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Originally Posted by boneheaddoctor
True, but the RIAA is who takes the lions share of record sales....artists even with good contracts get a paultry sum...
More artists need to be able to do direct sales...(which I can imagine is prohibited in most contracts)
Sad fact is most of the new music they push on us the hardest is pretty pathetic these days..while the better artists don't get the same treatment, or airtime.
I for one admit I love Metallica....however I refuse to buy their music out of principle over their Napster lawsuit ( Napster introduced me to new artists I never heard on the radio at the time). And I am the type person who pushes back when shoved. And I feel shoved by the RIAA actions.
I don't feel all artists are behind the RIAA...unfortunately except for a handfull the choice is limited. You can't buy their music direct as a protest to the RIAA. So while I do feel bad for the artists that suffer for it...I feel the greater evil is the RIAA. Lot of grey here but for me the scale tips to hurt the RIAA where it matters most...their balance sheets. When its over hopefully the Artists will keep a greater share of the sales for their music.
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Believe me, I'm quite familiar with how lopsided major-label record deals are... I've endured TWO of them.
Which makes it all the more harmful to artists when you pirate their music instead of buying it.
Direct sales, as you describe them, are extremely difficult, if not impossible, for most musicians and bands.
Professional quality, high-end recording is not easy, and is not cheap.
Albums must have promotion. No one is going to buy an album they don't know about, merely because you made it. Promotion is very expensive.
Albums must be distributed to stores, online retailers, etc... No one is going to come looking for you just to buy your album. Distribution is labor-intensive and expensive.
The immense cost and labor of recording, distributing, and promoting an album is far beyond the resources of most musicians and bands, therefore record labels are a necessary evil.
This up-front cost must be recouped by the labels before the artist makes ANY money on album sales. If album sales are weak, the artist gets put on the back burner (at best), or dropped altogether (at worst).
At that point, the artist/band is either right back where they started (with nothing), but usually end up in an even WORSE position, since they now carry the negative stigma of being "dropped" by a label...
But it's no skin off the label's back... It's just written off as a business expense, and they get a tax deduction for it.
The recording industry has nearly a 99% failure rate. 99 out of 100 albums released by a major record label never turn a profit. But record deals are structured in such a one-sided manner that, when that 1 out of 100 artists IS hugely successful and profitable, the label makes such an astronomical amount of money on it that they can afford to allow 99 other albums to fail.
If you want more disgusting details of the vile inner workings of record deals, read this:
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
I've been through all of this bull$h!t personally. Twice. So have many of my friends and associates. I still work in the music business, mostly in high-end recording studios, with artists and bands who are currently experiencing exactly what I did.
So trust me when I say that the RIAA REALLY doesn't give a damn that you personally have stopped buying music out of protest.
It IS your favorite artists that you're hurting.
Mike