RIAA Accounting: How To Sell 1 Million Albums And Still Owe $500,000
from the who's-ripping-off-whom-again? dept
Last year, we had a post on RIAA accounting, detailing how labels screw over many musicians, even some of the best selling ones, such that they never actually make a dime in royalties. Bas points us to an excellent 14 minute video from lawyer Martin Frascogna, entitled How To Sell 1 Million Albums and Owe $500,000:And, as we noted in the post last year, don't think that because a band goes "unrecouped" that the label loses money on them. The "recouping" only comes from the 10% royalty rates, which are really much, much lower (in this example, the "real" royalty rate is more like 2.5% due to the clauses in the contract). That leaves 97.5% of the money in play. Obviously, some of that is covering costs and expenses. But there's plenty of cash that makes its way into the label's bank account, when an album sells $20 million.
As for what kinds of tricks the labels use, well, Frascogna notes "breakage fees" of 20%, which are based on breakage rates for vinyl from half a century ago. That CDs don't break so much and that digital files don't break at all, doesn't matter. The labels still try to get a super high breakage rate that they get to deduct. For them, it's pure profit. Then there are "uncollected account" withholdings, on the basis that some retailers go bankrupt and don't pay for the stock they had. The way it's described here, that's often just a set number, rather than based on any actual, documented cases of uncollected fees. Next up? "Free goods." Now, we talk about the importance of free goods all the time. But here it's used in a different manner. Basically the labels deduct the "cost" of providing reviewers/radio stations/etc. with "free" copies of your album. That money comes straight out of the gross that the royalty is calculated on. The fact that you could just email the mp3 to those folks yourself? Well, pay no attention to that newfangled technology.
Next up, there are "container charges." That's for things like the jewel cases and inserts for CDs. Again, the fact that digital music doesn't have such expenses is pretty much ignored. Also, the fact that all of these expenses get deducted from the artists' share? That also seems wrong. Even more insane? Apparently the standard "container charge" is an additional 30% off the revenue. Again, in many cases that's just pure profit for the labels.
Finally, there's the ever lovely and totally amorphous "reserves." As Frascogna notes: "no one really knows what reserves entail." It's basically a blank check for the record labels to claim they have to keep some of the money themselves for "other stuff," which is mostly undefined. In this case, some labels simply set a straight percentage, up to 20% more of the gross that artists never get to see as part of their own royalties.
Bring all that together, and the 10% royalty looks more like a 2.5% royalty, and that's not enough to even get halfway to recouping even if you sell 1 million albums at the high high price of $20/album. And that doesn't even touch on splitting up any money you get between band members and paying the manager/agent, etc. When you dig in to things like this, you can understand how artists like Lyle Lovett can say they've sold 4.6 million albums and never made a dime in royalties from album sales.
Now, many of these points can be negotiable if you're knowledgeable about them. But many artists sign such contracts without realizing what that fine print really means -- and that's just what a lot of the labels are counting on.
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Filed Under: accounting, musicians, record labels
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Mike, You Just Dont Understand
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Re: Mike, You Just Dont Understand
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Re: Mike, You Just Dont Understand
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Re: Mike, You Just Dont Understand
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The only people that make money from music are the MAFIAA C.E'O's
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http://www.portfolio.com/culture-lifestyle/culture-inc/arts/2008/01/14/Britney-Spears-Career- Analysis/
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Even then however, if they want to keep their extravagant rock and roll life style they have to have a good solid investor working form them.
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Artists never toured before like they have to now. They got their mansions and fancy cars from record sales royalties.
Now, since people want to rip them off, they have to leave their families for 9 months a year to go out on the road to earn a living. Or they just quit. Nice work, asshole pirates.
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[Citation needed]
Protip: No, they didn't.
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You're a dork living in your mom's basement and you're going to try and convince me you know how the record business used to work? That's a good one.
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/sarc
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To be honest, I've never been shown convincing evidence that there was ANY time when artists made more money (profit here that goes to the artist - as we've already discussed in the above article, quite a bit does NOT make it to the artist) from recordings than from performances.
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The rest of your post is typical copywhiner ad-hominem, which is not worthy of in-depth response from me.
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I never need to pirate assholes. There's always plenty in the comment threads.
