The Steel Guitar Forum

....interest in mind. (That was sarcasm.)

http://gear.ign.com/articles/749/749883p1.html


I love the internets.

Just sickening.

Read: Our MBAs who run the "record business" have payments to make on their pools, mansions, boats and vacation homes! College tuitions for thier kids!!!

Judge, get us more money so we can get back to the high flyin coke tootin' days on the 80's! We went to COLLEGE for this business stuff, and these musician bums are bleedin' us dry with thier 10 cents per song! Sometimes that's a dollar per CD! It costs us at least $2 to make them and distribute them! That only leaves us with $6 wholesale per CD! WE MUST MAKE MORE THAN SIX TIMES WHAT THOSE JERKS MAKE!

LET "EM EAT RAMEN NOODLES!!!!<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by John McGann on 14 December 2006 at 02:32 PM.]</p></FONT>

Just another argument for the DIY approach...

Steinar

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"Play to express, not to impress"
www.gregertsen.com
Southern Moon Northern Lights

Here's a picture of a record company executive giving an artist his royalties...

<SMALL>In publicly defending its strong arm tactics and stated desire to scare consumers into absolute compliance, the RIAA has long cited the negative repercussions of piracy and lost revenue upon the recording artists that pour their talent into making the music that people like to hear. It's a sympathetic defense, yet in the past week the RIAA has made it quite clear whose profits the group is truly out to defend, and it's certainly not the artists who actually make the music.</SMALL>

Uhhh - y'all surprised??

I'm not sure when exactly it happened (maybe at Woodstock when somebody saw ALL THOSE KIDS and said, "hey, we can make some serious money with this), but it seems like it used to be people who loved music started and ran the record companies. But now, sadly, it seems the companies are run by accountants who probably don't listen to music at all.

<SMALL>it seems the companies are run by accountants who probably don't listen to music at all. </SMALL>

...sure they listen to music... Jonh Tesh... Kenny G.... Céline Dion...

<SMALL>I'm not sure when exactly it happened (maybe at Woodstock when somebody saw ALL THOSE KIDS and said, "hey, we can make some serious money with this), but it seems like it used to be people who loved music started and ran the record companies. But now, sadly, it seems the companies are run by accountants who probably don't listen to music at all.</SMALL>

It happened in the '80s when all the major labels switched media formats and started releasing back catalogs on CD.
They(the labels) started turning outrageous profit margins, because everyone was buying all their favorite old albums on CD and the labels had already made their original investment on these albums years ago.

Then here comes all these investment firms, that watch what companies grow and earn then buy them out, and they see that record companies are making a 500% to 1000% profit.
So all those old record labels and studios get bought up by investment corporations.

All of a sudden '90s hit and everyone in the world now has all their favorite LP's on CD and those big profit margins disappeared. So the labels are back to just making a small profit, if even that. Except now they are owned by big investment corporation that insist on seeing a high profit margin. Now the record company executives are in a panic, and to help show a profit they just start cutting budgets. They get rid of long time artist that aren't selling as much as they used to, they get rid of in house jobs, like artist development.

Now the labels are with out most establish artist and with no artist development. CDs are being sold for $18+ and they are by some no name that you don't even know if you would like. They have no marketing budget, no development and lousy rushed production. All because the label executives are all under pressure to make big profits or loose tier jobs.
Then the digital music world hit the internet. People didn't want to pay almost $20 for a CD from an unknown artist, just to get it home and find out it sucked. They just wanted to hear a song or two off it. However the big labels had done off with just buying a single, it was all or nothing. So folks started trading songs online. If you don't give the people what they want, then they will find a way to get it.
To me this is where the industry really messed up. At the first sign of people trading songs on line they should have got into the businesses. Instead of the billions they spent fighting it and suing people over it. Now they finally have things like I-tunes and other places, to listen to a song or two by an artist to see if you want to buy it, and what do the record corporations do? They want more money from that now.

Now we are heading into 2007 and have seen what investment corporations, bean counter accountants and lawyers have done by pushing around the music industry for the past 20 years.

I think it's time that the record labels get away from the investment corporations along the expectation of make high profits and start making MUSIC again.

If they don't there is going to by a big change in the industry within the next ten years. Like I said before- if you don't give the people what they want, they will find a way to get it themselves.
It's already starting to happen with indie labels and online sites.

You make a lot of sense, Alvin. But most people never really think about things...they just accept everything as inevitable

<SMALL>The language of this statement reveals a great deal about who the RIAA is looking out for, and it's not artists.</SMALL>

Was there ever really any doubt? (I mean, among people whose I.Q. was greater than 75 or so?)

