With paltry streaming royalties and a cost-of-touring crisis, it’s harder than ever to make money as a musician. Claudia Cockerell on the household names who are taking up side hustles, and what it says about the state of the music industry
For anyone unaware, the “music industry” had a brief period around 1960-1978 where they led youth culture and brought some decent artists to the fore, including [everyone]. Which was ironic as they started mostly as a goof by rich people or a front by the mafia.
A “record deal” was always a sucker’s deal because they’d loan you $300,000 or whatever and then decide how much you’d paid them back over however many years you made them money. The companies didn’t buy videos or tour buses or billboards or anything -they fronted the money and the artist paid for that, usually without knowing it.
Around 1980, in a coke-fueled bender that lasted over a decade, they decided “fuck it” and just screwed everyone they could for every dollar they could. Fortunately, they were so stupid and up their own asses that mp3s destroyed them after a decade of them trying to decide who was going to get fucked more than who else. (Anyone remember the DAT wars?)
Billions were made but the artist usually only saw a small fraction of that because record companies were “riding the gravy train” and living fat off all the money. Nothing has changed. No one is going to wake up. It was always this bad. It’s just that being a touring musician used to be at least a job and a career and now it’s pretty rare.
If it helps, think of it like this - there’s no one in any seat of real power in the “music industry” who is a musician. They don’t give a shit about what they’re selling, it could be cow pies for all they care - they’d look and act exactly like they do now because it has 100% nothing to do with music. It’s just marketing a persona and bilking them for all they can.
And it’s been that way the entire time. Yes, there are exceptions, but not many.
Back during the Napster days, Howard Stern had the Foo Fighters on. He asked them what their thought of the whole Napster vs. Metallica legal debate.
Dave Grohl told him he was 100 percent for Napster, explaining that they barely made a dime from record sales, and instead made the bulk of their money from touring and t-shirt sales. And that very few musicians were in the same boat as Metallica, actually making money from their album sales.
So from that point of view, the more people who were exposed to their music meant the more folks who might want to go see them in concert.
Right before MP3’s, record labels treated a lot of their albums as products to sell. This required a marketing budget to go along with it including a lot of promotional material like music videos and concert tours for promotional purposes. The drop in revenue due to MP3’s killed that model and it never returned.
Concert tickets are so expensive because record labels took control of that part of the revenue stream to find their promotion/marketing business. And promotion is no longer a small activity run by a band’s groupies. The reason that Trent Reznor signed with a new label after he went independent was because he wasn’t able to compete with the marketing arms of these companies.
For anyone unaware, the “music industry” had a brief period around 1960-1978 where they led youth culture and brought some decent artists to the fore, including [everyone]. Which was ironic as they started mostly as a goof by rich people or a front by the mafia.
A “record deal” was always a sucker’s deal because they’d loan you $300,000 or whatever and then decide how much you’d paid them back over however many years you made them money. The companies didn’t buy videos or tour buses or billboards or anything -they fronted the money and the artist paid for that, usually without knowing it.
Around 1980, in a coke-fueled bender that lasted over a decade, they decided “fuck it” and just screwed everyone they could for every dollar they could. Fortunately, they were so stupid and up their own asses that mp3s destroyed them after a decade of them trying to decide who was going to get fucked more than who else. (Anyone remember the DAT wars?)
Billions were made but the artist usually only saw a small fraction of that because record companies were “riding the gravy train” and living fat off all the money. Nothing has changed. No one is going to wake up. It was always this bad. It’s just that being a touring musician used to be at least a job and a career and now it’s pretty rare.
If it helps, think of it like this - there’s no one in any seat of real power in the “music industry” who is a musician. They don’t give a shit about what they’re selling, it could be cow pies for all they care - they’d look and act exactly like they do now because it has 100% nothing to do with music. It’s just marketing a persona and bilking them for all they can.
And it’s been that way the entire time. Yes, there are exceptions, but not many.
Back during the Napster days, Howard Stern had the Foo Fighters on. He asked them what their thought of the whole Napster vs. Metallica legal debate.
Dave Grohl told him he was 100 percent for Napster, explaining that they barely made a dime from record sales, and instead made the bulk of their money from touring and t-shirt sales. And that very few musicians were in the same boat as Metallica, actually making money from their album sales.
So from that point of view, the more people who were exposed to their music meant the more folks who might want to go see them in concert.
Right before MP3’s, record labels treated a lot of their albums as products to sell. This required a marketing budget to go along with it including a lot of promotional material like music videos and concert tours for promotional purposes. The drop in revenue due to MP3’s killed that model and it never returned.
Concert tickets are so expensive because record labels took control of that part of the revenue stream to find their promotion/marketing business. And promotion is no longer a small activity run by a band’s groupies. The reason that Trent Reznor signed with a new label after he went independent was because he wasn’t able to compete with the marketing arms of these companies.
I fear this is happening to every industry
Ouch, just like video game industry :-/
Any “industry” that doesn’t sell a physical product and many who do.
Any “industry” that doesn’t sell a physical product and many who do.
At this point, there’s no one at the wheel at all. It’s all algorithms.