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I'm interested ... I've seen multiple people from within the industry publish case studies showing how the record label system screws over the artist.
Has anyone published a credible version that shows how great things were in the good old days before digital piracy?
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Check wikipedia under Fairy Tale, Myth, or legend
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Wow, that is so wrong. I suggest you take a historical stroll through the past and discover what they had to go through, even way back when.
Holy cow.
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They had to tour almost year round, and rode the ride. They toured in order to give out records and do interviews on local radio stations to build their audience. They went from small town radio station to small town radio station doing self promotion.
The sad part is that you're either in the industry and don't understand it, or not in it and still completely clueless.
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Clarification
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Re: Clarification
Do the labels reimburse retailers for shoplifting?
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No. Think of the "Breakage" fee as insurance for the record label. If a case of CDs was to fall out of a truck on the way to the store, and then get run over by another truck (never mind the fact that the shipping company would be responsible for the damage), the record label takes a bit of money our of the pool reserved to cover the loss of profit and expense incurred by such an incident.
If the case of CDs doesn't get damaged, then the record label can keep the money.
Either way, the record label keeps the money... It's a win win for everyone that is the record label!
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Re: Clarification
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Seeing as it costs them nothing when someone pirates an album and a digital file can't break on the way to itunes servers the digital sales breakage would be 0%.
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Re: Clarification
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It makes no sense - aside from producing an album that someone thought was worth stealing, it isn't the artist's fault/responsibility.
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That kind of accounting should land someone in jail...
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Re: That kind of accounting should land someone in jail...
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Re: Re: That kind of accounting should land someone in jail...
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Re: Re: That kind of accounting should land someone in jail...
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Re: That kind of accounting should land someone in jail...
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Tell them I said thank you while you still owe the real pirates $500k.
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There, decided i wasnt to lazy to google it.
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(I think I learned this on TechDirt, yay!)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRUBMBi_lp4
Embarrassingly, I can remember that on TV.
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Do you think perhaps that the artist made a good living off the advance, got to go on tour, got to sell concert tickets as a result of all the marketing and promotion, and all the came with it?
The royalty rate is still 10%. If they signed a contract and agreed to stupid, unsupportable fees, they have nobody to blame but themselves. The royalty rate is still 10%, they just stupidly allowed for 75% of the income to be expenses that don't have to be documented.
You wouldn't do that in any other business, so why sign a contract like that in the music business?
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Would you consider the average VC to be horrible too? Some of them buy up 90% of companies for a few dollars (making the investment) and when the company goes public, they make a ton of money. Do you think they should give money back to the founders or original workers just because they made too much?
The issue is bands and artists who sign contracts without understanding the implications, and then whine about it later.
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Um, no its not. The issue is our freedoms are being trampled in the name of "doing it for the artists". If people can't negotiate "fair" contracts, that is their problem. But if the mafIAA is buying influence in government to take away our freedoms than that is everyone's problem.
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It is done for the artists, because if the artists work isn't protected, there is no way to fund them to start with. The labels must protect their profits in order to be able to keep doing this sort of thing, otherwise there is no money for the artists.
Cause and effect. You cannot split them up and ignore the one you don't like.
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Growing and securing their profits does not mean pretending that we still live in the 90s and trying to find ways to pretend that technology hasn't advanced since then.
If they spent that 10% breaking fee on something like 'Technological Growth and Development' they would still be making money and they wouldn't have to run to the government every time something new comes out. Why should the governments of the world be responsible for a handful of business.
Record labels aren't too big to fail. Remember that. If the big labels were gone tomorrow, would we be any worse off? I doubt it. Because it's a lucrative business, I'm pretty sure someone step up to fill the void very quickly.
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And you douches keep trotting out some variation of, "if it's a bad contract, they shouldn't have signed it." Newsflash: If virtually every contract out there follows this same model (and they do, indubitably), AND you're naive enough to believe in the "golden ticket" the recording contract is supposed to represent, then you sign whatever contract is offered to you, or you go without one.
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This calls for a levy.
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See... most industries call that an 'investment'. And if they give the artists $1mil... and rake in $20mil... and write off the advance... that's not profit?
