saying that the internet will kill the music industry is absurd. You're a victim of RIAA propaganda.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
You could just buy music from bands who cut out the middleman...
Is this a prototype of the future of the music industry?
This is horrible. I feel bad for bands that this happens to... groupies don't want to have sex with guys that only make $40K a year. What a shame. And $40K/yr isn't nearly enough to sustain a cocaine habit. How will they ever get on behind the music?
--
"What do you want me to do? Whack a guy? Off a guy? Whack off a guy? Cause I'm married."
If the band/artist is goning to complain about the Internet as being a tool to destroy the lives of the people in the music industry they need to find a new job. Music sharing was done way before the internet and they had to of known that P2P sharing was going to be some new wave of the future.
Looks like an interesting reversal, if it can happen. After all, the music industry is intimately linked with mass media. This article wasn't signed and we don't know how much media-cred it can get but it's interesting nonetheless.
For a while, the Press has favored a "RIAA vs. Net" view of the situation. Actually doing the math is a step in another direction, raising a lot of old issues and a few new ones.
We all know the current model has a problem. Even RIAA members know this. There has to be a new model that will satisfy everyone in the food chain.
Alexandre http://enkerli.wordpress.com/
Dr. Matt...
Save the Bottom Line
What this article forgets (and this is actually kinda major) is that the artist usually don't see anything until all of the costs involved in making the album are paid for. What this means is that the band gets 15% of the NET profit not gross sales. Everyone has to get paid before they see a dime.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
Joe Beancounter from the RIAA or the MPAA doesn't get the publicity shots shaking Senator Hatch's hand
And when Senator Hatch changes his position on the whole DMCA thing, it doesn't get the same attention, either. It's been years since this Register article . I have heard people express their doubt as to the senator's actual honesty regarding this issue, but I have not heard anything since then of actual substance (no one saying that he has gone on record one way or the other since then). Someone catch me up if there is anything newer.
--something witty
Yes, but those numbers are what the artists receive through the RIAA's system. Sure they get other income, but the moral of this article is that of over $8 million in sales, each member of a 4 person group will get about $40,000. That's horse shit. Cut out the middle man, and try to cash in on more of that $8 million.
What with my yodelling CDs, Ivan Rebroff albums (over 65 years old and still touring!) and Ziesjoemsongs (even Dutch people can't understand them :-) and C64 remix tracks I must be so elite that I've come out the other side :-)
Except that I listen to Kylie too...
The ongoing industry attempts to carpet bomb technology (especially P2P) will continue to make it harder and harder to work outside the sponsored music industry.
Think, if all P2P networks are outlawed then how does a small garage band get their first album out? TCPA controls could severely limit the ability to create, edit, and publish music on a PC in the first place (all theoretical of course).
It would be interesting to see how many DMCA take down orders would get filed if you ran a huge P2P server with only free music on it.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
is an example of one ($x million for signing with MSFT) Although you could say that was partly Microsoft trying to bury Borland.
All this tuff is really nice and interesting. but i think to vaguely remember that artists do gain some pretty penny from airing their tunes too. I think this is also a good way to earn money for them. but excuse me if i digress. Recently my wife bought a CD reader by SONY. A Discman. It sported a nice, big, flashy write on it : "Also MP3 reader". Nice. Recently she bought the last Massive Attack album, nice music. Guess what? You put the disc on the reader and...silence! The reader made by SONY, is not able to read a CD protected with the same protection system invented by SONY. Funny stuff eh? My legit CD reader, is not able to read a legit store bought CD. Can u see a pattern here? For me this alone spells DOOM for the RIIA and all of his friends. THATS the real issue with the music today. If they do not solve this s**t with copy protection systems, some really bad 455 mojo is going to happen to them. If they do not get their acts together, soon there will be no more "record industry". My 2, off topic cents. P.S: Bye the way, the link to Albino's writing is really good. P.P.S: I phoned to a SONY representtative in my area talking to him about the reader/CD issue. He said he was aware of the story and that now SONY is looking into this. Many CD's do have this problem. He said that i was authorized to bring back the CD and eventually give his name if the store refused to take it back. He also suggested to me to (!) rip the CD, recording it in real-time with a recording software and encoding it in MP3. I found this really showing where this market is going. Down the toilet. KazaaLite for ever! Peace out.
Oh yes...don't get me wrong. The labels are bigger pirates than any P2P network could hope to be. I just wanted to point out that this is definitely not their only source of income obviously. I'll always buy a CD at a show rather than from a store if I can. And I listen to local and indie bands almost exclusively. Mostly because it's just plain better. Not paying into the RIAA system is just an added benefit.
Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful
Sold 550000 units at $50 each = $27.5m. 15 months work for me, people: me, 1 assistant coder for a month or two, a years worth of art, a month for the musician, a few people months for the testers and producer. That comes to (just) less than four people equivalent. Let's say I made $50000 for that (I was younger then, as you can see by the low budget). That comes to 0.18% of total gross sales so you're doing well!