Ringtones?!?!? That's the greatest money-making ripoff since, what...Pet Rocks? "I bet we can sell 15 seconds of this hit song for a buck, and some fool will buy it!" Yup, they're making hundreds of millions of dollars on goofy ring-tones. P.T., you're right once again!

The second biggest ripoff scam is selling those pea-pod (downloaded) tunes for 99 cents each. (And the poor artists/songwriters are probably getting a nickel of that, if they're lucky!)

Let's rewind a minute...

Used to be, you'd buy an album. It cost $2.99-$3.99. For that sum, you got a nice big record-jacket, the record, and the 10 songs on it. Everyone made a profit...the studio, the execs, the artists, the writers, the distributors, the retailers, the plastic companies, the printers, the press makers, even the trucking companies!

Then came the CD.

They were about $10 back in 1979, or roughly double the prices of records. (They told us the CD cost far more to make - that was their excuse. Funny though, AOL sent out billions of CD's in the mail - for nothing! At one time, I was getting about one a week).

Now, fast-forward a coupld decades...in comes the pea-pod thing. Now you didn't even need records or CD's. You can just buy the bits and bytes, download them, and everything's hunky-dory. Problem is, ten songs <u>still</u> cost you $10. (Remember, that's what the "expensive" CD's cost 25 years ago) Technology's far better now (they can now press CD's far faster than they could ever press records), all the "middle-men" (those distributors, the retailers, the plastic companies, the printers, the press makers, even the trucking companies) are being cut out of the equation, and a flippin' CD's worth of songs is still costing $10.

Are we supposed to feel good about this "streamlined marketing approach"? (which has no physical product?)

Record collections are appreciating every year.

How much will all those bits and bytes on your pea-pod be worth in 10 years?

Oh yeah, that was yet <u>another</u> reason to come up with the download/pea-pod technology. They wanted to eliminate that collector's market - that they weren't making any profit from.

(Yes Virginia, big business thinks of everything! )

Since the record lables almost NEVER pay for an recordings,
that are NOT totally recouped by artists income,
they are losing nothing here. Unless the arist totally tanks.
And they don't sign new artists that
aren't on the lowest common denominator
musical gravey train.

But they, as usual, want a bigger piece of the little guys pie.

It is the
Recording Industry Association
Not
Recording Artists Association.<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by David L. Donald on 15 December 2006 at 11:13 PM.]</p></FONT>

...for the last time...the price of a CD(adjusted for inflation)is no more than a vinyl LP was in the 70s!Does a new Chevrolet Monte Carlo cost$4,000 now?NO!That's what one cost in'74...with a 454 and Rallye wheels-about$4400,actually...2006s are$20,000...a CD's worth of songs on Itunes is$10?That's$2.41 in 1974 dollars...I assure you that vinyl albums cost more than that in'74-I bought MANY of them at$3.99 plus tax.

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http://home.comcast.net/~steves_garage

<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Steve Hinson on 16 December 2006 at 07:03 AM.]</p></FONT><font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Steve Hinson on 16 December 2006 at 07:04 AM.]</p></FONT><font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Steve Hinson on 16 December 2006 at 12:50 PM.]</p></FONT>

What Steinar said (DIY).

Drew

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<font size=1>Drew Howard - website - Red guitars sound better!</font>

I still say that 1975 was the turning point in the music industry. By then, the major record labels realized there were a whole lot more people out there who could buy records, and they started going with 'what works' rather than emphasizing artist development.

No need to get upset.

Price comparisons (taking inflation into account) are often simply not valid. As an example, My first VCR was purchased in 1978 or '79 for $925. If I adjust for inflation, a VCR should cost about $2,800 today. You see, products that can be made more cheaply by using automated process technology should (and usually do) decline in price. (Computers are another good example.)

I think music CD's (the kind made by the millions by large companies) are overpriced, vastly overpriced. (And, I'm not alone.)

CD's produced by Forum members, in incredibly small runs, sell for less (usually) that those CD's by big stars (which are made in the millions).

To me, that doesn't make sense.

I think...no, I know that the big companies are ripping us off, royally.

Now, they're offering those "eye-tunes" for a buck apeice, and I think that's an even bigger ripoff. There's not even a physical product involved, they're just selling a download. A download that the artist/writer is getting a few pennies for, while the big label takes the other 95%. No longer does the big label have to risk pressing hundreds of thousands of anything. They post the recording on a server, and collect the money. In short, how can they lose??? The artist will probably pay for the studio time, and probably most of the promotion, out of his few pennies.

