WTF?

Sunnyside

Amen, DJRose!

DJRose

Heh, thanks Sunnyside.

First of all, for those outside the US who want a high quality WTF, here's a Vimeo link: http://vimeo.com/7166047

And because this has turned into a debate about the ways that the music industry is being completely fucktarded (I agree, it is), I'm going to bring this up here. I've been working for Capitol's street team for just over 3 years now, going to concerts and passing out stickers and the like, being paid in concert tickets and the occasional CD or piece of swag. They have been very good to me, yet I know that what I do used to be done by paid professionals - complete with expense accounts and high salaries - because a friend of mine used to be one of those people. I know they're good to me because I am essentially working for free, and that's as far as it goes. To illustrate the point of just how much big labels (like Capitol) care about what their artists want, J0rge tweeted a link to a blog this afternoon that discusses the model that labels use to pay their artists. It's actually quite disturbing, IMO.

http://www.toomuchjoy.com/?p=1397

This was the part that I found to be the most troubling, emphasis mine:

QUOTE

A word here about that unrecouped balance, for those uninitiated in the complex mechanics of major label accounting. While our royalty statement shows Too Much Joy in the red with Warner Bros. (now by only $395,214.71 after that $62.47 digital windfall), this doesn’t mean Warner “lost” nearly $400,000 on the band. That’s how much they spent on us, and we don’t see any royalty checks until it’s paid back, but it doesn’t get paid back out of the full price of every album sold. It gets paid back out of the band’s share of every album sold, which is roughly 10% of the retail price. So, using round numbers to make the math as easy as possible to understand, let’s say Warner Bros. spent something like $450,000 total on TMJ. If Warner sold 15,000 copies of each of the three TMJ records they released at a wholesale price of $10 each, they would have earned back the $450,000. But if those records were retailing for $15, TMJ would have only paid back $67,500, and our statement would show an unrecouped balance of $382,500.

I do not share this information out of a Steve Albini-esque desire to rail against the major label system (he already wrote the definitive rant, which you can find here if you want even more figures, and enjoy having those figures bracketed with cursing and insults). I’m simply explaining why I’m not embarrassed that I “owe” Warner Bros. almost $400,000. They didn’t make a lot of money off of Too Much Joy. But they didn’t lose any, either. So whenever you hear some label flak claiming 98% of the bands they sign lose money for the company, substitute the phrase “just don’t earn enough” for the word “lose.”

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that OK Go probably hasn't recouped whatever Capitol has spent, which puts them on a lower tier than say, Coldplay or Lenny Kravitz. So as far as their label is concerned, label knows best. I think OK Go has been pretty lucky so far - all the interviews where they've commented that Capitol could've sued them over the AMW and HIGA videos being proof of that - but that doesn't mean they have any kind of influence over the business aspects of their work.

Is it stupid that International iTunes is not selling a video that made its Top 20 videos within its first day of sales? YES. Is it stupid that, in their infinite wisdom, Capitol has decided not to go around that problem and find other ways to get money from people who want to give it to them? YES. Is any of that the band's fault? Not in the least. In fact the band would probably love to get some of that money, because it will help them recoup (you know, all 10 cents per download they probably get).

This whole thing has got me completely rethinking the music industry.

jedi_grrlie

^^Also, if you haven't read Steve Albini's rant that is linked in that article, DO SO LIKE RIGHT NOW I KNOW YOU'RE NOT DOING ANYTHING BETTER AT THIS MOMENT.

Sunnyside

Tim tweeted this link

http://www.yooouuutuuube.com/v/?rows=36&am...amp;startZoom=1

Now this truly is psychidiculous.

Will

QUOTE (Sunnyside1334 @ Dec 11 2009, 03:47 PM)

Tim tweeted this link

http://www.yooouuutuuube.com/v/?rows=36&am...amp;startZoom=1

Now this truly is psychidiculous.

SO MANY BEACH BALLS!