4 ms·

Courtney Love wrote a fabulous article explaining the realities of a million-dollar album (2000 - https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/ https://www.salon.com

by jppope 11mo ago

Courtney Love wrote a fabulous article explaining the realities of a million-dollar album (2000 - https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/ https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/) and it explains so much of whats actually going on that the public doesn't fully comprehend. Its a great read if you've never read it. The realities are similar to what we are reading in this article. Most of what gets talked about is gross numbers not net. Most of the benefits of the job, are in the journey not the destination - if you're even into that stuff... i.e. having your music impact lives. I wish sooooo much that people could read these things so when I go to a dinner party or random event, some GenPop person knew that JK Rowling makes billions of dollars but your average published writer loses money publishing a book. Your average NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL athletes are broke 5 years after they are out of the league. Fame, is mostly a curse. Good on charli xcx for writing this and for writing period.

SL61 11mo ago
It's interesting to observe that fame (and the money that usually comes with it) seems to follow something like a log scale. People usually don't become gradually more famous in a linear way. They're more likely to spend a few years with 50k listeners and then get a big hit and get 1 million listeners overnight, then the next big jump is 20 million, and so on. It's possible to be semi-famous and still able to go to the grocery store and pump your own gas without getting recognized. The local sports radio guys don't need an entourage, even if they do get recognized. But as a rising artist, you hit a point where you can no longer go out in public at all. It's really shocking when it happens because it's so abrupt. My dad's famous friend was a regular at a local restaurant and wasn't bothered for a long time, even when his name/face started showing up in the media. Then one day another customer shouted his name and he got mobbed by fans, and he realized he couldn't go out to eat like a normal person anymore. I think Charli crossed that line with the success of her album Brat last year. It's the point where you start to ask yourself if it's really worth it, and maybe consider going full recluse like Thomas Pynchon. (That's not even getting into the online stan culture stuff that Charli talks about in the article.)
- trogdor 11mo ago
  > I think Charli crossed that line with the success of her album Brat last year. In Hollywood, that line gets crossed at a surprisingly low level. I am friends with Josh Sussman, who played Jacob Ben Israel on Glee. I occasionally visit him in LA, and we can’t go anywhere in public without getting constantly stopped by people wanting photos. It’s exhausting.
  - derangedHorse 11mo ago
    I didn't watch it myself, but Glee was a very popular show. Since Josh Susman was a recurring character, it's unsurprising that he'd have a large fanbase (especially in LA).
- bigiain 11mo ago
  It's fascinating to me that her new album's name is "Wuthering Heights", the name of Kate Bush's debut and number 1 single from 1978. Kate Bush is well known (in the circles of people who know about this sort of thing) and as fiercely independent and self-controlled artist. I hope Charlii manages her career and fame as well as Kate has over the decades.
  - steve1977 11mo ago
    As I understand, Charli’s album is the soundtrack to a movie called Wuthering Heights. Which is loosely based on the 19th century novel of the same name. And that novel was also the inspiration for the Kate Bush song.
- empressplay 11mo ago
  I will note "in the US" here. I lived in Camberwell, Australia for a while and I would run across Geoffrey Rush in the local supermarket fairly routinely. Nobody bothered him.
- blippage 11mo ago
  In the words of Adam Ant: it took us 3 years to be famous overnight. I also heard about Matt Lucas, of Little Britain fame. He was slowly plugging away at it, and was about to give up. At around 30 years old, he teamed up with David Walliams, describing it as the last roll of the die. Their popularity exploded. Morgan Freeman didn't become famous until he was in his 50's. Someone asked him if he was upset that it took so long. His response was: "No, because it didn't have to happen at all."
pinkmuffinere 11mo ago
> Your average NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL athletes are broke 5 years after they are out of the league. Fame, is mostly a curse. I'm not familiar with the financials of music / media production (I didn't read the linked article yet, sorry). But I feel this over-pitying attitude towards professional sports players is misplaced. They do often go broke after their career. That is sad. It is also completely avoidable with _very_ basic financial planning. I think feeling sorry for them is a disservice, because it makes it seem that this outcome is hard to avoid. It's not hard when they're making 500k+/year: 1. Spend (a lot) less than you make. At 500k/year anywhere in the US, you should easily be saving 200k / year. 2. Invest the money you've saved. There's lots of good advice online, and realistically if you're saving 200k/year you don't have to worry about making the best choices -- just decent ones. 3. Don't accept generic lifestyle creep! People need to be responsible and take control of their finances. You can't rely on somebody else to watch your finances, or make you eat your vegetables, or brush your teeth. The same advice applies to lots of people in tech, IMO.
- specialist 11mo ago
  Your ideas are intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
  - pinkmuffinere 11mo ago
