If Major Labels Are All About Helping Artists, Why Do We Keep Seeing Artists Calling Out Their Labels For Screwing Them?
from the just-saying dept
It still really amazes me that anyone takes the major labels or the RIAA seriously when they make claims about how they're doing what they do to help artists. The labels have a long and detailed track record of screwing over artists at every opportunity. We're seeing some details around that in some of the recent lawsuits we've covered. But, as we've heard time and time again from various artists, it goes much further than just fancy RIAA accounting.The major labels tend to pick ahead of time just a few "winners" that they're going to put any real effort behind. If you're signed to a label, but aren't one of the chosen few, you're pretty much screwed. The label still owns everything, but you get no real marketing support, and you're limited in what you can do. So your album "flops" even though it was destined to do that from the beginning. To some extent, this is the nature of the business model that the majors have set up, where they only make money on a very small number of big hit albums, that they spend a ridiculous amount of money promoting. Everything else just isn't worth it for them. Of course, that doesn't mean those albums are bad, or that they might be quite profitable if they weren't locked into the majors' obsolete way of doing things. But for the artists who get the short end of one of those types of label deals it can be incredibly frustrating.
Take, for example, the situation of KiD CuDi, a hip hop artist who's been considered one of the bigger up and coming acts these days. However, he recently decided to go in a slightly different direction, and put together a more rock-influenced album, citing inspiration from Pink Floyd, Nirvana, the Pixies and ELO. That album came out yesterday, and apparently Universal Music decided that it wasn't going to support the album much at all, leading CuDi to unload on Universal via Twitter for its lack of support. Put together, his tweets read:
Ok so just a heads up, my weak ass label only shipped 55k physicals cuz they treated this like some indie side project tax right off. So i apologize on behalf of my weak ass major label. And I apologize for the lack of promo, again, my weak ass major label. They tried to rush me thru this so i can just give em another MOTM, but guess what? Fuck that, next album is WZRD. MOTM3 on hold til 2014. who mad??? not me and @DotDaGenius. So its def gonna be tough to find one in the stores guys, I'm sorry about that. I gotta go out and find one too, becuz my weak ass label never even gave us a copy of our own album. FAIL!!! Im lettin Universal Republic have it, fuck it. What they gon' do, spank me?? hahahaha. AND Teleport 2 Me, Jamie aint on the radio!!!! like helloooooooooo????? HIT HIT HIT!!!Obviously, Universal Republic made a decision not to support this album, because they don't think it'll bring back what they want it to. And that's their decision -- but that's one of the risks of signing with a major label, and it's one of the reasons why more artists should really think twice about giving so much control to an entity that might just decide to stop supporting you. I don't begrudge Universal making this decision, but it again highlights that the major labels aren't looking out for the best interests of the artists at all. They're looking out for their own best interests.
This isn't to say that all labels are bad. Artists can find some smart and innovative independent labels that still give the artists plenty of say and control, but the majors are the majors, and to think they represent the artists is clearly a joke. So when it comes to public policy debates, why do politicians and the press still continue to assume that the RIAA and major label view is what's best for the artists?
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Filed Under: kid cudi, labels, music, promotion, wzrd
Companies: universal music, universal republic
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They're not 'screwing' them, they just have different accounting standards from the rest of us, they're called Hollywood accounting standards.
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Labels can't afford to that as much now.
Blame yourself, pirate boy.
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So I guess I need to give a serious answer: lol @ blaming an idiotic system which produces more than it needs and plans to throw some away not working on piracy.
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No wonder they're not doing so well. They have no idea how to allocate resources!
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Selling records...
Todays children are spoiled layabouts who refuse to put in the effort to wind the mechanism up.
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Re: Super-Lolz!
You DO know they also charged the artist the cost of every album press, and then charged them again for the disposal of unsold albums, plus the cost of replacing any albums broken in transit, right?
Seriously, nobody can be that ignorant and still breathing...
Hmmmmmmmmm, are you an undead troll?
Are undead trolls still harmed by acid, or do you have to use positive energy? Do they still regenerate?
Your post raises so many questions...