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You're saying that people who spend their lives playing instruments, with the percentage of high school dropouts pretty high for an industry should know about these things?
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People like you are pretty much caused the entire economic recession.
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But you're entitled to your opinion, unfortunately.
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Venture Capitalists vs. Private Equity firms
Check out the link to Fresh Air's story about Private Equity firms (particularly the last sentence below): "Private equity firms buy undervalued or underappreciated companies, impose short-term improvements and sell them for a fast profit. Some of the companies they've bought include Hertz, La Quinta, Dunkin Donuts, and Toys R Us. Josh Kosman, a private equity expert, says that the way the firms have been able to buy these businesses � through leveraged buyouts � means the majority of the money for the buyout has come from loans that the firms dump on the company they're supposedly fixing."
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And the only "tricks" going on here are the disingenuous ways a record contract is portrayed. For example, most indie deals are straight up 50/50. Indie record labels have been devastated by piracy. Masnick and the freetards don't care.
Also, the deal described is ludicrous. A record label is a venture capitalist in a far more ballsy way than most: they put ALL the money up, right at the front. The musician has a nice fat advance to go shopping with, but if they're stupid enough to sign a deal with a low royalty, that's thier fault and nobody else's.
Demonizing record labels is such a sleazy way to try and justify ripping off musicians, but that's never stopped Masnick before, has it?
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Keep chanting. If you say it enough, someday you might even convince yourself.
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Yes, they're for-profit companies. But there's a difference between making an honest buck and literally stealing from the hand that feeds you.
Yes, the artists that sign such contracts are stupid to agree to such terms but what about the people who WROTE the contracts in the first place? They are far more at fault here.
Also, please note, this article said nothing about justifying copyright infringement. What it said was that the very same companies who literally buy laws to "protect the artists" are instead more akin to parasites.
So tell me, what are we the consumer to do? We're being told to pay to support the artists, but the money isn't going to them. Just last week, a Spanish collection agency had its top brass arrested for fraud. I know, that's just one agency, but it was a very influential agency that had been trying to make it legit to extort license payments from all sorts of things.
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It's better for the artist if you pirate 10 of their albums and buy 1 t-shirt than if you "just" buy the 10 albums.
That is so fucked up right there.
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It is in many ways an attempt to justify something else, and the only "else" seems to be piracy.
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If you ignore all the posts about creative ways people make money in today's market, I agree, the only "else" is piracy.
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That's a ridiculous claim and you have nothing to support it. Search this site all you want and you'll never find Mike supporting piracy or attempting to justify it.
You mistake criticism of a system that ripped off its artists for years for piracy justification. As if sticking it to the major labels would somehow make more money roll downhill to the artists.
There's no justification going on here. He's presenting the average major label contract in all its perversely ugly glory and you think it's being used to justify something?
There's more time and letters wasted here by commenters like you on two unsupportable claims:
1. Major label contracts are good for artists.
2. Mike Masnick supports piracy.
Finding evidence to support either of those two claims is going to be a long, fruitless search.
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Nerds, dorks and geeks that know nothing about the music business want to believe it is, because they think it might then excuse them from ripping off musicians.
Besides, do pirates only rip off major labels? No? They rip off indies too? Then shut your lame-ass hypocritical piehole.
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Well, thanks for making my point for me: exposing the ugliness of a major label contract has nothing to do with justifying piracy.
And of course it isn't an "average major label contract." When it comes to arguments like this, you start sending everybody on a hunt for the mythical "true Scotman."
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoTrueScotsman
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I mean, the evil pirate-supporter Masnick has already linked to a video from an industry lawyer showing how artists are being conned by the labels. Now it's your turn to put the nerds, dorks and geeks in their place and show them how wrong we are. A bell curve showing how much the artists make from their recordings would be ideal, thanks.
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Re: To the 'piracy' comments
I understand the concept of a Label making as much money as they can, from whomever, including the artists. Donald Trump would even say, "Want your business to make money? Pay yourself first." Spotify has the same concept as record labels do in the music industry: Spotify business is huge right now, and huge money is being tranferred to many commercial marketing business owners. Money is being thrown around to everyone and, like the person who farmed the carrots, artists only get around .004 cents per song stream.
