Caltrops - No Stairway to Heaven





	[quote name="No Pocky For Titties"][quote name="Lizard_King"][quote name="MSNBC"]What do bands get from labels? They get a big chunk of change up front when they sign a typical high profile seven-album deal like Pearl Jam did 10 years ago. Everyone likes a large lump sum of money: Debts can be repaid, substantial down payments can be made on cars and houses, drugs can be purchased in bulk at a substantial savings — wait — scratch that. Â Â Â Â But in exchange for that lump sum, the label owns your soul. That lump sum isn’t a payment, it’s a loan against which recording, promotion, and publicity costs — virtually all costs — are charged. A band doesn’t start receiving royalties, real “earned” money, until it pays back that loan with sales, or “recoups.” Pearl Jam tour satisfies pent-up demand Â Â Â Â Very few artists ever recoup and earn royalties — as Pearl Jam has undoubtedly done — and even when they do recoup, <b>artists don’t receive ownership of their own master recordings</b>. As attorney Freundlich puts it, “The old adage is, it’s like paying off your mortgage but never owning your house.”[/quote] Hopefully this will work out more successfully than their anti-Ticketmaster crusade, or for that matter their Nader-cheering. [/quote] Yet another reason why this site needs a search feature: I wrote virtually this same article months ago in this very forum. What's surprising about major labels is not that they screw artists - that's their fucking JOB. The surprising thing is that musicians (who are, at some level, all independent business people) are so willing to ride ass-first on major label cock. I took a workshop at one point on running an independent label (unsurprisingly, kind of a ripoff, but still valuable), and the one point that really hit home which the guy made was: if a record label wants to put out your record, it's because they can make money off of you. They aren't interested in your career. All they want is ALL YOUR MONEY. If you give it to them it's your own fucking fault - you should have hired your own lawyer. I don't feel bad for artists that get screwed, they fuck themselves over. The royalties agreements are negotiable. The touring agreements are negotiable. This shit is all negotiable. If you say that you own your masters, if they want you bad enough, you'll get them. If you're afraid that you won't pay back your advance - TURN DOWN THE FUCKING ADVANCE!!! Good example: Jawbox left respectable indie Dischord and defected to Atlantic during the post-Nirvana We Need The Next Nirvana era. In the process, they alienated most of their fans, but they actually got a much <i>better</i> contract with Atlantic than they'd had with Dischord - they stipulated that they'd own their masters, and they refused touring support (since they didn't want the label touching their primary source of income). They used Atlantic's marketing money to get their name in front of zillions of teenagers, and got semi-popular. Then they got screwed in that their label subsidiary closed down and they were dropped, right after possibly their best album came out. So, they broke up - but the real end of the story was that because they're not idiots, they negotiated their contract correctly and were able to start their own indie label (DeSoto) with profits from their now-out-on-Desoto Jawbox catalogue. Now they (or, some of they) make their living running the label and producing. Another good example: Beck has major-label records and indie-label records. I'm sure he makes more from his indies per-unit than he does on his major label records. It would be interesting to see where the bulk of Beck's money comes from. <s>FoK</s> Titties[/quote]