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(sorry, the best I can do on short notice)
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bonus points if you got this before
I typed C.H.U.D.
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Online trolls are best combated by ignoring them though, so maybe setting them on fire and then ignoring them would be the best counter for them.
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Imagine selling all the albums you can without worrying about having to produce even 1 more than you need. Imagine not needing a system to do returns.
Oh, wait. We don't have to imagine that. There's this thing called the internet...
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No business can be forced to do business in a way that it doesn't want to.
/sarc
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Blasphemous pirate talk!!!
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Sad, but true. Marked insightful.
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So, you mean when the Government found Record Labels violating anti-trust laws?
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I'm confused. WTF does this have to do with digital sales and actually marketing and supporting the artists you have signed to your label? Wouldn't the modern music market make the above more efficient and easier (lower manufacture costs, no returns, etc)?
Oh, yeah, you're one of the idiots who looks at physical sales as if it's the entirety of the music industry. My mistake.
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Feb 29th, 2012 @ 2:00pm
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Talk about a straw man
The world is not a nice place and Hollywood is far from the nicest place in the world. So, by many standards the whole machine squeezes everything it can from the artists.
It's easy for anyone to look at a contract that paid them n% and think, "gosh I should have received n+1% or maybe even 2n%." And perhaps if they had negotiated better, they would get that. But perhaps not. Business is sloppy and rarely fair. Gosh, there are a number of coked out artists who never made a profit for the labels, even if you use normal accounting not Hollywood accounting.
This isn't just a fact of life in Hollywood, it's a fact of life everywhere. Business is hard.
Yet we're about to hear the astroturfing begin as Mike cues up the siren call from Big Search: give all of your hard work away for free. It will all work out. Honest. Hollywood will only give you pennies. Let us give you nothing and tell you it's cool. Cool is good.
And you know who has worse accounting standards than Hollywood? Big Search! They don't even provide any auditable data with the checks they give to blogs. You like it or get lost. And that's just the accounting for the sites that use the ads from Big Search. The average artist on the web gets zero, nada zilch because that's how Big Search likes it.
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I will give you a few points, though, since you did manage to write about 4 total paragraphs of text and not ONCE reference a single thing the article talked about. That takes some skill.
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To be fair, he doesn't really read the articles.
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To be really fair, he doesn't comprehend the articles he's not reading.
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And then it's all Big Search's fault because business is hard and life isn't fair?
That's ridiculous! Poor Big Artist . . .
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The thing is have you actually tried any of the stuff talked about here. Either on the Web or, heaven forbid, real life?
Are you an artist at all or just a blow hard?
Have you bothered to ask,oh, Bing, Yahoo or Google for an audit trail on their penny per click ads they scatter far and wide across the Web or are you just blowing so much smoke again? Have you or can you real annual reports?
And just what do you know about web artists? Or artists at all, for that matter.
Or have you just invented a demon called Big Search because Hollywood imagines there is such a thing and someone is probably making a slasher movie about it as I write this.
Bob, when you find and define this entity or demon known as Big Search, let us know. Keeping in mind that the job of any search engine is to actually index what is out there on the web, not to make moral, legal or other judgements of it. Just to index it so people can find things, the things they want. If you don't like that then I guess you'll have to tell us the rules you want in your fantasy web keeping in mind that Bing, Yahoo and Google aren't about to stop serving ads just for you.
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Labels Are All About Helping Artists
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Now the tough decision...do I buy it to show there's support for this album or jump on the "FUCK UNIVERSAL" bandwagon and just pirate it?
hmmm.. . .
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Yup. As Neil Young observed, "Piracy is the new radio." When the RIAA (and MPAA and academic publishers and . . . ) understand that and adapt their business models things will be good for the consumer and in the long run for "content industries". Unfortunately they all seem intent on making the "problem" of "piracy", which if it's not "the new radio" is really a black market in the face of state-created artificial scarcities, rather than "theft", worse by trying to defend their old business models with state power.
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You can always send Cudi a birthday card and say fuck the label, they didn't want to make money on this they don't have to.