Business in this type of industry is largely manipulated for one purpose: The heavier the money-weighing scale leans on your side of business at the end of the day, the better you are at music business--the more money you will rake in. This is achieved by selling "star status" tactics and easily convincing an artist to sign for a huge loan--a massive loan.
At the end of the day, an artist (or farmer) feels like his work and talent is worth more than 0.4% of revenue return for the product, while the Commercial Advertising/Internet business takes the rest.
When someone tries to communicate this, it is not supporting piracy. It shows dislike with how much the money scale leans toward the certain departments of the industry.
Yes, everyone needs a piece of the pie, but how big is the slice being given to the artist?
I support anyone who is against how the music industry pays the valuable talent in the artists--the most valuable asset to the Music Industry Business.
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Without the music that the artist performs, the record label has nothing to sell. After they use the artist up and spit him or her out, they then hold the rights to the artist's recordings for decades.
I can tell you who I respect in this transaction, and it's not the vampire record labels.
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While they may not need a label in the traditional sense, they DO need some form of support to get their own asses out there to venues to play. Even IF they know where all the available places are to play, they still need the resources to get there, such as gas costs, food costs, and if they value hygiene at all a place to sleep & shower. And even though MP3's are overtaking CD's, people STILL buy CD's just as they still buy vinyl records.
This is why it is so difficult for bands starting out to say no to labels. It's not JUST the music. It's all the practical applications of putting the band out there. Besides, it's a little uninformed to say that a band doesn't need a record label at all. FYI, not every record label is a major record label. The vast majority aren't. And even though there are indie labels out there who operate with a major label mentality, there also record labels out there who offer artists more artistic control over their music. They just offer a more structured way for an artist to promote themselves.
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Because before the internet you couldn't self-distribute and advertise (on a large scale unless you were uber rich to begin with) and all the major labels had these clauses in their contract.
So it was sign a bad contract or don't get in the business. Its not like there were/are a lot of major labels offering good deals and idiots just signed with the wrong ones.
So when your band have previously made a couple grand a year and someone wants to throw a million dollars at you, but only if you sign this shitty contract, what would you do? Make a couple grand a year and slowly expand your market until hopefully someday you make money or take the fucking million knowing you will never make another dime on any albums covered in that contract
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It's obviously important for artists to be aware of the contract they're signing and this video certainly highlights some of the things to look out for. At the same time, it's fairly one-sided.
The band was given $300k upfront - when nobody really knew if the album (that didn't exist yet) was going to sell well. The label spent $500k in studio fees and another $200k on a top producer and engineer. In other words, the label has invested $1m on recording the album. They then have to pay for manufacturing, distribution, promotion etc.
Also slightly misleading is that the $500k debt that the band has ended up with isn't a real debt; they don't have to pay it back. It's just a number on a balance sheet.
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Makes you wonder who owns the studio and why they an charge that much given the cost of professional recording equipment these days..
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Play that with the usual musician stereotype of someone who has been busting their ass playing in dive bars and clubs for years trying to get a break, barely able to make rent, and now suddenly has a $1m contract thrust on them with a $500k advance. The RIAA is knowingly exploiting the situation these people are in and dazzling them with big numbers.
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Mostly 'cause there's 100s of other suckers desperate to fight you to get there first. It's easy to rationalise value in something that so many people are so desperate for. Ask Steve Albini about 'the trough'... but finish lunch/brekkie first.
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Because if the artist doesn't agree to the contract, they don't even get to make 2.5% on their music. See also: monopoly
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I do like the fact that just because it's legal it can't be unjust. It's quite an American attitude (not sure whether you are or not).
I any case I usually find that people like you with hyper-capitalist attitudes are the first to whine when things like this happen to them.
I guess what I'm trying to say, ever so politely, is just shut up.
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So while many of those people maybe have been ignorant in signing those contracts, that doesn't excuse the actions of these labels nor should it absolve them of responsibility to play more fairly with their artists.
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Jul 7th, 2011 @ 12:06pm
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Wait a sec, Mike: did the band get $1M? If so, that's plenty.
Now, if your point is that record labels ALSO make too much money, you'd be right. But you're wrong if ignoring the absolutes of a $1M advance for merely playing music.