    Do you really? I keep a blog here[1], but it’s very sporadic and not very focused — i mostly write to satisfy myself [1] https://bagelpour.wordpress.com https://bagelpour.wordpress.com
- bigiain 11mo ago
  You're right, of course. But often there are obvious and "easy" answers that are anything but easy for the person who needs those answers. "Just cheer up, depressed person!" "Just eat less and exercise more, fat person!" "Just stop shooting up, heroin addict!" "Don't accept generic lifestyle creep, pro athlete who's teammates are all living it up like they live in a gangsta rap music video!" I'm sure there are lots of pro sports players that get and heed advice just like yours, and finish out their short and bright sports career well financially set for their remaining 60-ish years when they're no longer capable of earning half a mil plus a year being athletes. But I'm also fairly sure the career and lifestyle, and the managers, hangers on, and sycophants they're surrounded with push then hard the other direction. I'm not from the US, so I don't have a real understanding of US pro sports and the way people end up there, but I have this impression that it's "one of the ways out of the ghetto" for at least some of them. People who won the genetic lottery, but lost the birth demographics lottery. They've never had generation wealth or even a middle class safety net. They don't have family or friends who have experience or advice about what to do with suddenly having way more money that anybody the have even known. They don't have family or close friends who can recommend trusted financial advisors or lawyers. Any advice they're getting risks coming from people they ane not certain they can trust to have their own interests at heart, and aren't trying to skim their own percentage off the top. I don't exactly pity someone who earns 500k+ a year in a short pro sports career, and blows it all ending up poor. But I think I can understand how the system is set up - if not to actively encourage that outcome, at the very least that system probably doesn't do as much to protect against it as they could.
canucker2016 11mo ago
Pro athletes also have higher divorce rates than the general population - 60-80% vs 50% source NYTimes/Sports Illustrated
saghm 11mo ago
The "average" player in one of those sports leagues isn't really a celebrity at the level the article is talking about. Charli XCX's last album was nominated for 11 Grammies and won six of them, and it has the 15th highest aggregate rating from Metacritic of all time. If you're comparing to athletes, this is All-Star roster, potential MVP winning-level performance for at least that season. By no means it's every player who hits 50 home runs in a season is going to be set for life financially, but the chances they're going to struggle are a lot lower than some some random utility infielder or middle reliever.
- globalnode 11mo ago
  never heard of them before this HN article lol. the only thing that struck me was no paragraphs in the article, just one giant wall of text. and also how bored id be living that lifestyle (personally)
  - rafaele 11mo ago
    Did we look at the same article? I counted 6 or 7 paragraphs
  - bigiain 11mo ago
    I was aware of her name, and roughly her genre, but couldn't have named or even recognised a single track of hers. I looked her up and started listening as I read the article, and the while listening to the two track released so far from her upcoming album I was thinking "this is really good, why haven't I listened to her before?" then I put on her last album Brat, and realised "Oh, right. That's not my style of music. She's never been writing for me, and I know who she is writing for, and I understand why they like her and why she's so popular." And I respect that. I'll keep an ear out for her new album, and based on what I've heard so far I fully expect to enjoy it, way more than I'm enjoying Brat. I've also added her substack to my rss feeds, no guarantee it'll stay there long term, but I'm at least curious enough to follow along for her next few blogposts.
  - Insanity 11mo ago
    I know of her name, but I couldn’t name a single song of hers. Luckily we don’t all enjoy the same music, that would be boring as well! :)
thaumasiotes 11mo ago
> Your average NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL athletes are broke 5 years after they are out of the league. Fame, is mostly a curse. They would also have been broke if they hadn't been athletes. The career doesn't damage their finances. It's excellent for their finances while it lasts, and then they revert to normal. Why would you call that a curse?
derangedHorse 11mo ago
That just sounds like you're saying the "average" person in all those professions are bad at personal finance. Maybe that's a reflection of society at large. One articles estimates 90% of Americans being in debt[1] so it wouldn't surprise me that this successful subset would fare much better (although I would bet they do when compared to the general population). Also debt isn't always bad, but most individuals quoted in the study are probably not holding the good type of debt (debt one can easily pay off but doesn't). [1] https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/demographics/ https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/demographics/
- tristor 11mo ago
  > That just sounds like you're saying the "average" person in all those professions are bad at personal finance. Maybe that's a reflection of society at large. It is, but it's also a reflection of the business of professional sports in America and where most professional athletes come from. Most professional athletes don't come out of a positive financial environment, they mostly come from poor upbringings and neither through family or the education system are they taught basic financial literacy. Professional athletes in the US suffer the same exact problems as lottery winners, for pretty much exactly the same reason.

