I read this article about how the whole music publishing system works. I was
imagining the process to be pretty straightforward: You, the artist, are
given money by the label to make your album, and once it's done they
distribute it, giving you a share of every unit sold. Couldn't be more
wrong -- the sells of the vast majority of albums published by recording
companies are monetary fodder for the Ricky Martins, Aguileras and Britneys
of the music industry. That is to say, most artists aren't making almost any
money off their record sales. The way it works is this: You are given the
money to make your album, but it would have to sell rather well (in between
90,000 to 200,000 units) before you start getting royalties. When you do,
you get around 1.40$ for every unit sold. Since the label's profits for an
album before they start giving royalties to the artist ranges between about
one million to two million dollars, there's a lot there that goes beyond the
original investment in the artist. Yes, the rest goes mainly to marketing,
but the real shocker is it's mostly for the marketing of *other artists*,
mainly those teen sensations of the type listed above. Gives you a warm
fuzzy feeling to know that a large part of the money you shelled out for the
US release of Select Ambient Works II is going to go to produce N'Sync's
next video clip, eh?
Cheers, Cloth
-----Original Message-----
From: atomly [mailto:atomly@atomly.com]
Sent: Monday, September 11, 2000 1:55 PM
To: idm@hyperreal.org
Subject: Re: [idm] IDM in the US mainstream
On Mon, Sep 11, 2000 at 03:55:04PM -0500, Kent williams wrote:
quoted 5 lines The problem with electronic music is the inherent conservatism of
> The problem with electronic music is the inherent conservatism of
> the US market, coupled with the mega-monolithic business model of major
> label record companies. You're never going to get 2 million people to buy
> Funkstorung, and the major labels aren't interested in developing artists
> who don't have the potential of being big unit shifters.
Yea, Kent pretty much hit it on the head here. As recently as the 60's,
"independent" labels were able to get singles into the top 10, but now
only the majors (Universial, EMI, Warner, Sony and BMG) can get decent
distribution much less hits.
quoted 3 lines Electronic artists also control the means of production. They turn in
> Electronic artists also control the means of production. They turn in
> their records on a CDR. A big part of the major label game is suckering
> people into taking big advances and then twisting up the accounting so
that
quoted 2 lines they never come out ahead. You sell records AND you screw the artist by
> they never come out ahead. You sell records AND you screw the artist by
> making him pay you back any money you give them. AND you take their
publishing
quoted 1 line rights so they don't have royalties!
> rights so they don't have royalties!
Once again, Kent is dead on... For a good explanation of this, read
Steve Albini's (member of Shellac, Rapeman and Big Black, producer of
Nirvana, PJ Harvey, Page and Plant, etc) rant on this at
http://www.atomly.com/random/albini.html
--
:: atomly ::
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http://www.atomly.com |
http://www.mp3.com/atomly
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