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Recording Deals In The Digital Age
cascadefx writes "There is a really interesting panel wrap-up over at the National Association of Recording Industry Professionals's website. The Incredible Shrinking Profit Margin panel discussion looks like it included some interesting discussion into the deals that are made with performers now that the rules have changed. These notes offer interesting (perhaps hopeful) business predictions about Britney Spears' career as well as answering the (new)-age-old question about just how much an artist makes off of an iTunes download. Check it out."
Why sell through the system at all anymore?
FP?
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
Is she going into pr0n? At least in that case, if she opens her mouth, it'll be for a good reason!
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
If you sell through the system, talent is optional.
If you sell outside the system, though, you have to succeed on your own merits.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Artists have always been share croppers for the man (record co's.. iTunes is the beginning of change. Artists, with guts, can make their deals direct with the new distribution channels, and they should, especially, anyone with a name that has a contract up for renewal.
Anyone seen my jagged little pill?
The prediction about Britney's career?
"Britney Spears' career, as a pop artist, is over."
Wow. That's some Insightful commentary. I mean, backing up a statement like that with support and facts and information is cool and all, but just one hopeful sentence like that is even COOLER.
I'm going start predicting stuff like that. Hey, I predict that computer games will be different in the future.
Moo.
It isn't Britney Spears I fear, but what comes after her. Seems to me that each iteration of manufactured talent is more sickening than the last. (One reason I don't watch American Idol, which seeks out the next 'talent' that fits the cookie cutter.)
But consider that much of Spears' success was the performance. Sing, dance, strut about the stage, before spending the next few decades going from one failed relationship and addiction to the next until appearing on Good Morning America and announcing she's cleaned up, totally focused on life and ready for a comeback (no, not as a signer, but the next president.) Music downloads don't leave much room for performance, unless you plan to watchs someone frolic about on that miniscule screen on your cellphone. Admittedly, some acts have never had a top-ten song or little chart success anyway, but have enormous cult-like followings (i.e. Jimmy Buffet, are you a parrot head? ;-) and without enough curiousity or word-of-mouth, will people attend shows?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Obligatory google cache.
DiscDividers tabbed plastic CD dividers: divider cards f
Good stuff -- they interview record execs and former/current/hopeful musicians and explain the sorts of problems the industry is facing. While people stealing music online is a factor, lesser-known factors are also discussed including the fact that sales figures may be sinking because people are finished replacing their record collections with CDs.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
The music industry is changing, along with the movie industry. Distribution channels are changing, and as such the method of getting your margin is going to change too. The RIAA's job of seeming to try and protect what is soon to be an outdated distribution scheme is pointless for the long term, and irritating for the short. A slimmer profit margin is no big deal, when you consider that it's not a few hundred companies trying to support their insfrastructure, but rather a half dozen online firms supporting theirs. Let's not forget that online distributors will never get caught with extra inventory. It's hard to run out of warehouse space. They have to worry less about shipments. In short, thinner margins that are consistent fit the business model. It's nothing to whine about, though of course the RIAA always has to find some large stick to shove in the wrong place.
They say that their core buyers aren't buying. IIRC, every year, the recording industry beats inflation in terms of revenue and profit growth but they keep saying that they are going down the drain. And now this recording professionals group seems to be parroting the same line. That is one drain I'd like to go down.
I'm not saying file sharing is necessarily good for them but it seems to be a case where they are trying to get enough people to say they are losing money often enough such that everyone believes them even if the facts are the opposite.
Text only from Google's cache
EA (Electronic Arts) will clear 60 masters, then use just 15 songs in a game, all at low rates. And they want to pay these low rates on a buyout basis, with no share of revenue, no points, and no step-deals.
That's nice. I'd like a convertible with bucket seats and a six-speaker audio system. "They want" "They want" "They want" It's nonsense.
Here's the product. Here's the price, LICENSED for a limited period in a specific market excluding all others. 15% advance in TALL LONG GREEN CASH DOLLARS WALKIN' DOWN THE BOULEFUCKINGVARD starting day one with a double-the-rate step up when the clouds part. Two minutes and we fold up the card table. Here's a pen.
Artists own 100% before they sign the deal. The best way to make a good deal is not to make a bad deal.
Phone companies take 50% of all downloads
Only if the artists agree.
"The phone could replace the iPod
Everyone wants to be Apple.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
They just don't get it ... do they?
They charged admission to hear this great theory of business.
Oh, and you can get a CD of the proceedings ... for $20.
Quite accurately, they pointed out that their target audience just isn't buying records anymore. Oh the shock and horror of it all!
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results -- according to Einstein. Maybe that's it ... that's the answer ... the recording cartel (let's not pretend that it's an industry) is collectively insane. That's a much kinder, gentler (though less accurate) view than to say that the recording cartel is stupid and clueless.
Even though I'm outside their demographics (no, I'm not at the low end!), I'll continue to buy music I like ... from the artist directly.
That having been said, I think the music is crap. But you wont catch me downloading it. For music I like, the cost of the CD is nothing VS the amount of enjoyment I get from it.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Slightly offtopic since this is not mentioned in the article at all, but since we're talking about recording deals...
;p
Don't buy music from sites like the iTMS or Napster. Ever. According to this article French Apple enthusiast site Mac Bidouille, support personel (eg dancers, clip director, sound techs etc) are not getting their cut from legal online sales.
The reason? Record labels are unwilling to change their contracts, which ties royalties to the sales of physical media, not the song itself. That's outrageous. That's outright theft, pure and simple.
(Article is in French. Grab a translation here.)
Support the little guys. Download your albums off Suprnova NOW!