by jppope 11mo ago

SL61 11mo ago

It's interesting to observe that fame (and the money that usually comes with it) seems to follow something like a log scale. People usually don't become gradually more famous in a linear way. They're more likely to spend a few years with 50k listeners and then get a big hit and get 1 million listeners overnight, then the next big jump is 20 million, and so on. It's possible to be semi-famous and still able to go to the grocery store and pump your own gas without getting recognized. The local sports radio guys don't need an entourage, even if they do get recognized. But as a rising artist, you hit a point where you can no longer go out in public at all. It's really shocking when it happens because it's so abrupt. My dad's famous friend was a regular at a local restaurant and wasn't bothered for a long time, even when his name/face started showing up in the media. Then one day another customer shouted his name and he got mobbed by fans, and he realized he couldn't go out to eat like a normal person anymore. I think Charli crossed that line with the success of her album Brat last year. It's the point where you start to ask yourself if it's really worth it, and maybe consider going full recluse like Thomas Pynchon. (That's not even getting into the online stan culture stuff that Charli talks about in the article.)

trogdor 11mo ago
> I think Charli crossed that line with the success of her album Brat last year. In Hollywood, that line gets crossed at a surprisingly low level. I am friends with Josh Sussman, who played Jacob Ben Israel on Glee. I occasionally visit him in LA, and we can’t go anywhere in public without getting constantly stopped by people wanting photos. It’s exhausting.
- derangedHorse 11mo ago
  I didn't watch it myself, but Glee was a very popular show. Since Josh Susman was a recurring character, it's unsurprising that he'd have a large fanbase (especially in LA).
bigiain 11mo ago
It's fascinating to me that her new album's name is "Wuthering Heights", the name of Kate Bush's debut and number 1 single from 1978. Kate Bush is well known (in the circles of people who know about this sort of thing) and as fiercely independent and self-controlled artist. I hope Charlii manages her career and fame as well as Kate has over the decades.
- steve1977 11mo ago
  As I understand, Charli’s album is the soundtrack to a movie called Wuthering Heights. Which is loosely based on the 19th century novel of the same name. And that novel was also the inspiration for the Kate Bush song.
empressplay 11mo ago
I will note "in the US" here. I lived in Camberwell, Australia for a while and I would run across Geoffrey Rush in the local supermarket fairly routinely. Nobody bothered him.
blippage 11mo ago
In the words of Adam Ant: it took us 3 years to be famous overnight. I also heard about Matt Lucas, of Little Britain fame. He was slowly plugging away at it, and was about to give up. At around 30 years old, he teamed up with David Walliams, describing it as the last roll of the die. Their popularity exploded. Morgan Freeman didn't become famous until he was in his 50's. Someone asked him if he was upset that it took so long. His response was: "No, because it didn't have to happen at all."

pinkmuffinere 11mo ago

> Your average NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL athletes are broke 5 years after they are out of the league. Fame, is mostly a curse. I'm not familiar with the financials of music / media production (I didn't read the linked article yet, sorry). But I feel this over-pitying attitude towards professional sports players is misplaced. They do often go broke after their career. That is sad. It is also completely avoidable with _very_ basic financial planning. I think feeling sorry for them is a disservice, because it makes it seem that this outcome is hard to avoid. It's not hard when they're making 500k+/year: 1. Spend (a lot) less than you make. At 500k/year anywhere in the US, you should easily be saving 200k / year. 2. Invest the money you've saved. There's lots of good advice online, and realistically if you're saving 200k/year you don't have to worry about making the best choices -- just decent ones. 3. Don't accept generic lifestyle creep! People need to be responsible and take control of their finances. You can't rely on somebody else to watch your finances, or make you eat your vegetables, or brush your teeth. The same advice applies to lots of people in tech, IMO.

