Here's what the music industry is doing now. It's called a 360 Deal. I read about it on Gene Simmons's website, then googled it (no, I wasn't just surfing this goofy blog, it just came up in google LOL) and thought some of you would find this interesting:

[quote]Since 2001 record sales have staggered in decline at an estimated 25%. Record labels invest a large amount of money into acts, and for the past few years it has not being paying off. What once was a deal of artists agreeing to hand over about 85% of album shares, but pocketing profit from tours, merchandising and publishing has been morphed into what is called the “360-Deal” or the “Multi-Rights Deal”. What this means is that not only do record labels get about 70-85% of album sales, they will also receive a cut of tour sales, merchandising, and publishing.

The 360 Deal allows labels to capitalize on artists as a brand and push more paths of revenue, thus giving the label more incentive to push the success of an act and market them in every way possible( this is due to the growing "mogul" trend amongst most current artists). The label will now own the act in everything they do and pocket a rough estimate of 30-50% of net earnings.

Well what exactly does that mean? Here’s a break down of a typical 360-deal:

<!--[endif]-->Album Sales: The artist will get somewhere between 15-30% which is an estimate of $1-$3 per album sold. The larger percentage goes into the label’s pockets and covers production expenses.

Publishing: Artists get about a dime for writing their own songs and music, more if the song is featured in film or television. The labels now get a cut of that.
<!--[endif]-->

As PT Barnum famously observed: there's a sucker born every minute. You'd have to be an idiot to sign a contract like that. With the Internet today, there's no reason to give that much to a record company.

Greed, but all parties brought this on. All. People are going to wonder what happened when their anarchic free-everything-on-the-Internet mindset comes back full-circle in the form of lost jobs, higher taxes, the demise of the telephone (landline, and how will we call anybody when the towers get knocked out), the demise of newspaper, the demise of books, and finally the demise of a lot of jobs. And what tax money is going to pay for what money the state and country has lost because of businesses and industries shutting down? Domino effect. I'm sure this will make people just download more thinking they're sticking it to the man, so these people are hurting everybody with this sort of thing.

Cherish free things while they still exist. It is never for long.

^^^^ The last 2 posts above ^^^^ are good posts IMO.

Hmmmm... stupid tags. about half my post is missing

I guess I'm a bit uncertain where you stand, OCI. Are you saying you'd rather have a return to a paper society, without free information on the Internet? As in a return to large volume encyclopedias instead of Wiki and thick dictionaries instead of MW Online?

The advancement of technology is inevitable. I for one enjoy the benefits that come from not having to buy an Encyclopedia Britannica and run it along a shelf. I enjoy not picking up a soggy paper from the driveway and wading through the nonsense to find something I want to read. I enjoy Google taking me to a site like CMR where I find people with similar interests.

I see to some extent what you're getting at, but those dominos were going to fall no matter what, and I guarantee those record labels were going to want more money as time went by (as were the performers) because that's just the way they operate. It's big business. And this is the age of media madness, where entertainment supplants virtually everything. Consume, consume, consume, watch TV, go to the movies, listen to the radio and CDs, buy, buy, buy. Labels see dollar signs, and prices go up, Internet or not.

I think a lot of artists were getting ripped off by the labels before the Net became what it is, and the indie mindset is a lot of what sparks this as a result. Look at how many artists are releasing their material independently or even starting their own labels. They don't want to deal with the big labels. The big labels are sinking big bucks into select artists who want huge sums of money. But these artists are now competing with the indies. So the big labels have to find an alternative source of funding to pay the big artists whose sales are dwindling due to the competition. The sales alone aren't cutting it. So now they've decided they will cut into all the action to try to recoup their investment. Ironically, this will drive more artists away--to their own indie releases or upstart labels--and the big labels will have to gouge even more money from tour sales, merchandise sales, firstborn children black market sales, whatever they can come up with. They're shooting themselves in the foot (and then the knee, and then the groin, right on up the anatomy).

It's the labels and certain demanding artists who have brought this on the industry far more than the consumers. In fact, I think the consumers have been driven to the "free-everything-on-the-Internet" way of thinking by the extortionist prices the labels and demanding artists have created as time has marched on.