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It's simple. It's best for the artists because the labels assume 100% of the risk for every underperforming artist they sign to their rosters. Not every artist performs as well as the outlay, and because of that, many artists feel they have been given the "shaft" by a lack of support from the label.
This Kid Cudi, whoever he is, should have known better than to express anything artistically other than what the label bargained for. Universal signed a hip hop artist and he had the audacity to deliver a rock record. As we all know (at least those of us who don't hack out blog pieces with slow-loading jpegs), the Late Winter-Early Spring quarter is prime hip-hop moving time. Rock moves during the summer, when people are looking forward to outdoor festivals and losing their virginity to someone with freshly-inked tattoos.
Hip hop is for snowbound days when wearing your year-round extra-puffy coat doesn't mean sacrificing comfort for cool. Kid Cudi knew what he was getting into when he signed the contract: a one-way street to riches paved with the gold inlays of failed hip hop artists who tried to dabble in other genres. (Remember Cypress Hill's rock album? No? I'm fairly sure Cypress Hill doesn't either.)
Now, as much fun as it is for rinky-dink bloggers like yourself to spout anti-label hate without bothering to dig into the facts behind Cudi's outburst, allow me to do the heavy lifting (and also point out that this page took the greater of 11.4 seconds to load completely -- completely ridiculous in this age of instant access and short attention spans -- it's almost as if your site is attempting to "window" the latest posts and create false scarcity by forcing me to open another tab and load something in that one while waiting for yours to finish).
This post has so many holes in it, I don't even know where to begin. But I suppose I'll start somewhere near the top to allow you and your fans the chance to follow along without being distracted by other tabs still loading in the background.
1. "it goes much further than just fancy RIAA accounting"
Without even attempting to imagine what the fuck exactly you mean by "it," let's deal with the rest of the sentence. "Fancy RIAA accounting?" What's so fancy about two sets of books? Everyone from semi-drivers to meth dealers use two sets of books. It's not dishonesty. It's redundancy. There may be some completely different totals in each book, but if you're the label absorbing 100% of the risk for clueless artists, you need to be able to track what their failure to hold up their end of the business relationship is costing you so that you can square that against any theoretical profits or royalties these same ungrateful artists might be whining about.
That's where the redundancy comes in. When one-hit wonders like Cudi or Kenny Rogers or anyone else comes looking for where their money has disappeared to, you show them one book. If that answer fails to satisfy them (and, likely, their lawyers), hurl the other book into the fire and make a loose comparison to the burning book and their hopes and dreams.
2. "If you're signed to a label, but aren't one of the chosen few, you're pretty much screwed."
This is patently false as anyone in the top 5% of artists can attest. The mega-millionaires got their solely on their talent and sticktoitiveness. Lady Gaga? Worked her way up by playing thousands of shows for the local strip club, often as a vocalist. John Mayer? When not spending his evenings busking at the bus station, he was selling pre-written love letters to bumbling frat boys at several major colleges. LMFAO? Not only did this group play thousands of show for the local strip club (often as a musical group), but they also penned dirty limericks for bumbling frat boys at several major colleges.
If you aren't making bank at a label, it's solely because you as the artist have failed to make an effort. Here are several links showing the other side of the story:
Former Label Heads Detail How Artists Screwed Them to Death; Also Piracy
Label Artist Loudly Defends Labels' Honor; Says 'Fuck' Quite a Bit
Hollywood Is Having a Tough Time of It Out There, What With Being Strangled By Artists, Piracy, the Boston Strangler, etc.
3. and 4. "I don't begrudge Universal making this decision, but it again highlights that the major labels aren't looking out for the best interests of the artists at all."
But they ARE looking out for the artists, Reznick. They're keeping the artists from expressing unpopular genre shifts through their recorded output. If every artist were given free reign to produce whatever the fuck they wanted to, it would be complete anarchy, and not the fun kind either. It would be the kind that sets fire to inflexible industries and their books and would result in an explosion of culture that would very likely maim anyone within a hundred feet of it. This being culture, that includes EVERYONE ON EARTH, INCLUDING THE ARTISTS.
