Does the Master Own You??

Yes Sir Boss! I was willing to do anything to get famous and get off this merry-go-round of being an unknown artist. I just signed my first record contract and we go into the studio with a by the numbers producer. I don’t even know his name!

Yeah partner! The record company said that they would take my masters and keep them for me! That is so sweet of them. They just know that we’re going to be the next hot band in America! They even advanced us 50,000 dollars to do the album, video, pay the producer and pay for a swanky spot in Beverly Hills while we record this!

Our agent is brilliant! He told the publishing company that we signed with that we don’t need a revision clause as far as publishing with them. It’s an 80-20 deal and that’s peanuts because we’re going to sell millions and millions of records! The record company is setting us up right now. We’ll be bigger than the other bands that came before us!

We owe them a CD every 8 months and if the previous one doesn’t sell, then they would take the profits from the second CD and put it towards the balance due for the first one not selling! Gee, this is great business practice.

I’ll let my manager and agent handle all the business stuff! I don’t have time for all of that. I’ve got songs to write and girls that will scream over me! Sometimes, I feel like I’m in jail, but at least the jail has a nice bed and is air conditioned.

As an indie artist, you need to master your career and be the master of your destiny.

As you are chasing your record deal, stop and think. Will you control the Master or will the Master control you?

Recoupable Expenses

There are several big temptations when a representative from a major label comes knocking on the door of an indie band. One of the biggest is, of course, the chance to get the music out to a much broader audience than indie status could ever hope to achieve. The other is money.

Signing with a big label may seem like the key to riches, but in fact it may actually leave a band in a deeper financial hole than when they started out. To begin with, although big labels try to offer increased promotion to the acts they sign due to the clout gained by merger after merger and a general lack of diversity in terms of ownership in the radio market, the fact remains that most albums signed produced by a major label fail to generate any revenue.

So, if you are among the acts who does not make money for a big label, well at least you gave it a shot. No harm done, right? Wrong. You may not have sold your soul to get that deal, but big labels are all about a sneaky little thing called recoupable expenses. That’s right; in the end, all of the production, the touring support, the marketing are going to come out of the artists’ pocket anyway. If you happen to be in the greater percentage of artists who do not sell a ton of records, your debt will carry over to the next album.

Indie artists need to be very careful when the shark is circling in the water. The benefits of signing with a major label are generally not worth the risks. Remember, all of the “big” artists you hear about are success stories of the labels: those who end up indebted are never heard from.

How Labels Shaft Musicians - 2. The Hidden Costs

There are an alarming number of ways that record labels manage to bleed extra money from their clients. In a lot of cases these are charges that you and I would generally believe to be acceptable costs that the label themselves should pay. A prime example is "secretly" paying independent promoters to promote the single or album. They usually do this by paying radio stations to play the music. Record labels claim to do this in order that the radio stations don’t know they’re being paid by the label. You might believe this would fall under the remit of the label, as being part of the marketing costs. However, in many contracts, deep down in the incredibly small print, you will usually find that the label would rather the band paid for it. Once the contract is signed, of course, there is nothing that can be done. The most difficult part of this for musicians to bear is that the independent promoter is not as affordable as his name would suggest. The cost of this little transaction can easily be in the range of $500,000 or possibly even more. There is no guarantee that the independent promoter has a positive effect or that it is even they who get the record played on the radio. The band also has no say in whether it goes ahead or not. The ist on signing a contract with a large label then do read every last letter of the fine print. If possible get a solicitor to look it over to be sure that you aren’t signing away your unborn children.

How Labels Shaft Musicians - 1. Selling Your Soul

There are actually several points neatly rolled into one post here but they’re all essentially based around the initial signing of that elusive first contract and even slightly before that.When a label A&R guy turns up to a gig and likes what he hears he generally brings the equivalent of a pre-contract agreement with him. He tells the band that this agreement enables him to speak to the label about them and vice versa. All is not at it seems, even at this early stage. Most unsigned bands, though, would jump through hoops at this point and understandably sign the agreement. This pre-contract agreement in actual fact ties the band or musician to that particular label. It prevents them from contacting any other label or signing any agreements with another label. Essentially, unless the band agrees to the deal offered by the music label, they are left with no deal and no possibility of signing another deal. Eventually, the band will sign whatever the label has to offer. Usually this is a long contract requiring the band to commit to at least 5 albums and numerous videos. Obviously, if the first album is successful they’re still stuck with the same deal despite being a much more marketable prospect. What makes this worse is that while the band have essentially no way of getting out of the contract without being sued by the label, the reverse is not true. The label essentially have the right to cancel the agreement whenever they choose. Slow album sales or poor progress on an album will often see the label cancel their agreement. Bearing in mind how soon this occurs in the relationship between label and musician the early signs are not good.

 

Why Major Labels Suck - Volume 1

First, let me explain why this is titled version 1. The logic is simple. There will undoubtedly be a lot of these posts because there are an almost insurmountable number of reasons why major labels suck. I’ll try my best not to simply state that they con artists out of money, although in many cases they do, and give a more rounded opinion. So, in volume 1 we’re going to briefly discuss how major labels con artists out of money when they offer digital downloads to consumers. Weird Al Yankovic pointed out that he makes considerably less (although, still considerably more than most I would imagine) money when his singles or albums sell as digital downloads. He points out that while it costs the labels and producers considerably less money to offer a song for download than to produce it on CD the artist sees less money. This despite, in the case of iTunes, an album only costing the consumer a couple of dollars less. Thedigitalmusicweblog rather conveniently did some math to save every one else the effort so thanks for that. I’ll cut a somewhat long mathematical story short here. Not only does the post point out that Weird Al (like so many other artists) only receives 4% of the sales from his digital music but also that he would be earning, on average, $45 for every thousand songs sold. That’s 4.5 cents per song; when you consider that albums from Weird Al sell on iTunes for around $12 each that’s ludicrous. In contrast, a $15 CD would line Weird Al’s pockets with about 31 cents per song. Obviously, the morale of this story to most of us is not that we should buy the CD to make artists more money but something else. Artists on the books of major record labels get shafted whether their music sells digitally or on CD. Keep your eyes peeled for volume 2, which is sure to be with you sooner than you think.

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