Some think there's nothing wrong with that.

But I do.

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I agree with Steinar on the DIY approach.

Earlier this year, six Canadian indie labels came to the same conclusion about who the CRIA (Canada's RIAA) supports, and left it. It's also discussed in this excellent blog post by an Ottawa intellectual-property lawyer. Key quote: "we do not feel that we can remain members [of CRIA] given CRIA's decision to advocate solely on behalf of the four major foreign multi-national labels.”

In a related move, several Canadian artists banded together to form their own advocacy group, with a statement of policy here. My favorite observation: "Suing Our Fans is Destructive and Hypocritical." (Ya think?)

No matter who owns them, the fact that 95% of recorded music comes from the same four corporations is sickening to me. (It was just as sickening when I heard about it in the '90s and the number was six.) Is it any wonder that these corporations have the loudest voice at the table?

I'd observed that the big labels have mostly given up on creative music (as opposed to "product") or artist development (now it's "sell 3 million of your debut or you're out"). I thought it was all about corporate mergers, but Alvin's explanation makes sense. The RIAA's tactics are just hammering more nails into the coffin, IMO.

Meanwhile, more and more fed-up customers are waking up to the existence of quality independent music. I don't mind that outcome at all.

<SMALL>My favorite observation: "Suing Our Fans is Destructive and Hypocritical."</SMALL>

I agree, it's nice to see some common sense being exhibited. But I think it's gonna be a hard road getting music back in the hands of the actual creators and their fans, much the same as it's difficult to get the food chain back into the hands of independent small farmers and consumers. Perhaps internet distribution will help equalize the playing field some, but I tend to think the fact that the broadcast media and major labels are in this together makes it hard for indies to get a lot of traction mainstream. But of course, one has to try. IMO, of course.

Even organizations like CD Baby sometimes overlook the accounting aspect. Just because one of your songs or CDs was sold doesn't mean that you as an artist will collect your pennies' worth.

A local singer/songwriter type I played for "tested" the system with CD Baby by buying his own CD from them. The purchase was never reported in his statement. After emailing a scathing letter to some rep, he got a response like, "We're very sorry. Sometimes it just gets lost in the system."

So if you want to talk about real ripoffs, how about sales and downloads that are underreported to the artist.

Good call, Steinar!

I guess that explains why more major league artists are getting into the perfume industry...

what's a shame is that articles like these are passed off as objective news reporting, when in fact they are not.

I know plenty of people that have been treated quite well by CD Baby. They seem like a great organization to me.

Donny,
Do you have any actual experience with with i-tunes ? There royalty system seems fair and they have been very good about making payments and reports to bands I play with.

I get the impression that for the most part the sharks and suits are gone. Except for a few trolls under the bridge that are left over. They are busy strip mining some other part of our economy now.
I mostly see very cooperative deals going on now. Bands are like small mom and pops and labels are like resorces that help out for an equitable split of the profits. 50/50 P and D deals are the most common with band paying production and labels paying promotion. No recoupables or cross collaterization. The people at these lables are much more into the music than I have ever seen. Plus they guys running the 400 and below venues across the country are often into it because of the love of music. Many are retired baby boomers that are spending there pensions on having great music come to there town. In some ways it is better than ever. All this music I'm talking about about is pretty much off the grid.
You still need a good lawyer and to do some research about who ever will be handeling your CD distribution. For instance Bar-None (out of Hoboken) records are complete lying scum that do not pay royalties.

I do agree that the RIAA are pretty rediculous with there cheap atempts at exploitation. They are just following radio into the tar pits.

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Bob
upcoming gigs
My Website



<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Bob Hoffnar on 26 December 2006 at 08:35 AM.]</p></FONT>

It seems like some of the newer, smaller publishing companies do a pretty good job at being cross-industry marketing outlets for their artists. I know of at least one publisher that licenses recordings of their artists to TV show production companies, advertising producers, film-makers, etc. etc. The publisher also sells compilations and albums of it's artists directly to the public.

I believe the deal is that the artist gets a predetermined percentage of the revenue generated by the publisher, but the artist is also free to do their own marketing of their CD's such as by selling them at concerts, or through their own website, or through record stores, etc.

I think this type of arrangement is a pretty good deal for those artists that are not real well know, but who are regionally popular.

<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Tom Olson on 26 December 2006 at 10:11 AM.]</p></FONT>