Ah, the music industry
Jul. 14th, 2010 05:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marinessFrom multiple sources, a couple of recent articles explain again why most musicians make no money from record sales - and why most of that money ends up heading to the record label.
This is why some artists - the one that comes to mind is Jane Siberry - have given up on the concept of record sales altogether, while many others survive on touring and/or creating their own CDs/flash drives as best they can without the assistance of a major record label. I've met a few musicians who, if not exactly living life up in mansions and privately owned jets, are doing decently enough with independently produced CDs and small to large performances here and there. And others that are not doing financially well at all, which could be chalked up to the starving musician syndrome, but in part has to do with a large portion of an audience's limited resources going to record labels and the evil that is Ticketmaster (the last two times I've bought tickets through Ticketmaster - for Stephen Lynch and Jonathon Coulton, the Ticketmaster fees were 1/3 of the cost of the ticket.)
What's not mentioned here is another issue: the fees charged to record copyrighted songs. It's been awhile, so I don't remember the exact numbers involved, but some time ago, the singing group that I was directing was considering putting together a CD. One song we did rather well was "White Christmas," and since we certainly had no problems crediting and paying the Irving Berlin estate, and besides, didn't want to get the independent recording studio considering helping us out into any trouble, we figured we would just get a license for the song, pay whatever fees/royalties and move on.
The problem was, the initial fee - for a song, remember, written in 1940 and made famous not so much by Berlin but by Bing Crosby - was in the thousands of dollars. Thousands. Regardless of whether or not we sold a single CD. So, we rapidly dropped the idea of including "White Christmas" (and ended up not doing the CD at all, at least not with my involvement, but that's another story). The same thing - fees/royalties for copyrighted songs - are also part of the money musicians will owe record companies if they aren't playing their own work.
Off topic, while typing this up I lost a key from my three month old computer - maybe four month. Ok, yes, I realize I bought a cheap computer, but still!
(It's just the top of the left cursor key. I really don't type that hard. Maybe it was a cat.)
This is why some artists - the one that comes to mind is Jane Siberry - have given up on the concept of record sales altogether, while many others survive on touring and/or creating their own CDs/flash drives as best they can without the assistance of a major record label. I've met a few musicians who, if not exactly living life up in mansions and privately owned jets, are doing decently enough with independently produced CDs and small to large performances here and there. And others that are not doing financially well at all, which could be chalked up to the starving musician syndrome, but in part has to do with a large portion of an audience's limited resources going to record labels and the evil that is Ticketmaster (the last two times I've bought tickets through Ticketmaster - for Stephen Lynch and Jonathon Coulton, the Ticketmaster fees were 1/3 of the cost of the ticket.)
What's not mentioned here is another issue: the fees charged to record copyrighted songs. It's been awhile, so I don't remember the exact numbers involved, but some time ago, the singing group that I was directing was considering putting together a CD. One song we did rather well was "White Christmas," and since we certainly had no problems crediting and paying the Irving Berlin estate, and besides, didn't want to get the independent recording studio considering helping us out into any trouble, we figured we would just get a license for the song, pay whatever fees/royalties and move on.
The problem was, the initial fee - for a song, remember, written in 1940 and made famous not so much by Berlin but by Bing Crosby - was in the thousands of dollars. Thousands. Regardless of whether or not we sold a single CD. So, we rapidly dropped the idea of including "White Christmas" (and ended up not doing the CD at all, at least not with my involvement, but that's another story). The same thing - fees/royalties for copyrighted songs - are also part of the money musicians will owe record companies if they aren't playing their own work.
Off topic, while typing this up I lost a key from my three month old computer - maybe four month. Ok, yes, I realize I bought a cheap computer, but still!
(It's just the top of the left cursor key. I really don't type that hard. Maybe it was a cat.)