{"id":33294,"date":"2015-10-24T02:00:07","date_gmt":"2015-10-24T06:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=33294"},"modified":"2015-10-21T12:57:42","modified_gmt":"2015-10-21T16:57:42","slug":"the-vicious-economic-model-of-the-music-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/10\/24\/the-vicious-economic-model-of-the-music-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"The (vicious) economic model of the music industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

A post by Kristine Kathryn Rusch<\/a> from a few years ago, talking about the “standard” abuses musicians were subject to under 1990s-era studio contracts:<\/p>\n

Those of us who exist on the periphery of the music industry have heard for years that new artists and even established ones can\u2019t make money in the traditional music industry.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t understand that until I read Jacob Slichter\u2019s So You Wanna Be A Rock \u2019N Roll Star<\/em> several years ago. He wrote about a system in which a musician who signed a deal with a major record label could end up owing the label tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. He delineated it all out in a long book that showed just how the label ended up taking a na\u00efve artist and putting him into debt.<\/p>\n

Slichter said this was why so many rock bands disbanded \u2014 because the band itself was a legal entity and as a legal entity it was in hock to the studio. The only way the musicians could continue to perform and try to earn money from their music was to create a new legal entity and abandon the old one. Otherwise, they were working in a kind of indentured servitude.<\/p>\n

Think this is just sour grapes from one musician who didn\u2019t make it big? Look at a link<\/a> that a reader from last week gave me. It\u2019s from a magazine I\u2019ve never heard of called Maximum Rock \u2019n\u2019 Roll<\/em> and was written by rock producer named Steve Albini. I\u2019m not so sure how dodgy this website is that I\u2019m sending you to \u2014 I don\u2019t know if they violated Mr. Albini\u2019s copyright by reproducing this piece. I\u2019m going to trust that they didn\u2019t, because y\u2019all need to see these numbers.<\/p>\n

For those of you who can\u2019t be bothered to check the link, Albini lays out the line-by-line \u201ccosts\u201d that the musicians agreed to when they signed their record deal. The musicians received a $250,000 advance. But by the time the album got released and the tour was completed, the advance was gone \u2014 and the musicians owed the record label $14,000.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re understanding me right. The \u201cstandard\u201d contractually negotiated costs that the musicians agreed would come out of their pockets came to $264,000. The only way for the artists to recoup that loss was to sign a new deal with the label, often at lesser terms. If the label even wanted to sign them. (That part is courtesy of Slichter)<\/p>\n

How much did the label earn \u2014 with the same costs deducted?<\/p>\n

$710,000. In 1990s dollars.<\/p>\n

Albini also lists how much each \u201cplayer\u201d made. He includes a producer ($90,000), a manager ($51,000), an agent, ($7500) and a lawyer ($12,000).<\/p>\n

He writes, \u201cThe band is now \u00bc of the way through its contract, has made the music industry more than 3 million dollars richer, but is in the hole $14,000 in royalties. The band members have each earned about 1\/3 as much as they would working at a 7-11, but they got to ride in a tour bus for a month. The next album will be about the same, except that the record company will insist they spend more time and money on it. Since the previous one never \u2018recouped,\u2019 the band will have no leverage and will oblige.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A post by Kristine Kathryn Rusch from a few years ago, talking about the “standard” abuses musicians were subject to under 1990s-era studio contracts: Those of us who exist on the periphery of the music industry have heard for years that new artists and even established ones can\u2019t make money in the traditional music industry. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,9,28],"tags":[529,200],"class_list":["post-33294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-law","category-media","tag-lawyers","tag-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8F0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33295,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33294\/revisions\/33295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}