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Re: Wait a sec, Mike: did the band get $1M? If so, that's plenty.
article then.
Yes, the band got $1 million, but they had to pay to recored the album, pay managers, lawyers, etc...
After taxes, they end up with $180,000. For the whole band.
E
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Re: Re: Wait a sec, Mike: did the band get $1M? If so, that's plenty.
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Re: Re: Re: Wait a sec, Mike: did the band get $1M? If so, that's plenty.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait a sec, Mike: did the band get $1M? If so, that's plenty.
Needless to say, you're wrong, as the freetards always seem to be, with remarkable consistency...
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait a sec, Mike: did the band get $1M? If so, that's plenty.
How is your career going? Not seeing your big mythical piles of cash, and assuming those darned PIRATES must be responsible? Your kind is so pathetic. You stand for nothing, and accomplish even less than that.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait a sec, Mike: did the band get $1M? If so, that's plenty.
To use an old example, you don't have to be a terrorist to be an expert on terrorist mechanisms, nor do you have to be a Goth to be an expert on Gothic architecture.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait a sec, Mike: did the band get $1M? If so, that's plenty.
What a convincing argument.
Sod off.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait a sec, Mike: did the band get $1M? If so, that's plenty.
And how do you know that, shilltard? Or are we to believe an badmouthed AC just because he spews out adhominems? Very convincing.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait a sec, Mike: did the band get $1M? If so, that's plenty.
Why not post the facts about the business instead of resorting to childish name calling? Acting like a 5 year old in a business discussion is not a particularly compelling line of argument.
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Re: Re: Wait a sec, Mike: did the band get $1M? If so, that's plenty.
article then.
Yes, the band got $1 million, but they had to pay to recored the album, pay managers, lawyers, etc...
After taxes, they end up with $180,000. For the whole band.
So in otherwords - if they would have posted their music for free on the web, and sold t-shirts; they may well have doubled their profits...
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Re: Wait a sec, Mike: did the band get $1M? If so, that's plenty.
So no, the record label did not hand the band a $1,000,000 check and say "now go make us a winner!" Hope that clears it up for you.
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Re: Wait a sec, Mike: did the band get $1M? If so, that's plenty.
Also, don't farmers usually have to take out a sizable loan to start out? You confuse me.
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If they are losing money by signing too many bands that flop, then they need to decrease their costs so that unproven bands are less of a risk instead of spreading out the costs amongst all their artists.
It's like Wal Mart charging $100 for every item in the store, because the rotten fruits/veggies won't sell. The difference is that Wal Mart spends their capital on efficiencies to lower consumers' costs, whereas the RIAA spends their capital on litigation and regulation in order to decrease consumer satisfaction.
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Isn't it Ironic...Don't You Think?
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Innacurate and It doesn't need to be
First 20 dollars as the base retail price for a CD. Even in the 90's I don't recall many single cds that were 20 dollars. 15 dollars would be a more accurate SLRP for today, while most albums are sold for less than that.
Second, Most contracts base a royalty on the SLRP not on the wholesale, so I believe he is incorrect there.
Third - Reserves are based on returns not potential spends. Labels are paid on ships, not sales, and so reserves are for the returns that inevitably come from a operating in a consignment industry as Martin states. I find it odd that he says that no one understands the point of reserves. I would say more accurately that some people are poor at incorporating the math of reserves into their projections, but I would hope that everyone who negotiated a contract with a reserve clause understands the concept.
There are several more inaccuracies and exaggerations in this video that I'll omit to save time, and the sad thing is that he didn't need to do that. The actual accounting is draconian to say the least, I'd like to see an actual record contract broken down not mythical norms in potential scenarios to see what would be potentially owed on either side. This is actually what artists ( or their lawyers ) should do. They should break down a model of possible scenarios under the proposed contract and see how much you would have to sell and the label would spend to end up at an agreeable numbers on both sides.
The contract is a blueprint for a financial model - why not just run the numbers of several scenarios beforehand.
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record deals
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Couple of details...
