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Courtney Love does the math (2000)
- pashields 14y agoThe pre-internet version of this is Steve Albini's "The problem with music" which shows how major labels can end up costing bands quite a bit of money. Originally printed in Maximum Rock 'N Roll in 1993, but reproduced here on Negativland's site: http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17 http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17 It's worth the read if only for the amazing end line: "Some of your friends are probably already this fucked." Apparently, he'll be updating it for the digital age soon based this article from January: http://www.mhpbooks.com/steve-albini-to-update-the-problem-with-music/ http://www.mhpbooks.com/steve-albini-to-update-the-problem-w...
- kafkaesque 14y agoSorry, I don't make it a habit to plug stuff I submit to HN, but in case anyone is interested, I submitted Albini's article here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4901063 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4901063 I used to do music and a lot of my friends and I discussed the economics of music a lot. The funny thing is...some of my friends really ARE this fucked. As in, literally. I have friends who are signed and tour a little over 50% of the year all over the world. They get depressed and always ask us to email them to keep them from getting too depressed or from going out of their minds.
- netrus 14y agoPrevious discussions on HN about that article: http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=courtney+love&start=0 http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=courtney+lo...
- merinid 14y agoKind of old problem. The world has changed. Newer math now, like how much does Spotify actually pay people. Apparently Lady Gaga got $167 from one million plays of 'Poker Face'.
- socalnate1 14y agoSource? There is no way that figure is correct.
- netrus 14y agoFor example: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/apr/13/spotify-songwriters http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/apr/13/spotify-songwrit... But Pokerface is now 4 years old, not sure if the numbers are still representative.
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- merinid 14y agoTotal aside, kind of interesting that Spotify is a peer to peer application.
- guard-of-terra 14y agoIt's not in the sense that there is no social interaction between "peers" and can't be. They just reduce Spotify traffic bills for their own money.
- vanderZwan 14y agoNew math, but aren't the scumbags shaving off all the profits still the same?
- crusso 14y agoHow much did she make from radio stations playing her music for free?
- rhplus 14y ago
- imissmyjuno 14y agoSome great insight, but I do wonder if it was ghost-written. Courtney certainly didn't give up her Prada pants, nor has she fully quit the machine: in 2004, she released a solo LP on Virgin records, and in 2010 she released another as part of reformed Hole on Mercury, a Universal Music subsidiary. EDIT: On the other hand, Kevin Shields of the My Bloody Valentine whom Courtney mentions has made some great choices by waiting for digital distribution to mature and self-releasing his long-awaited album. Good work.
- stewdio 14y agoSee above comment by @pashields. These are Steve Albini’s conclusions that Courtney is merely riding on—and continuing to get credit for it seems. I think Albini’s original-original was actually printed in The Baffler before it was printed in Maximum Rock 'N Roll.
- singular 14y agoI think that's a little unfair, can't 2 people talk about the same subject from different angles? Also Steve Albani, while a respected producer, is not a highly popular musician like Love, it's nice to see an opinion from somebody in a different position.
- stewdio 14y agoWhat you’re saying is fair enough, but in this specific case if you compare what the two are saying it is obvious these are not “separate angles” but one is the original composition and the other is a watered-down version of the exact same angle. And the result is perhaps not Courtney’s fault—when my peers say something interesting I love to quote them on it. Just here it seems to have been done without the credit.
- api 14y agoThis is the reality anywhere you have gatekeepers. I also have to point out that for all its talk about leveling the playing field and connecting artists to fans, the digital world has for the most part been simply replacing the old gatekeepers with new ones... and often at a lower margin for the artist. Look at what artists get from Spotify for instance, and Apple is trying to Wal-Mart the margins even lower. (Wal-Mart. v. To use access to a massive sales channel as a tool to squeeze margins away from suppliers, often brutally.)
- caycep 14y agoThat being said, I remember some post here about an indie artist (Zoe Keating) looking at revenues from Spotify, Apple, Amazon, etc. With Apple she made decent living wage ($80k for the year) while the revenue from all the other services, esp the subscription ones, was barely a blip on the radar.
