at the risk of igniting another mp3 downloading thrash, I wanted to
point people to rolling stone's list of "rock's 50 richest" in its
latest issue. it's, well, suggestive, to say the least.
as you might expect, the list is depressingly dominated by old farts
(paul mcCartney, rolling stones) and a few young farts ( dave matthews).
the striking thing to me is that most of the biggest money makers made
the vast majority of their bucks touring, with most earning only a small
portion from recording and publishing. greated, it's not news that tours
are the big money makers but I hadn't realized just how skewed the
numbers are.
J. Lo, who didn't tour, still made only 10 percent of her money from
music with the vast bulk of it coming from her role in maid in
manhattan.
also: Rush made more than J.Lo, Dr. Dre, Britney, the Neptunes, and
Nelly. Paul McCartney made more than all of them put together.
in case you're wondering, autechre doesn't make the list.
joking aside, though, I wonder how "superstar dj" types fare compare
with rock acts. The only names on the list who could even loosely be
described as electronic acts are the neptunes and maybe dre and eminem
(as producers anyway).
the question is whether music artists big and small are simply going to
have to accept that recorded music is turning into a "loss leader" --
advertisement for tours and various kinds of merchandising.
or maybe they just need to become large-assed movie stars.
in an unrelated -- well, or maybe not so unrelated -- matter: I know
people were talking about mr. scruff. if you haven't already, check out
his videos at the ninjatune website. very entertaining. I still sorta
like his first one best but the newest one is pretty elaborate and
entertaining.
--
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