1. SRLP (Suggest Retail List Price) is often much higher than the realistic list price. In the 90s & 00s major label CD SRLPs were as high as 19.98 for a major artist. A consumer would have to hunt for a record store that was silly enough to sell the CD for that much, but on paper that meant that each sale was worth $20. It makes all of the numbers more impressive. (2 examples: "We sold $10 million worth!" or "Pirates cost us $10 million!")
2. I've seen contracts with royalties based on both wholesale price AND SRLP. I don't know which is more common, but both certainly exist for at least small to mid-sized acts & their labels.
3. Reserves are basically a % of the prospective sales that have occurred within a pay period that are held over until the following pay period (or for 2 pay periods, or more, depending on the contract).
In this case, a "sale" is a release sent to a store or distributor on consignment. They can still return it and it ceases to be a sale. On a balance sheet, the "sale" is a positive addition and a "return" is a negative addition.
The understandable and to me, acceptable justification for this is: Every new release has a huge burst of sales when it is first offered. In the 2nd 6 months of a record's life cycle (sometimes earlier if it's a smaller release, sometimes later if it's a larger release) there is a sudden influx of returns from stores and distributors. This happens because the stores and distributors have a limited return window for releases and if a record's just sitting there, they'll return it for credit & order something else.
A lot of times, a release will have a large initial sales period that shows "sales" of $$$. Then, the subsequent returns will wipe out the vast majority of those "sales" and if the label didn't hedge its bets by taking out a reserve for that first pay period, it would've paid $ to the band for sales that didn't actually happen. (It's one of the few places where a band has an advantage over a label)
Thing is, if a release DOES have such a backlash of returns and the label has paid the band for phantom sales, that release is usually pretty dead in the water and the label may show that overpayment for years or even forever. The fabled "long tail" can be pretty fucking long!
Here's an example of what I'm talking about
Key: month, sales in that month, returns in that month (total sales):
1st month 500
2nd month 250 (750)
3rd month 200 (950)
4th month 200, -100 (1050)
5th month 10, -400 (660)
6th month 30, -250 (440)
7th month 25, -50 (415)
8th month 25, -5 (435)
9th month 20 (455)
10th month 20 (475)
and so on... if the band & the label are lucky, it turns into a catalog title that clicks over steadily, maybe with bumps as the band tours or gets more well known. Usually, the long tail becomes really really long.
Please note: I am not in any way excusing or explaining the bookkeeping tricks of the major labels, or even the larger indie labels who use those tricks.
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Re: Couple of details...
The manufacturing costs shouldn't be borne by the band (container charge) unless it's allowed by contract.
For example, we recoup art fees above and beyond a standard art cost. We also recoup certain costs related to certain formats, for the same reason. Everything else is borne by the label.
Also, keep in mind that things that are recouped by the label are actually paid for up front by the label and recouped from future sales, so it's not as if the band is physically paying for recoupable costs.
P.P.S.- Listening to this video while typing and I think there's a few problems with it. Glacial Concepts pointed the issue of the definition of reserves. I'll have to go back and listen to the video again because he wasn't making any sense.
About the SRLP & the $20 million starting place in the video: No sane label or band will see 1,000,000 sales and assume that all of the SRLP is being paid to the label.
Everyone knows that the label ONLY gets the wholesale price for each sale, just like in any other business that works on a distributor model (food, automobiles, clothing, other consumer goods, etc).
It sucks because I appreciate any easy-to-understand primer on the ways that record labels can fleece the unprepared. I wish he'd started at the wholesale price ($10,000,000 in his example) instead.
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Re: Re: Couple of details...
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Re: Re: Re: Couple of details...
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F*&^ that...
This is worse than Kevin Smith's experiences from the movie industry...
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pimps
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(as a web designer I have to point out the appropriate use of the blink tag)
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Idiots blaming the victim
The folks getting ripped off are musicians, they are not lawyers or accountants. The evil record labels deliberately add arcane language in a concerted effort to obfuscate and masquerade the kind of deal the artist is signing up for. Then, they go after the general public for more money, even going as far as suing 12 year old kids and elderly people on social security for millions of dollars for "copyright violations" when the labels themselves are violating the creators of such material. Not to mention that the record labels force feed us crappy music. They do all this, then wonder why the public becomes so disenchanted with the state of the music industry.