- crusso 14y agoYou have to wonder why that is, though. Maybe the gatekeepers provide more value than they're given credit for in forums like this. Maybe the artists' roles in producing value is overrated. Maybe consumers just lack any real sense of discrimination so can't be bothered to find the good independent artists when the music industry is throwing a ton of crappy acts their way. In a world where an over-produced non-talent like Justin Bieber is a huge sensation, I really wonder how much we can't just blame consumers for not expecting better. The Internet has provided plenty of models for "artists" to form closer connections with their fans and eliminate the gatekeepers. Why hasn't it worked?
- 001sky 14y agoMaybe the gatekeepers provide more value than they're given credit for in forums like this. Don't confuse contributed value with value extraction. Completelty different things. Extraction requires legal/social leverage, which is independent from anything else. eg. Legal Authority == right to tax. There is no correlation that gov't "adds value", except insofar as there is/not (over the long-run) an political revolution. ... etc.
- jplur 14y agoThis is off topic, but Salon.com is a mess. The page loads, and I get halfway through reading the first paragraph, the scroll point jumps around four times, a big overlay advert opens up, the page jumps down to where I was reading, now hidden behind the adverts background. Scroll up to the top, close the advert, a popup window opens for netflix. Close that, scroll back down, start reading the article but realize I've lost my attention. I'm not against advertisements, just wish these big sites would devote some front end development to having them load smoothly.
- sadfasdfa 14y ago>>The page loads, and I get halfway through reading the first paragraph, the scroll point jumps around four times Experienced the same problems here. I was pleading the gods to please strike down whomever gave birth to such an atrocity of a design.
- stanfordkid 14y agoThe artists are a commodity until they are stars, the scarcity at the early stage is the set of people that can make the system work (promotion, marketing, producers)... thus they reap all the profits. Artists are not forced to work with major record labels. Once artists prove themselves not to be a commodity (i.e be stars) they reap great profits and have much more negotiating leverage over labels. I don't understand this rant.
- singular 14y ago> Artists are not forced to work with major record labels. And what were/are their alternatives? Things are theoretically different with the internet now, though I'm not sure how well well-paying outlets for artists have advanced as of yet. > the scarcity at the early stage is the set of people that can make the system work (promotion, marketing, producers)... I doubt there's a scarcity of these people. Nor do I imagine they reap a huge profit from their work anyway. And surely the whole point is the quality of the artists' work, not how well crap can be pushed to preadolescent girls a la Justin Bieber? > Once artists prove themselves not to be a commodity (i.e be stars) they reap great profits and have much more negotiating leverage over labels. I don't understand this rant. If you read TFA you'll find that this is often not the case, even the stars get screwed out of vast sums of money.
- beloch 14y agoThe alternative, for artists, is not to sign with a major label. A lot of bands go it alone these days, although odds are they aren't the ones you hear on the radio (see "independent radio promotion"). They can still find an audience thanks to the internet. Yes, their music gets pirated heavily but, as Neil Young so aptly put it, "piracy is the new radio". The more their albums are pirated, the more likely at least some people will check out their live shows, buy T-shirts or, heck, even albums from their website or at concerts. As a fan of good music, I try to maximize the impact of every last dollar I can afford to spend on music. My goal in doing this is to pay as little as possible to Apple, amazon, or major record labels and as much as possible directly to artists. That means almost every album I buy is through band websites or at concerts. I make use of the "new radio" and don't feel the least bit bad about it because I make a point of supporting the bands I like in a way that sees far more of my money reach artists than comes from any "honest" iTunes user. In my view, this is the most ethical route. The record labels' "war on piracy" is really just a war on competition, and is a great example of how the letter of the law can be subverted by a greedy few to defeat the spirit of the law. Even the term "piracy" is very deliberately chosen to squash this valid new promotion channel. I really wish people would take a cue from Neil Young and call it the "new radio" because that's a far more accurate term.
- drcode 14y agoDon't try to become a rock star if this bothers you. Problem solved.
- showkhill 14y agoThe right answer - won't stop another 500 HN music industry threads alas.
- polychrome 14y agoTo deal with the bankruptcy issue, couldn't they form an LLC that signs on to create the record instead of themselves?
- niggler 14y agoThe problem is that the corporate veil can be pierced, and it happens a lot in these types of scenarios.
