I believe that. The industry should get it under RICO.

Post #54,614 by jake123 10/3/02 2:00:06 AM Reply	I believe that. The industry should get it under RICO. Well, I can tell you something I was told once. Moist is a Canadian band that had a quadruple platinum album in Canada called Creature. That meant that they had record sales of over 400,000 copies. There are five people in the band. Total income in royalties among the five amounted to less than 200,000 dollars... significantly less; I was told that they made about 40k each the year that album did that, and they toured constantly, and that most of their income was actually from doing shows, not from royalties. Creature was perhaps the second or third best selling album in Canada that year. I have no trouble believing that at all. I've been a pro musician, and know many many pro musicians. Here's the progression the further you get into the industry: record company execs are weasels, whores, leeches, cocksuckers, bloodsuckers, vampires. I have family in the retail end of music as well, and I calculate that the breakdown (assuming a price of 20$/CD, which is about average up here) as 2M for the retailers, 5.5M for the label, and perhaps as much as .5M to the band... most of which was clawed back by the label for promotion and recording costs... on which they charge a markup. Also, the management (which is also part of the label) collects a percentage on everything, like merch, road pay (what they get paid to play a show), autograph fees, interview fees, and so on... between all the parties getting into the act, it's very common to see over half of all touring income get taxed away by the various management groups that the label enforces on most artists. It's a very dirty business. There's a great song by Albert Collins called "Personal Manager" that discusses this... I recommend it if you can find a copy. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------- * Jack Troughton jake at consultron.ca * * [link\|http://consultron.ca \|[link\|http://consultron.ca\|http://consultron.ca] ] irc.ecomstation.ca * * Laval Qu\ufffdbec Canada [link\|news://news.consultron.ca\|news://news.consultron.ca] * -------------------------------------------------------------------
Post #54,625 by ben_tilly 10/3/02 7:07:33 AM Reply	In other words The way that they are trying to treat us is a pale echo of how they have been treating musicians all along. I can believe it. It would still would be nice to have something official to give to people along those lines. Cheers, Ben "Career politicians are inherently untrustworthy; if it spends its life buzzing around the outhouse, it\ufffds probably a fly." - [link\|http://www.nationalinterest.org/issues/58/Mead.html\|Walter Mead]
Post #54,647 by jake123 10/3/02 10:29:15 AM Reply	Re: In other words The way that they are trying to treat us is a pale echo of how they have been treating musicians all along. Yep, pretty much. And if you think it's bad now, consider all the artists from the forties and fifties that got a new car for a record that earned the companies hundreds of thousands of dollars (an expensive car running about four to five grand in those days)... or that got diddly squat. I can believe it. It would still would be nice to have something official to give to people along those lines. Well, unfortunately, I don't think you're going to see something like that until someone gets prosecuted. Record contracts are under NDA; they spell out quite specifically what artists are and are not allowed to discuss with the public about them, and carry quite heavy penalties if those clauses are contravened. A large part of the issue is that the seeming teeming masses of record companies basically come down to three entities (see the article for the list). There has been a lot of collusion over the years between manufacturers, distributors, and retailers over the years. However, since until quite recently almost all of this was owned lock stock and barrel by the Yanks there hasn't been a lot of impetus to move on the apparent abuses by the cartel. Why are things changing now? Well, taking a look at those companies one quickly realises that none of them are American now... the US recording industry has been bought out wholesale by overseas interests. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------- * Jack Troughton jake at consultron.ca * * [link\|http://consultron.ca \|[link\|http://consultron.ca\|http://consultron.ca] ] irc.ecomstation.ca * * Laval Qu\ufffdbec Canada [link\|news://news.consultron.ca\|news://news.consultron.ca] * -------------------------------------------------------------------
Post #54,695 by Steve Lowe 10/3/02 1:09:02 PM Reply	Yup. I know a couple of recording artists. One a punk rocker from England and the other a Christian Music folk guitarist from South Dakota. They don't want me spreading their names around because of NDA. They both say the same thing: They only make money on concerts, very little on media sales. Both of them support filesharing stuff like Napster and the like because it gets there music out there. They don't care whether music is out there by radio, filesharing, or by people buying CDs and tapes. The publicity is what gets tickets to concerts sold, and that's how they make their $. Butts in the seats! ----- Steve
Post #54,928 by jake123 10/4/02 3:25:36 PM Reply	You've indirectly touched on the reason... ... the RIAA and ilk are so afraid of the Internet. Musicians aren't hurt, because their current structure doesn't reward them anyway, and it helps put butts in seats... which means the musicians aren't dependent on them for marketing to help them put the butts in the seats anymore. Combine that with the fact that good recordings can be made for spectacularly small sums nowadays... Of course, it doesn't occur to the vampire whores to actually share the rewards with the workers who produce the goods they profit on... instead, they're trying to legalise it out of existence. After all, if they can do that, they can continue on their fat dumb and happy ways. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------- * Jack Troughton jake at consultron.ca * * [link\|http://consultron.ca \|[link\|http://consultron.ca\|http://consultron.ca] ] irc.ecomstation.ca * * Laval Qu\ufffdbec Canada [link\|news://news.consultron.ca\|news://news.consultron.ca] * -------------------------------------------------------------------
Post #71,088 by Arkadiy 12/27/02 12:45:01 PM Reply	If they aren't making money, why are they dealing with those sleasebags? -- We have only 2 things to worry about: That things will never get back to normal, and that they already have.

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