All of these bait-and-switch and strong arming tactics simply do nothing more than add to the riches of the record labels. Blaming the artist for record company evil is like blaming the victim of a crime. It's unconscionable.
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Re: Reserves
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This article is better...
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
It goes into more detail than the article above, and its written by someone with a ton of first hand experience dealing with labels. Definitely worth reading, especially if you are in a band.
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breakage and free goods
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Confussion
I think it was 1991 that the law changed so that any band who
get's dropped by a label (before paying back their advance) will not be liable from their own pocket. My band signed for �200k, we got dropped and kept the money (what was left anyway)!
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http://www.musicthinktank.com/blog/what-are-the-odds-of-succeeding-without-a-record-deal.h tml
Has a cool graphic at the bottom showing the odds and figures!
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Courtney talked about this 11 years ago.
Seriously, this is not a news flash. She outed this behavior a decade ago. While everyone likes to think Courtney is dumb as a box of rocks, when she's sober and coherent...she's actually a pretty smart lady.
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D'Oh! Winner!
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They still make money...
Long story short, don't go label. do it yourself!
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Re: They still make money...
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Advance -getting it wrong
Yeah, easy to say. Its your own fault for signing, but usually its between signing the contract or getting a job at McDonalds. One party holds all of the power, the record company is usually not that desparate to sign, while this represents the artists future.
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HOw the labels cut artists out
For "artists" (IMO better defined as "Idle Americans"), they can develop the "idea", and developing the idea - which we assume is less important - is left to people who rip off the deserving idle Americans.
For IP, we reverse that. The idea is totally unimportant, and anyone who develops it should be entitled to all the credit (and profit?).
Why am I not understanding this?
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So none of you have cell phones under contract right? Cause those contracts suck donkey balls too. Of course, I'm sure you can negotiate better contracts with the cell phone companies.
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Re:
do you buy from the indies and only take from the majors or are you indiscriminate in your gluttonous consumption?
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Pirating is already in the accounting
It's not like it's new, or the industry isn't used to it. They've dealt with it all along, but it's only now - since it's digital, that they're making a big fuss. Why? Because, being online, it's somewhat detectable and traceable. Controllable - e.g. it can be legislated for at the ISP level.
The labels never before, in the past, had this ability to discover pirates (mainly now thru use of peer-to-peer) so they simply built it into their accounting. They doubtless still do. If pirating was magically eradicated, they *still would* (like the over-large "breakage fee").
I'm pretty tech-savvy. All my friends are young and professional and they have *no idea* how to download stuff. They buy Apple for gods sake, that practically guarantees they don't have the skills to do anything outside iTunes and Tiny Wings.
So I'm sure that although it's easier to pirate *lots* of music now than it was in the past, *fewer* people are doing it. And that makes all the difference.
Just say 10 million albums are downloaded for free every year. Sounds like a lot. If every download was a different person, then sure you could say 10 million lost sales. But if most of the downloads are done by a tiny percentage of people, what's the lost sales? They could never actually buy all the the music they download.
So the majority of downloads don't equate to lost sales. Actual lost sales would not be any higher, per capita, that it has been in the past. Probably less, considering you need to be savvy (and I don't mean "I have an iPhone4" savvy) to do it. And in the past the labels have sucked it up. It's already part of their accounting.
They're just making a fuss about it these days because they see the chance to control it - and therefore make more money than they do already, because they're sure as hell not going to give the bands any more money, even if nobody pirates at all anymore.
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Re: Pirating is already in the accounting
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The Results
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Re: The Results
Best thing to do? Just avoid radio (if you're doing that already, keep on doing it) and download/use Spotifiy, etc. as much as possible.
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What a great deal! What are you doing being an attorney? Go and record artists!
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Now i get it
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RIAA Accounting
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Shouldn't they be able to get a loan with better rates somewhere else? What actual function does the labels serve?
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Shouldn't they be able to get a loan with better rates somewhere else? What actual function does the labels serve?
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Re:
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Re:
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Updated version of the video (original removed)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcwgdB0NltY
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Breakage fees
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramophone_record
http://vinyl-record.co.uk/Pages/VinylRecordHi story.htm
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Records
THANKS CRYSTAL MANN
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Music business
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Property Investment
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