Is any of it even available for public record? I had a music teacher once who claimed he got about $10 a year in royalties for a song he wrote a long time ago, but I don’t think there is any way to tell if that is the truth without a subpena.
Legendary producer Steve Albini wrote a fantastic article about this. Back when I played in a band, the LAST thing I wanted was a record contract. I just wanted to play and have a few beers and meet girls. Tour bus? No way, Jose - I liked gigging in town.
Here’s the intro to the article:
“Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed.”
From this site:
http://www.ram.org/ramblings/philosophy/fmp/albini.html
If that link disappears, just google ‘steve albini contract’. It’s the first 1000 hits.
I’ve heard of another tactic used in the fine print of new artists’ contracts: the artist is required to get their recording and video produced at specified facilities.
Said facilities turn out to be owned by the parent company, and can charge pretty much whatever rates they want, recouping everything paid to the artist (and then some).
As Mr. Burns would say, “Excellent!”
I dont mean to de-rail into any semi-arguements, but this is precisely while the file-sharing thing is so highly fought by the record companies; file sharing in the long run causes record companies to lose their monopoly.
Thats bad for business, which is why they’re fighting it so hard.
Of course, a very high percentage of people who start up a business selling something don’t make any or much money. And if selling that thing involves vast amounts of expense, the more so, even if unit sales are high.
Luckyseven, it appears to me at least a viable theory that the music industry fights filesharing because those involved in the industry (whether as the creators of the product or distributors or whatever) know that if people don’t pay for their product they won’t get paid. Dontchathink?
I was watching a news show a couple of years ago where Courtney Love and T-Boz Watkins were discussing this. After all the other expenses are taken out, an artist in a big-name band can wind up earning as little as $30K for recording a hit album. How concert revenues figure into this is not clear. I’m guessing the big cars and mansions are actually owned by the record companies, who loan out big $$$ in anticipation of future profits.
These artists really do owe their souls to the company store!
Just in case anyone on here ever has aspirations of becoming a professional musician, you can save a good deal of money by doing some things yourself that many people pay others to do.
For example, my band recently spent some time in a studio. To save us some money, I’m mixing the album myself instead of having a professional do it. 
Yep, signing a record contract is the kiss of death for most bands. I love playing in my band, but I wouldn’t sign a conventional contract; it would probably be a huge pay cut for me. Plus, being away from my family (on tour) is a non-starter.
The indie label route can be a better deal for bands. You don’t get much, if any up-front money or tour support, but what you do make will be yours. New Order made a lot of money this way.
I also suspect this is the case for many musicians.
I was reading an interview with Tony Iommi a few years back. According to Tony, the members of Black Sabbath were living high on the hog in the 1970’s. Each band member got anything he wanted – mansion, fancy cars, etc. But everything vanished the day after the band broke up. The band members later realized that they didn’t really own anything; all the goodies were leased. The record company simply pulled the plug when the money source dried up.
What an eye opener. I had a feeling that this went on, but was never sure. I always understood it to be that the artist make their “real” money touring. But I never knew the record companies were so manipulative. It explains so much of what we are hearing in music today.
Thanks for the interesting replies everyone.
Two friends (and ex-band mates) of mine are in Edwin McCain’s band. Neither of them lives extravagantly or has any substance abuse problems. As of a few years ago, after several gold records, they had essentially nothing.
Fortunately, after their earliest recordings passed out of the hands of the record label, they began selling their CDs themselves, through the website and live, finally starting to make pretty good money. They also say that merchandise sales (T-shirts, etc.) are very high-profit and generate at least as much revenue as CDs.
If it stays together for a long enough time and picks up a following, a shrewd, stable act has a shot at outlasting the record companies’ clutches. (Stupid, drugged-out musicians who hit it big are basically trainwrecks waiting to happen).
Such options were much less available before the internet and cheap CD repro, so it was probably even worse then.
I was always under the impression that artists really don’t make that much money off albums/singles (unless you drop a 5 million-plus bomb like G-n-R or Linkin Park). I always hear the real money is made off touring (if you tour smart). Is this still the case?
Most artists, even then, don’t make that much on album sales, unless they manage to buy the rights to their catalog. IIRC, Incubus’ album Morning View sold several million copies, and they didn’t see crap (George Ziemann posted some figuring on this, it may be archived on his RIAA page)…I imagine that, comparatively speaking, the few artists that manage to sell even ten million albums don’t see a whole heck of a lot. I think the average nominal royalty rate is somewhere between 1/3 and 1/5…but of course, it gets knocked way, way down from there, so many artists end up making less than half of what their supposed royalty rate is.
Yes, it’s generally accepted that most artists make the bulk of their income through touring - and merchandise sales, which usually coincide with touring (how much can it possibly cost to make those t-shirts they sell for $25-30?)
Normally this is the rule, but then what about this past summer, which, according to a news report i heard, was one of the worst for concert attendence ever.
I’ve talked to quite a number of people that work with, play in, or help manage “indie” bands that really feel that most “indie” labels are really a much better deal for all involved parties. Considering that you can now make a pretty decent sounding album for the cost of a PC and some sounds software there’s no earthly fucking reason to pat $4M in production costs on an album. So people like Brit Daniels from Spoon and company get a little bit of cash from moderate record sales (50,000 is a great number), and then they get the entire door-cost of their tickets ($8-12 minus touring costs and opening acts) while the venues they play make all of their money off of drinks and concession sales. Here in Denver, a large number of bands will easily attract 200-250 people, nothing compared to a real “pop” star, but a full grand of that or whatever will go to the band, plus T-shirts/stickers/etc., and they can actually make a decent living off their work while at the same time almost no one has a clue who the hell they are. Their audiences are much more consistent and into them than people that just recently heard the band on the radio and decided to come for one concert.
In a phrase: big record companies can go suck it.