Reading an article recently on Prince's sales model. He makes $7.50 for each $10 CD. He controls distribution, handling advertising everything. If you've noticed the bill board charts lately his latest CD is doing well. My GF is a member of his sight where she can hang with other fanatics, or famatics as they call themselves. Prince has even managed to circumvent Ticketmaster to an extent. He sells a percentage of the floor seats through his site directly to his fans. I think everyone will agree that he is also the opposing force to any manufactured talent out there.
But I'm on a no-carb diet. Looks like it's gonna be rum.
Don't get me wrong -- I have great sympathy for musicians, other artists, and everyone else trying to get their fair share, but I can tell you that my salary as a programmer would be in the high six digits if I was paid 10% of the revenue my software generates for my employer. The artists' percentage alone is not really cause for much sympathy.
What is royally fucked is the fact that artists could command much higher percentages if the music industry wasn't dominated by a cartel with the aid and abettance of easily-purchased legislators.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
"CDs of program available: $20."
Score: +17, Still-don't-get-it
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Can I get this on Kazaa?
Do please believe me: the last thing I am is a Britney Spears fan. I couldn't even remember a tune from her.
But to get things straight: She's been professionally singing and performing in Musicals on Broadway since about the age of 10. _professionally_, _singing_, _performing_, _age of 10_. Get it?
The age when us kind was gaming on atari or SNES and was at least 3 years away from even doing our first lines of basic. She's a performer and an entertainer, and, believe it or not, she's damn good at it. With the support of an uber-patient mother and father she's worked herself up from that girl next door to somebody who's got a licence to print money. 'Tell you what: Go eat your hearts out.
Bottom Line: I'd suggest the slashdot crowd quit babbling on stuff they can't summon the slightest shade of competence on (popular stage performance and entertainment) and go back to comparing sendmail and postfix. After all, that's what we're actually good at.
Thank you.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I'm not sure if its worth mentioning, but the old line that "the theory 'eye for an eye' leaves us all blind" is still largely true. More disturbingly, it suggests that rehabilitation is completely impossible.
"Stumble before you crawl"
Sharecroppers is a pretty good term, but indentured servant almost applies, since many artists end up owing the label money, with their work tied up legally so they can't rerecord it, and sometimes contracts they can't escape from. Most artists don't earn jack from the record label (even fairly big and well known artists). If something gets a lot of airplay (or clubplay, or anything that BMI/ASCAP collect money for), they may get some money from publishing, but even that's iffy for a lot of artists who have a small but steady following. For every Madonna or Britney Spears, the labels have screwed a thousand smaller artists who don't suck, but aren't consistent with the business model of "small range of product, huge distribution".
w eb.html). The issue of independent bands and filesharing comes up, and most people he knows don't have much problem with filesharing- they're not getting paid by their distributors anyway.
The reason you're seeing "name" acts like They Might Be Giants (and one of my favorites, http://www.neubauten.org) going it alone is that they weren't making any money being on a record label anyway, and they can find a way to do better by dealing with distribution on their own over the web (or combination web and snailmail). A lot of these bands never had terribly good support from their label anyway, and got to be known through word of mouth/college radio/touring. Over the next few years we can probably expect to see some bands make it big without being on a major. Then they just have to deal with Clear Channel's attempts to control major venues...
(only partially off topic: I know a computer wargame company that also has done extremely well by self publishing after having bad experiences with the big publishers, and then subsequently acting as a very developer friendly boutique publisher for similar games. http://www.battlefront.com)
Here's the obligatory link to Steve Albini's "Problem with Music" article: http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
and another to a long (~hour) video clip of him giving a talk and answering questions (http://www.mtsu.edu/~nadam/downloads/Stevealbini
I know musicians who are in the self-publishing space. They don't have labels, or promoters, or any of that stuff, and they're not on iTunes. So, not only are their choices for distribution more limited, but what they get in exchange for doing all of this themselves is a whole lot less free time, in which to write/play/record. They may make a bit more on each CD they sell--and it's not a LOT more, since none of the things they have to do are any more free than they are for the labels--but it costs them time to do it, and they have to run their own business besides.
It's unfortunate that music is so popular that it requires an industry to feed it, and it's doubly unfortunate that the cost breakdown pays back based on the actual percentage expense of doing your part, rather than the effort, and triply so that that is abused by the labels, and I do hope the internet is going to change that, and soon. I think iTunes is one step along that road toward transforming the music business, but it won't happen overnight.
Most of you all have seen the cartoon of a tree swing made by committee. (?)
p
r ic kell/
http://www.businessballs.com/treeswing.htm
It reminds me of the record business.
Seriously, some of the talent scouts really CAN tell what's really good just by listening (some got the job from their uncle/auntie).
That's where the trouble starts, no one can make a decision-much less a decent pitch without invoking the gods of pop for comparison.
The reason no one is buying is because they're picking stinkers.
Example:
Bonnie Raitt's Nick of Time.
http://www.bonnieraitt.com/disc_nick_of_time.ph
Took marketing totally by surprise!, she was deemed "washed up".
Surprise!
The listening public had NO trouble picking this little gem out and making it gold (what? double platinum).
Another artist they don't push:
http://www.universalrecords.com/quicktime/edieb
Brilliant stuff (for the genre).
If the recording companies were smart they let us pick the hits.
You know, a Fresh Artist, New release download area (with marketing pushing the site heavily).
Many Ears make for a NO Brainer(TM)
My favorite example:
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/corinnemusic
These artists are hiding in plain site.
The record companies (why yes, I DO know of what I speak) need to fire some people a get with the program.
~hylas