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.
I have a friends band that recorded their entire CD for under $3000. If you are dealing with the major lables however, the costs vary. For a new artist signed to a major label, the advance for recording can be anywhere from $175,000 to $300,000, however if you are megaartist, this number can go into the millions. Any money not spent on the recording goes directly into the artists pocket. However, its all recouperable. Artist royalties are usually still figiured on the retail price of casettes, even though they are cheaper. The SRLP of a casette is usually about $11.98. About $9.95 of this is usually available for the artist to take royalties out of because of a concept called free goods, where the record company gives away records to make retailers buy more. The average artist gets about %10. Which means for every record of whatever format sold, the artist gets about a dollar. This doesn't seem like much, but artists usually make most of their money on publishing royalties, not record royalties.
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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.
I have a friends band that recorded their entire CD for under $3000. If you are dealing with the major lables however, the costs vary. For a new artist signed to a major label, the advance for recording can be anywhere from $175,000 to $300,000, however if you are megaartist, this number can go into the millions. Any money not spent on the recording goes directly into the artists pocket. However, its all recouperable.
Artist royalties are usually still figiured on the retail price of casettes, even though they are cheaper. The SRLP of a casette is usually about $11.98. About $9.95 of this is usually available for the artist to take royalties out of because of a concept called free goods, where the record company gives away records to make retailers buy more. The average artist gets about %10. Which means for every record of whatever format sold, the artist gets about a dollar.
This doesn't seem like much, but artists usually make most of their money on publishing royalties, not record royalties.