Home
sign up| features / music feature |
 content by: editor |
 music industry uncovered - part two
Part two of our guide to questionable music industry practices. Six reasons why being an artist signed to a major label is a mug’s game:1. “Business terms are negotiated by the record company from a position of overwhelming strength and unmatchable advantage. The history of the music industry is a history of dissembling, conflict of interest, exploitation and theft - legal, illegal and quasi-legal.” Robert Fripp, King Crimson. 2. How come an industry with a 95 per cent failure rate - only 5 per cent of records released make the successful sales grade - survives? Well, the major labels have engineered it so that they cream off just about all the profit, with the artist eventually getting a measly 2-5 per cent. The majors seem to hate artists being in profit to them because it means that the label has become answerable to the artist. The majority of recording contracts, ie 90 per cent, point out that any TV advertising whatsoever instantly cuts a band’s royalty rate by 50 per cent - stick them on TV and tighten the screws. Bands start paying royalties once they come into profit, until then absolutely all costs are paid for out of the artist’s advance and budgeted by the record company in accordance with their - not the band’s - wishes. 3. Independent labels, producing more innovative sounds than the majors, have not seen any decline in sales over recent years. Meanwhile, the majors have experienced a drop in sales, despite desperate attempts to recoup these losses by embracing the Pop Idol format. Hence they push “faux indie” labels like Heavenly and Mute (EMI), or 679 (Warners), or Delta Sonic (Sony). 4. In order to reduce its tax bill, a label will sign artists at the end of the tax year - bands whose career the label has no interest in whatsoever. And record companies love death - RIP means it doesn’t take long for the retrospective albums and repackaging machine to hit the shelves. Suicide is painless for a major label. 5. A&R scouts are not permitted to write contracts, but will push their new band a “deal memo”, a supposedly loose letter of intent to firm up the fact that the band will sign to the record label once a contract has been drawn up and agreed upon. But this “memo” is, in fact, a legally binding document. The band remains tied to the deal memo until the contract is signed, no matter how long it takes. In most cases, bands are tied to a label for life, but have no single union that represents them, no pension fund and no counselling body or health care provision - unlike actors, for example. They crack up a lot, musicians. 6. A mass of artists whose records have generated massive profits for the major labels end up utterly skint. Major acts, such as Toni Braxton, have declared bankruptcy because their finances were so squeezed by their label contract. Industry pundits believe that the reason Braxton filed was purely so that the court would void her contract with LaFace. And although Jimi Hendrix’s back catalogue reaps millions for Universal Music, his family gets none of it due to corrupt contracts.
Stuart Turnbull
 conversations
Read members' comments.
|
 |
related info
 useful linkswww.aandronline.com
note: The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
music  music archive Watch music sessions and interviews from 2002 to 2008. books  books and comics archive Author interviews and reviews from 2002 to 2008. |
send to a friend
music industry
access 1000s of articles