specialist 11mo ago
Your ideas are intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
- pinkmuffinere 11mo ago
  Do you really? I keep a blog here[1], but it’s very sporadic and not very focused — i mostly write to satisfy myself [1] https://bagelpour.wordpress.com https://bagelpour.wordpress.com
bigiain 11mo ago
You're right, of course. But often there are obvious and "easy" answers that are anything but easy for the person who needs those answers. "Just cheer up, depressed person!" "Just eat less and exercise more, fat person!" "Just stop shooting up, heroin addict!" "Don't accept generic lifestyle creep, pro athlete who's teammates are all living it up like they live in a gangsta rap music video!" I'm sure there are lots of pro sports players that get and heed advice just like yours, and finish out their short and bright sports career well financially set for their remaining 60-ish years when they're no longer capable of earning half a mil plus a year being athletes. But I'm also fairly sure the career and lifestyle, and the managers, hangers on, and sycophants they're surrounded with push then hard the other direction. I'm not from the US, so I don't have a real understanding of US pro sports and the way people end up there, but I have this impression that it's "one of the ways out of the ghetto" for at least some of them. People who won the genetic lottery, but lost the birth demographics lottery. They've never had generation wealth or even a middle class safety net. They don't have family or friends who have experience or advice about what to do with suddenly having way more money that anybody the have even known. They don't have family or close friends who can recommend trusted financial advisors or lawyers. Any advice they're getting risks coming from people they ane not certain they can trust to have their own interests at heart, and aren't trying to skim their own percentage off the top. I don't exactly pity someone who earns 500k+ a year in a short pro sports career, and blows it all ending up poor. But I think I can understand how the system is set up - if not to actively encourage that outcome, at the very least that system probably doesn't do as much to protect against it as they could.

canucker2016 11mo ago

Pro athletes also have higher divorce rates than the general population - 60-80% vs 50% source NYTimes/Sports Illustrated

saghm 11mo ago

The "average" player in one of those sports leagues isn't really a celebrity at the level the article is talking about. Charli XCX's last album was nominated for 11 Grammies and won six of them, and it has the 15th highest aggregate rating from Metacritic of all time. If you're comparing to athletes, this is All-Star roster, potential MVP winning-level performance for at least that season. By no means it's every player who hits 50 home runs in a season is going to be set for life financially, but the chances they're going to struggle are a lot lower than some some random utility infielder or middle reliever.

globalnode 11mo ago
never heard of them before this HN article lol. the only thing that struck me was no paragraphs in the article, just one giant wall of text. and also how bored id be living that lifestyle (personally)
- rafaele 11mo ago
  Did we look at the same article? I counted 6 or 7 paragraphs
- bigiain 11mo ago
  I was aware of her name, and roughly her genre, but couldn't have named or even recognised a single track of hers. I looked her up and started listening as I read the article, and the while listening to the two track released so far from her upcoming album I was thinking "this is really good, why haven't I listened to her before?" then I put on her last album Brat, and realised "Oh, right. That's not my style of music. She's never been writing for me, and I know who she is writing for, and I understand why they like her and why she's so popular." And I respect that. I'll keep an ear out for her new album, and based on what I've heard so far I fully expect to enjoy it, way more than I'm enjoying Brat. I've also added her substack to my rss feeds, no guarantee it'll stay there long term, but I'm at least curious enough to follow along for her next few blogposts.
- Insanity 11mo ago
  I know of her name, but I couldn’t name a single song of hers. Luckily we don’t all enjoy the same music, that would be boring as well! :)

thaumasiotes 11mo ago

> Your average NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL athletes are broke 5 years after they are out of the league. Fame, is mostly a curse. They would also have been broke if they hadn't been athletes. The career doesn't damage their finances. It's excellent for their finances while it lasts, and then they revert to normal. Why would you call that a curse?

derangedHorse 11mo ago

That just sounds like you're saying the "average" person in all those professions are bad at personal finance. Maybe that's a reflection of society at large. One articles estimates 90% of Americans being in debt[1] so it wouldn't surprise me that this successful subset would fare much better (although I would bet they do when compared to the general population). Also debt isn't always bad, but most individuals quoted in the study are probably not holding the good type of debt (debt one can easily pay off but doesn't). [1] https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/demographics/ https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/demographics/

tristor 11mo ago
> That just sounds like you're saying the "average" person in all those professions are bad at personal finance. Maybe that's a reflection of society at large. It is, but it's also a reflection of the business of professional sports in America and where most professional athletes come from. Most professional athletes don't come out of a positive financial environment, they mostly come from poor upbringings and neither through family or the education system are they taught basic financial literacy. Professional athletes in the US suffer the same exact problems as lottery winners, for pretty much exactly the same reason.