Of course on my less successful projects I got a much better deal proportionately :-)
Read much Mario Puzo? "The Last Don", anyone???
Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
The problem with your comment is that it's not a "free market" at all. You have 5 companies, all in collusion, who control every aspect of the market. You have one company that controls nearly every aspect of exposure.
If these companies actually had to compete, you'd have 1) lower cd prices, and 2) better treatment of artists.
Think about it, humans have been music makers forever. Only in the last 50-100 years has the technology for reproducing recorded music existed. Only in that tiny window has a musician been able to make a living from selling those recordings. Who's to say that this isn't a blip, an oddity, one whose time is rapidly passing. And that musicians will go back to making a living the way they always have, through live performance (not that ClearChannel makes that any easier these days).
You've got ot get out on the road, hold down your expensives and be sure not to set the place on fire.
PegQuin--I've got a sneakin' suspicion
Anonymous Troll ...and I work for a corporation, so I know! :P
Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
So what? With one in three thousand bands, "making it big", you won't meet one. You will hear music that's just as good because the average top 40 is still working on their routine. Those that are not working on their routine never had one to begin with.
I'm wating for web casts from bars to break the RIAA hold on entertainment. It won't be much longer if the internet itself is not destroyed and people get smart about promoting themselves.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The link in my previous post seems to have died, have a look at this link for an alternative.
Software development is a good example. People work for MS because they pay them to. People code for linux because they know they're making something cool for the community at large. However, what if Linus somehow (as if he could) closed the source to linux and started charging $100/copy for it. Would anyone keep coding for free? No.
So people will do something for the love, OR for money, but not for neither. And if someone else is taking advantage of them without giving anything else back, expect them to be pissed.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Why the hell do all of these pop stars live in mansions in Beverly Hills. They must be making money *somehow*!!!
.sig
Unfortunately, I can't pull up the interviews here because of the SmartFilter, but. . .
.
From what I remember, Nine Inch Nails, The Cure, and Depeche Mode all lost money out of their pocket doing their most recent tours, even though a majority of them sold out, t-shirts sales or no.
Of course, they didn't need to do large, over the top, theatrical presentations (esp. NIN), but they said it was worth it to make the fans happy. .
- Rovent
That 40k only represents their end of the year bank account, most people I know would love to work/live for a year and have 40k more in the bank at the end of the year than they began with. Much less live a year as a 500,000 record selling major lable backed Rock Act copmlete with Groupies and red carpet events/treatment.
Not that I don't think they should get a little thicker slice of the pie, just that those numbers are very deceptive. Perhaps that sanitation worker gets 40k a year but he spends that 40k to live on. At the end of the year they might have a couple thousand in the bank left over. In the mean time He/she was living paycheck to paycheck making rent/bills and perhaps hitting the club scene most weekends as a beer swilling drone.
40k a year before living expenses and 40k a year after living expenses are two VERY different things.
Record cuts need to come after expenses not before same as artists or artists royaties need to be figured before expenses same as the Lables cut.
The Bands debt needs to be wiped out once the investment is paid back at reasonable return ( laws geverning loan sharking would be usefull here ).
Right now the lables up front investment/loan to the artist is only considered paid off when collected from the artists royalties despite the fact the lable reaps back the amount invested and a good bit besides in its own share of the proceeds long before the after expenses royalties amount is sufficient to cancle that debt alone, and indeed it is carefully balanced so that few ever do.
Less popular bands are not nearly the risk lables say they are. Take those numbers and set forth the initial money the record company plops down, now find the break even point on record sales for the lable acording to Albini's numbers. The number is alot lower than the 500,000 mark. Take those numbers... off the top of my head I belive it was $900k to the lable for 500k record sales or $1.80 and album. They invested 300,000 and got that back and a little more by the time 200k units were sold. Not to mention thats ONLY from their cut of the sales, they are also at this point collecting the artists royaties ostensibly to pay back their loan. So the record company has broken even from its cut and the artists royalties recieved to that point are whoely profit or return on the investment. If you called it square there then the artists recieves their royalties free and clear and the record lable continues to collect its share and that end figure for the artists changes a whole hell of alot.
Lets put that in a simple sentence
The lable collects its cut and the artists cut until the artists cut alone pays off the investment.
Another way
The lable makes money seperate of the artist on the sale of the album and yet only considers their invest paid off when the artists money pays off the loan.
This is completely and totally unfair. You change that so that the artist's debt is cleared once the lable makes its money back plus a reasonable return and the artist starts collecting full royalties a hell of alot sooner than they do now. This dosn't impact the lables bottom line much ( changes their debt and profit lines accordingly but they sum out pretty much the same ) But it does remove the debt anvil they generally get to hang over the artists head for sub 500k album sales. I mean oh tisk tisk we made a bundle but you didn't make enough to pay us back, here we will loan you some of this money you made us so you can make us some more money and owe us even more.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
I agree with (1) but not (2). The supply of wanna-be artists is so high that record companies don't need to have the band's best interests in mind.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
While they might not steal anything physical, they do rob a seller of the opportunity to see if their product will sell. That, my friend, is sabotage. Expect to see sharers charged under RICO statutes, and downloaders charged with being accomplices.