Bottom line is: the bottom line. If Artist A (Kid CuDi) decides he wants to make a Pixies album, he should (at the very least) run this idea by a focus group composed of the people who know music best: entertainment lawyers. A short meeting with the legal team would probably find an uncleared 3-second sample and immediately vaporize the entire offending album just to be safe. CuDi would be allowed back into the studio to record his REAL album after a mandatory 48-hour quarantine/decontamination procedure.
5. "This isn't to say that all labels are bad."
THIS is the only part of your article I DON'T dispute, although I would seriously question the contraction rather than the spelled-out "is not." It just reads better and makes it seem as though some sort of care when into the generation of the other whatever number of words that went into both this piece and my counter-argument.
Last paragraph and you throw the labels a bone? How fucking generous? Most journalists at least try to fake a veneer of fair-mindedness and every single one of them would have spelled out "is not" in proper journalistic fashion. I'm not talking out of my ass. I know this shit. I'm not a journalist by I have assisted in webcrafting a few pay walls and registration boxes. BTW, yours is a complete atrocity. How in fuck do you expect to run a newspaper successfully if any person can just stroll in here anonymously and projectile vomit several hundred words all over the page?
6. I'm a very busy person with people to entertain and many, many new acquaintances to bullshit and impress with my Web 2.0 lingo. I would love to break down points 6-72, but my iPad needs charging and the fucking mini-bar is nearly empty.
Anyhow, I'm saving this post (and my response) to Google Docs. This way, the next time I'm trying to talk my way into a meeting or out of a harassment suit, I can look at all my many words and marvel at my own perspicacity.
BTW, if at any time you want to start producing some fucking data to back up these ridiculous claims of "label screws artist," please hit me up on ICQ. I practically wrote the goddamn thing one weekend way back in the day and the amount of data I sift through daily could choke an entire trainful of circus animals (if it were suddenly converted to peanuts or sand or something).
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You missed the part about the nearly empty minibar.
Apparently, when CLT gets drunk, he shifts from parody and mocking to full blown satire.
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because they are certainly lower those who hack out blog pieces in the comments of someone else's blog.
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+10 points for using "perspicacity"
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iTunes? BandCamp? Amazon?
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Teleport To Me, Jamie
Rain
Brake
"Brake" is incredible, btw.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiWH5KxMy2M
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I would say that the only "weak ass" in this is a guy who signed a deal that allowed the label to not promote him. Another one of those deals where there is probably more to the story. Want to bet he doesn't sell worth a damn, and is blaming his label to cover up for it?
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Unless you clearly are not paying attention, the major labels screw over the vast majority of artists they sign.
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"Cudi's debut album Man on the Moon: The End of Day was released on Universal Motown Records on September 15, 2009[13] and sold 104,419 copies in the first week and charted at #4"
"The lead single for Cudi's second studio album titled "Erase Me" featuring Kanye West and produced by Jim Jonsin, debuted on a Cleveland radio station June 30, 2010 and was officially released to Rhythm/Crossover radio on August 17, 2010.[30][31][32][33] The album debuted at number three on the US Billboard 200 chart, with first-week sales of 169,000 copies.[34] In its second week it crossed the 200,000 sales mark."
"Kid Cudi has sold over 4.6 million digital singles"
So he sells that many cds in about half a week normally. Ill take my million please.
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Basically, what he did the past is no indication of his future. Perhaps his label has "seen the light" and is pushing everything digital only. Maybe his new album is too "whatever" for retailers. Who knows?
If he kills the 55k copies in an hour, trust me someone will show up to turn out more. Money makes money.
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He gets no promotion because he doesn't stick to their formula "black people make hip-hops nad hip-pops only." Now its up to him to sell his album which is fine I guess if thats wasn't pretty much why people sign to labels. Of course once he finishes his 3rd hip hop album the label will be swinging from his dick again telling everyone how great he is.
They don't support him as an artist, they don't respect him as an artist and they don't care about his growth or his future. They care about product that fits a formula and can be marketed with the same strategy they always use. Rapper does leadbelly covers is different and therefore bad in their mind. He can sell digital himself, they are not promoting him, and now he realizes how pointless his contract is. Hopefully he pulls a Neil Young and just makes shitty albums to fulfill his contract and goes somewhere else before he makes his next hit record.