If the labels stopped focusing on cookie cutter artists and paying them silly sums of money they wouldn't be so surprised when sales were disappointing, causing them to scramble to recover their investments. Drastic measures like this wouldn't be necessary.

Yeah, I, too, am a little uncertain where you're coming from, OCI.

I think it simply means the death of more second-tier bands who survived almost solely by touring. I also think it will mean the rise of a LOT more independently produced bands releasing their own material without label support.



Arttie

I think the point should be illustrated that people don't know when to *stop* when it comes to free things, and even though our money system isn't the most perfect thing in the world, it's getting damaged and will bite people back whether they know it or not. Everything in this world costs money. You make money, you spend money. You 'vote' for goods that are to your taste and preference with the money you spend, and help spur the creation of more and similar goods. A record company is a shrewd loaner. But what am I going to do? Record it yourself, they say. Alright, but what what equipment? I have to pay for the equipment to do it, do I not? Or do they just build Macs and mics for free? What about the software. What if I just download ProTools? Many dollars put into the continued advancement of the program, and I use it without any money going back to anyone. OK, OK, but now I can make a record, right? Ok, sounds good... what about playing in front of people? Am I magically going to come up with the money for gas, passports, pro stage gear, and so forth, to tour and sell my download or hard copy? Or are we just going to toss out touring altogether...we've decided suddenly that's in the past too? If I DO make a hard copy, do I have to pay the artist for his work on my vision? Man, I think books should be free too, and cars, and houses.

It's going to get out of control, and it already is to an extent, and what are the artists going to do? I own quite a few independantly released albums. Sometimes the songs are great, sometimes not at all. I wish the sound was better. I wish the production was better. I wish the art was better. I wish they could afford to come play somewhere near where I live so people can see them live. How's all of that going to be accomplished in the future? Yes, record company, evil evil evil evil, but you might as well toss out your car payment, your mortgage, your credit cards, and anything else you have to make a "payment" on because nearly everything everyone has is recoup to some extent. Is it great? No. Is it fun? No. Could it be better? Sure. But I'd like someone to show me a foolproof blueprint of a money-free system in which I can have a job and prosper and grow as is the American way, or write songs and put out a record and tour as is the classic rock 'n roll way. Doing such an undertaking myself while I hack away at a job which has been affected negatively by free commerce in some way is not going to cut it. And people do not do things halfway in this country. Almost everybody who reads an article like that will, whether they realize it or not, slow their buying from ALL labels, the more the stigma is applied. Object association is part of marketing 101. I don't like greed and I don't like greedy cor., but people really should realize they maybe need to tweak their reactions a little bit, because it hurts the little people a whole lot, and when the mindset snowballs into all kinds of industries dying off, it's gonna hurt they themselves too.

Thanks..

I really hope I'm putting myself clearly enough where people don't skim and figure I'm a supporter of money grubbers. It's just how I approach a lot of things in looking at long term possibility. I appreciate a lot of free e-commerce and think the information itself should continue, but I also know if there's a big wide scale change it needs to be in baby steps instead of the mammoth leaps the general population tries to make as soon as they realize they can supposedly do and get anything on the Internet. Any way the scale tips itself is grassroots, and right now I know I'm a one out of maybe 10 who will *buy* the album after *downloading* the song. That would be an example of where we don't know when to stop. Remember, it isn't record execs that made a lot of garbage and trends what they are in sales. It's people voting with their wallets. Now we have some kind of chance to turn it around using the tools available to us, our access to so much music, but instead we're just shrugging and walking away from the damage so someone else can fix it, just like always.

Exactly right.

But, OCI, it doesn't have to be done the way the record companies are doing. I don't think any of us here are saying that things should be free. We're all willing to pay the price for an album by a band we like. The problem with the 360 thing-a-mabob is there is no incentive for an artist. They will make nothing off a contract like that unless they make it huge. And if they have the talent or skills or chutzpah to make it huge, they should reap more reward than that 360 thing-a-mabob gives them.