Pirates are gonna need a real long towel now for when they get to the bighouse.
To them all, I say buy a copy of Good Charlotte's "Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous", stop crying, and learn how to spend their money more properly.
For sheer entertainment value for $15 you can :
1. get a budget video game title for xbox, ps2, gc
2. get 2 game titles for n64, ps1, older consoles
3. get a budget video game for computer - like one of last years best games
4. get a dvd
5. go to a movie - 2 people - twilight show
6. buy 1 to 3 used music cd's
7. buy 1 or two used dvd's
8. eat a budget meal out for 2 people.
Which of those is much preferable to buying a music cd.
This goes without saying that some music for modern games is playable in CD players.
At the 45th annual Grammy awards, the assembled crowd of music industry executives and celebrities eagerly awaited the announcements Sunday night because they knew full well that a Grammy boost could mean a surge in sales, or at least peer-to-peer file downloads.
Up until just a few years ago, music consumers had to go to record stores and buy CD's with actual money. Not only was it damned inconvenient to drive to a store, but consumers (especially young consumers) rarely have that kind of cash lying around. There had to be a
better way. Luckily for everyone, the Internet explosion of the late 1990's ushered in a completely new and vital business model for the
industry: piracy.
According to the RIAA, consumers have flocked to this new distribution system. Actual retail sales for 2002 were a fraction of what they had
been before the advent of peer-to-peer file sharing, but since the music industry has yet to come up with a means of tracking downloads there is no real way of knowing. Available statistics make 2002 seem like a down year for the industry hen quite the opposite is true. Unofficial estimates of mp3 traffic indicate that music consumption shot up more than 150% in the past
twelve months. Norah Jones' debut effort Come Away With Me is an excellent example of success in this new economic paradigm. Not only did the album receive several nominations including Best New Artist but it was also one of the most popular titles of the year, selling almost four hundred copies since its release early last summer. Industry experts say the numbers are excellent assuming the formula of seven thousand downloads for every retail sale. "Winning a string of Grammy awards is great," said Jones. "But I really hope this translates into more illegal downloads. Otherwise, it's just a
statuette.My agent explains that I'm getting paid for this somehow. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but it must be the wave of the future."
RIAA president and humanitarian Hillary Rosen says she is thrilled to see music piracy finally finding a home on the Web. "We tried making the
switch years ago, but people just weren't ready in 1982 to form enormous anonymous sharing rings for bootleg eight-track tapes." Commercial music distribution is incredibly costly. Making sleeves, printing booklets, burning discs, it all adds up to an expense many in the industry believed was unnecessary. So, in the fall of 1999, a specially appointed RIAA task force designed and built the file sharing systems known as Napster and Gnutella. "I'm so happy to know that my organization has had a small part in this revolution," said Rosen. "It's all about getting the music out there - for the kids."
Accountants have scratched their heads over this acceptance of music sharing, questioning how the industry can meet their expenses by giving
away their product. Rosen giddily pointed to an official RIAA document, detailing how the music sharing business model works:
Sign artists to lucrative deal.
Produce album.
Upload songs to Web for an unknown number of people to download and share.
Profit!
...and then they recorded it and mass-produced it themselves instead of going through a studio, then they would be making a fuck of a lot more money, wouldn't they?
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Astorsmash, I lost an entire DAY reading this!
/. wasn't bad enough.
The writer is funny, has my kind of humor, and writes in a style that is extreemely addictive to read.
What a great link.
Just what I needed. Intelectual heroin....As if
-- "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."- Albert E.
What about promotion and marketing of the artist other than the video? This sometimes is a big cost for the record company.
All the Print Ads, publicity stunts and other costs associated with promoting a given band or album.
Also, how much does it cost to make a CD? My money sez pennies on the dollar.
Dolemite
Save the World! Use a Quote!
Yeah I've read the Sicilian and the Godfather. I've probably read the godfather 5 times. It's one of my favorites. The Sicilian has a better plot but the whole improtance of the family (as a group of related people, not the business) aspect that made the godfather so interesting was lacking.
**Bob Dylan says: You never ask questions when God's on your side.
The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great height
but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make people stumble
than to be walked upon.
-- Franz Kafka
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
It used to be about a band playing music for all of their friends, and maybe going from town to town scraping together enough money to survive. Now it's about a band playing the same music over and over again in a recording studio for a year, and then just barely scraping together enough money to survive. There are drawbacks and benefits with both methods, but the second way benefits the most number of consumers.
Very popular slashdot journal for adul