I am so sick of hearing people complaining about how the music industry isnt the same as it was 30 friggin years ago. The real reason the music industry is hurting (and its the ENTIRE industry -- not just rock music) is because most consumers realized that record labels, distributors and manufacturers have been ripping them off for decades (and theyve been ripping off the artists they love, too). It used to work like this: 1) Work your ass off and record a demo. 2) Get noticed by a (major) record label. 3) They gave you a big cash advance to record your album with a producer and engineer at a nice studio and so you could shoot a music video for what they decided was going to be your smash hit single that they then, in most cases, paid radio stations to play every 20 minutes. 4) Because the market is so easily oversaturated (pre-internet), EVERYBODY and their brother hears this song or sees the music video because its friggin EVERYWHERE, they all bought the album. 5) Well, guess what? Its pretty easy to pay back that hefty cash advance when your label has basically cornered the market for you (Actually, it ISNT easy -- but well get to that in a minute). 6) After that cash advance and all the expenses youve racked up have been paid back to the record company, and you hit milestones in your recording contract (your album going gold at 500,000 copies or platinum at 1,000,000), they actually start paying you. See, the majority of artists contracts pay them something like 22 cents per album sold, and then after those milestones are hit, those numbers increase (it could be marginally, it could be significantly -- depends on the terms of the contract). Wait. That only applies to like, maybe 5% of musical artists. A large amount of them NEVER see ANY money, even back in the days when all of the above was standard practice. Want to know why? So, about 95% of the $13.99 your fans just paid for your new CD never gets to you. The majority of it goes to the record label, the distributor, the company that manufactures the CDs (or cassettes, or vinyl, etc.) -- and thats not even including promotional costs, management, booking agents, etc. So, knowing that, its pretty easy to understand that some people -- both the people buying the albums and the artists recording them -- should be pretty pissed off that theyve been getting ripped for the last 30 years or so, right? That alone should be enough to show you that record labels dont care about you, or the artform that is musical expression. Its about money for them, and that is it. Thats why they call it the music business, because thats all it is to those executives youre trying to get to notice you, its business. So suddenly (or not so suddenly, as its been a pretty steady decline over the last decade and a half or so), people arent paying for music anymore because they know both the artists and themselves are getting shafted. And for some reason, we have rock stars pointing the finger at fans as to the reason why their bosses arent paying them. The fans arent blameless here, but the real problem isnt them. The problem is that with the expansion of the information superhighway (i.e. the internet), record labels have become almost completely obsolete. You dont have to have a major label backing you to put out a high quality recording. You dont even need them to sell it. (Dont believe me? Conquering Dystopia and Polyphia both jumped into the Billboard top 200 charts selling their (debut) albums by THEMSELVES.) Record labels have been clinging to a business model that became obsolete several years ago and now that people are finally noticing, Gene Simmons says rock is dead. Yeah, its way harder to become an international superstar now, which sucks if thats what you want. BUT you know what? If thats the only reason you want to be a musician, you dont deserve to reach that plateau anyway, because youre in it for the wrong reasons. Nothing stays the same. Everything evolves over time, thats how life works. Expecting the music business to stay the same as it was decades ago is the same as complaining about technology advancing. Stuff becomes obsolete for a reason. Gene Simmons is basically complaining that, at age 65, after over 50 years in the business, hes no longer relevant. Hes like a 1959 Ford Mustang at this point (and thats a compliment, not an insult). Im not an advocate of piracy, but all these people complaining about the music industry being broken really pisses me off because a lot of the people complaining helped contribute to breaking it in the first place. Some of them didnt have a choice -- thats just the way it worked back then. But some of them, like Gene Simmons, are as much to blame as anybody because hes been ripping his fans off for decades (look at how much all that KISS merchandise cost to produce and how much they charged for it), so the fact that theyre the ones complaining really bugs me. I encourage you to support the musicians and bands and artists that you like because it does cost money to make the art that they do. It shouldnt be free, but I also encourage to look at where your money is going. The sooner we start paying the actual artists for the music they make, and stop relying on a middle man we dont even need anymore, the sooner the industry has a chance to recover.
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 07:23:15 +0000
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