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But of course staying with the label is a choice for these artists. Its not like hip-hop thrives on collaboration and samples. /sarc
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Can you name a business that actually puts its employees interests before the corporate interests? Let me know, I'd like to put in a resume.
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Yes, they get offered a deal, but it is not employment. Most have no idea what that deal really means.
And don't forget that the labels and lobbyists usually claim all their efforts are for the artists. Except the accounting department of course.
Oh, and every 2 years or so, the rights they might retain, or the chance to get rights back is reduced by labels lobbying efforts ... wait for it ... for the artists.
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Can you name a business that actually puts its employees interests before the corporate interests? Let me know, I'd like to put in a resume.
All of which I pretty much said in the post itself (you don't read very well, do you?).
The point was not about that at all. It was about how you and your friends then go to Congress and the press and lie about how the interests of the major labels/studios represent what is best for the artists.
I can understand why you wouldn't see that. You're paid not to see the point.
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You're such a transparent, intellectually dishonest slimeball, Masnick.
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Citation needed. Difficulty: happening to hold the same opinion as someone from Google does not mean that "talking points" were passed along, no more than your idiotic rants mean you're paid by the RIAA to spew them here.
"To throw around terms like "censorship"?"
Citation needed as to why he was wrong to call it that.
"And to infer that people's Facebook might be disappeared?"
Did he ever say that? I suppose it could be said that a platform that depends as much on user input as Facebook could be found to be infringing and therefore sued out of existence, but that wouldn't be wrong. Citation, please.
"You're such a transparent, intellectually dishonest slimeball, Masnick."
...and you are incapable of mature adult discourse.
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Too bad for you that wasn't the SOPA bill.
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Typical.
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You're such a transparent, intellectually dishonest slimeball, Masnick.
Holy fuck are you delusional. Nothing in that paragraph is even close to true, though I'm flattered that you think that Google -- a multi-billion dollar company -- would think that it would make sense to feed me, a random blogger, talking points.
Though, seriously, if the company ever did that, do you know what a great freaking story that would be to expose?
Anyway, and then you call me "transparent intellectually dishonest slimeball"? After you make a ridiculously false assertion?
I don't think you're any of those things. I'm beginning to think you're just not very smart.
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It's why Google, a multi billion dollar company, agreed to host a seminar by some random blogger at their headquarters?
Come on Mike. False modesty just isn't your style.
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Heh. I recognize you're not from Silicon Valley, but if you were, you'd recognize that just about ANY company in the Valley can get Google to let them use a conference room for an event.
Suggesting that it's some sort of big deal is a statement made out of ignorance. ALL of the big SV companies do this. Microsoft, Facebook, SAP, Oracle, Intel, Google, Yahoo, Mozilla... all of them "host" events at their sites all the time. You basically just ask and they say okay, and in exchange you put up a "sponsored by" badge, and they get to show the community that they like startups.
Pretending it's anything more than that is just silly.
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Nyah nyah!
I'm rubber, you're glue! Bounces off ME and sticks to YOU!
Btw, thats what you sound like.
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I ain't got no time for this jibba-jabba
Because the ArTiStS have sold out! They have empowered the RIAA and the major labels ad nauseum to speak for them. C'mon Mike, you're too smart for a comment like this. KiD CuDi's done a deal with the devil and the devil's now doing him wrong so he goes off and twhines about it and you feel sorry for his dumb ass? Pleeese...
ArTiStS signed to Majors need to wake the f*** up to their new found creative reality and stop moaning when their sugar daddy spurns their creative musings. KiD CuDi got signed as a hip-hop artist, not a rock artist. This is the label's way of letting him know next time you want to change your aural color you let us know!
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What is an artist?
�
someone who creates things with great skill and imagination
-- I'd say that applies to the RIAA based on their hilarious comedy show "Record Label Accounting Practices"..strangely though the people who actually CREATED music for the big labels aren't laughing....
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