Dear list: Expenses! The same tricks movie studios use; that Don king
uses; record companies use. They overstate they cost of things they do.
Use a company studio such as the capitol records studio inb LA, they
over charge. Same if you go to a preferred studio suggested by the
label. I know of acase where Profile sent all its ny acts to a studio
where the studio would kickback a part of the fee presented the artist.A
manager of a Bristol band ran a similiar scam. Similarr scams are pulled on
tours. Overstate the cost of roomand board and then watch profits
dissapear by tours end often done to dancer and performers on rap
tours.Often the salary is held till the end of the tour and room/costume
cleaning/meals are deducted.Waytch the guy who computes the expenses.
>From: "Dirk van den Heuvel" <dirkv@groovedis.com>
>To: "Steve Catanzaro" <stevencatanzaro@sprintmail.com>, "BAO"
><tunde@arches.uga.edu>, "Jason Witherspoon" <arzachel@speakeasy.org>
>CC: "paul s westney" <pwestney@juno.com>, <acid-jazz@ucsd.edu>
>Subject: RE: how u can get rich making music! (was... courtney love)
>Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2000 12:44:37 -0500
>
>Well I've mainly worked in distribution not at labels, but I can say that
>Blink 182 (one of the bands at my former employer Cargo Records) made in
>excess of 350,000 (that's just royalties, not mechanicals or publishing
>either) BEFORE their last record came out. I don't think they're doing
>badly
>at all...
>
>Dirk van den Heuvel (dirkv@groovedis.com)
>Groove Distribution
>http://www.groovedis.com
>Your Guide To The Underground
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Steve Catanzaro [mailto:stevencatanzaro@sprintmail.com]
>Sent: Sunday, June 18, 2000 12:13 PM
>To: BAO; Jason Witherspoon
>Cc: paul s westney; acid-jazz@ucsd.edu
>Subject: how u can get rich making music! (was... courtney love)
>
>
>
>
>And if that fails, just take it as a tax write-off. If the artist,
> > however, earns the company millions, the artist is lucky to make what
> > a college professor makes.
>
>Well, even though I'm as anti-record company as you can get, that's not
>exactly true. I was a college professor, my friend made her recording
>company millions, and I would gladly trade places with her, dollar for
>dollar!
>
>Even if the artist who sells 2 million records barely breaks even on record
>sales (a literal crime, I strongly agree), that artist still has gigantic
>earning power, especially if they write their own songs.
>
>In the US, ASCAP (or BMI) pays the artist royalties for all forms of
>airplay; so, when you a hear a song on the radio, the artist gets paid.
>Ditto when you hear a song on tv, a movie, an airplane, muzak, etc. In
>fact,
>artists even (purportedly) get paid when songs are performed on jukeboxes,
>by bar bands, dj's, etc.
>
>How? ASCAP quite literally has scouts that go around and try to "survey"
>what songs are being played. Nightclubs have to pay a licensing fee to
>ASCAP
>and BMI to play their music. (You might see the ASCAP logo proudly
>displayed
>in the window of your favorite nightclub.)
>
>Plus, the royalties are paid on an escalating scale. If your song gets
>played in the hundreds of thousands of times, you're probably getting well
>over $1 U.S. each time. A song like "Yesterday" or "You've Lost That Lovin'
>Feelin'" could feed everyone on this list, and their families, for a
>lifetime, based on airplay revenue alone.
>
>In fact, sampling artists, ala Puffy, MC Hammer, etc. turns out to help the
>original artists. People like George Clinton, Rick James, and the Godfather
>of Soul benefit greatly when their songs are sampled by hip-hoppers and
>subsequently receive mad airplay. And now you know why the Roots, Dimitri,
>Propellerheads, and whoever else probably fall all over themselves to get a
>song under a Volkswagen or Jaguar spot. Either they get paid a huge
>licensing fee, or they get royalties on it, or, in some cases, both.
>
>And this is also why conventional radio is so terrible. The big radio
>stations do listening surveys where they put a bunch of kids in a room,
>give
>'em a questionnaire, and ask them to rate songs. The songs that win get
>airplay; and those winners are not the great ones, not the bad ones, just
>the ones that soothe your impulse to turn the dial. Because radio is in the
>business of selling commercials, so they're generally looking for pleasant,
>mediocre non-offensive material that'll ease you into the commercial
>segments.
>
>Since everyone more or less knows what kinds of songs radio is looking for,
>that's what they write. Hence Brittney Spears' writer, Max Morath, has
>released 3 songs that are, music theory wise, almost identical, or Dianne
>Warren, who has recycled the same chord progressions about 500 times now,
>keeps showing up on all the Monica, Brandy, and Whitney type records.
>
>Oh, and by the way.... most record companies take half of the airplay
>royalties too... but, at least that's better than 90%.
>
>(Oh no, it turned into another rant... Oops, I did it again. I'm so
>excited,
>I just can't sleep. Hit me baby one more time.)
>
>
>
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