There's a lot of bands out there who can afford their own equipment either by working other jobs to pay for it or inhereting it, using someone else's, etc. Proof of this can be found by the sheer amount of bands who have decent quality recordings available on their myspace page, and no record deal. A record deal is becoming more and more useless, unless the artist is going to make it just huge, and usually the bands who are going to do this are not of the style that most people here listen to or care about anymore. I think this is good too, because while we are going to lose having gigantic acts, many more bands are getting noticed and recieving moderate popularity amoung their subgenre's cult following. And those people are usually willing to fork over some dough to get something that the band puts out. And if not, having a decent following still brings people to your show... and those are never free if you are past the stage of playing one-off local gigs at whatever club will take you. And I can't imagine that if you are a big enough draw you wouldn't be able to cover more than the gas to get there.

I just think that going without a record deal and having a smaller fan base is not a bad idea, because then the earnings all go directly to the band without a giant company eating away at ever decreasing profits from the mass market that is not willing to put forth their dollar.

The problem is I can't see anyone ever getting more than moderate or sort of moderate popularity, especially with the enormous glut of bands out there who are about at the same level of self promotion. Everything working together to be totally average. Shows, where you can play shows, sometimes your production, sometimes your art quality, etc. Average is the worst of the best and the best of the worst and it's not where I want to be confined as a musician. And some people do make modest money and just can't finance so much things you would need. The reason cars get payment plans is because normal people just don't have tens of thousands of dollars in pocket at any one time.

For an artist to pull off its own large scale show independently it'll need sponsors, which means it'll need a bit of business sense. It'll need this with a label anyway or it'll get the bad end of the deal. If the artist has a tour set up by the label, the label will naturally get a cut of the sales. This plan outlined here is a just a crazy cut.

I think there are a lot of indie labels that give big labels a good run for their money. I've seen artwork on indie labels top the artwork on major labels. I've heard sound quality on indie projects top that of major label projects. I've definitely heard musicianship of indie bands top that of major label artists. From where I stand, being on a major label does not automatically put an artist in a better bracket.

Consumers have partly driven it this far, the economy has contributed. But I point out again that the ones who have driven the labels fastest to this point are the really big ticket artists who have demanded ridiculous amounts of money in their contracts. They ask more and more for mediocre work, the labels pay more and more to capitalize off the name despite the mediocre music, and when the sales go into decline this is how they try to make it up.

Orion Crystal Ice wrote:

Thanks.. I really hope I'm putting myself clearly enough where people don't skim and figure I'm a supporter of money grubbers. It's just how I approach a lot of things in looking at long term possibility. I appreciate a lot of free e-commerce and think the information itself should continue, but I also know if there's a big wide scale change it needs to be in baby steps instead of the mammoth leaps the general population tries to make as soon as they realize they can supposedly do and get anything on the Internet. Any way the scale tips itself is grassroots, and right now I know I'm a one out of maybe 10 who will *buy* the album after *downloading* the song. That would be an example of where we don't know when to stop. Remember, it isn't record execs that made a lot of garbage and trends what they are in sales. It's people voting with their wallets. Now we have some kind of chance to turn it around using the tools available to us, our access to so much music, but instead we're just shrugging and walking away from the damage so someone else can fix it, just like always.

I guess I need to make sure I understand what you mean by "buy" the album after "downloading" the song. You don't mean buying after downloading illegally, right? You mean downloading a single song off something like Amazon for a buck? Why would you download a song, though, and still go buy the album?

Assuming this is what you were referring to... This is a big step up for the labels and artists. A lot of people didn't buy even a song from an artist, despite liking a song or two, because they didn't want a full album. Now a popular song or two can make serious money. If an artist puts together a full album of quality music, then a lot more individual songs will sell in downloads. More and more people don't like to have the hard-copy CDs, so the digital format simplifies things as well. People can buy the songs they want on impulse, rather than having to wait for stores to open or discs to reach them in the mail. You and I are probably the exceptions to the norm in that we would prefer to have the actual disc in our hands, with all of the songs right there to listen to and all of the artwork right there to appreciate and all of the liner notes right there to read. GW is the real exception to the norm in that he doesn't even want mp3s.

But maybe I don't understand what you mean after all. Because I'm not sure how buying a song off the Internet and not the album is shrugging and walking away from damage for someone else to fix.