- rayiner 14y ago"Work for hire" should be abolished, both in creative industries and in software.
- anigbrowl 14y agoI am surprised to see you make such a suggestion. Quite apart from the freedom of contract issues, think of the transaction costs on a large collaborative venture such as a motion picture.
- rayiner 14y agoThere is no freedom of contract issue--getting rid of "work for hire" doesn't mean employees can't contract to transfer their IP to their employers. It just means that these transfers must be specific and explicit.
- anigbrowl 14y agoHaving done a lot of work-for-hire in film and TV, my experience is that it usually does involve specific and explicit contracts, and disputes are most likely to arise on amateur productions where business is one on a handshake or informal basis with no paperwork involved. I'm no fan of 'submarine contracts' but more often disputes like this tend to involve someone (such as a camera person) holding the IP hostage as leverage in a payment dispute. Whether a project will be financially successful is often a matter of pot luck, so many people just sign whatever comes their way and don't review the terms unless a dispute arises and the stakes make it worth winning. For one thing, you can't make people read contract terms carefully and a lot of creative people don't like reading turgid legalese in the first place; for another, the ratio of paying producers to wannabe creatives is low enough that many employment offers may as well be contracts of adhesion, and until people achieve enough success to get an agent the attitude is often that it's better to sign a bad contract than to be passed over for someone more accommodating. Maybe I misunderstood what sort of work for hire situations you had in mind?
- wglb 14y agoThat is an interesting position. As one who has been on the worker side of this, I would tend to agree. How then would someone buying my services end up with the copyright of that work?
- edwardunknown 14y agoI think we're almost done with this, finally: with a laptop, an Apogee Quartet and some $1000 ribbon mics (all easily resellable) you can make recordings as good as any studio, magic mixing board or no. And with Spotify, Rdio etc catching fire distribution will soon be no problem for the little guys. No need for big labels and dummy contracts. But we have to make sure Spotify, Rdio etc are transparent about their payouts. The big labels are probably making deals to ensure they live on as gatekeepers to these services and right now they have the leverage. We have to demand openness so we don't see a situation where Warner gets 5 cents and smaller labels get 1 cent per play.
- forrestthewoods 14y agoSpotify is horrible for artists. In some senses it's even worse than piracy because listeners think it's far, far better for artists than it really is. At least with piracy people know the artist isn't getting paid. http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/research/augustconcerts2.jpg http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/research/augustconcerts2.jpg What makes it even worse is that Spotify itself doesn't make money! They are losing tens of millions of dollars per year, it's crushing all other distribution models, and artists aren't getting paid. It's basically the worst outcome for everybody all at the same time.
- edwardunknown 14y agoWhen it catches on with Mom and Dad and the country western Walmart crowd hopefully people will start making money. And all we know is some artists are getting screwed. Warner, Universal, EMI might have made a deal where they get a decent percentage and smaller labels get peanuts, we have no way of knowing.
- jessevondoom 14y agoNo way of knowing? Really? None? For starters, Google: https://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=major%20labels%20invest%20spotify https://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=major%20labels%20invest%... Doesn't take long at all to find out that the deals struck with majors included not a decent percentage, but actually ownership. Ownership means access to a revenue stream — good for labels, bad for artists who don't receive royalties on investment revenue. Go beyond that one Google search, you can quickly learn that indie labels — the folks who win more than half the Grammys — don't get the same arrangement. So the music one their labels actually subsidizes the competition. They're not all that happy about that. And lastly: artists. You can listen to them. Plenty are outspoken. For every Metallica getting onstage with Spotify there are many others essentially saying that they receive nothing — and that makes sense because the payouts are designed to work at scale, not at the level most working musicians operate. Saying all this without judgement. I think the streaming market could be a good one for artists if it were more geared to driving direct purchases — but thinking about it as the answer is a problem. It's the start of exposure, like radio used to be, not the end goal.
- nateweiss 14y agoGreat piece by Ms Love. Surprised I hadn't seen it before. Thanks for posting.
- vonskippy 14y ago12 years since the article was written and what's changed? Seems like business as usual for the music industry. All those "We're going to change the world" artists have just stood in line those 12 years waiting for their turn to get screwed by the recording industry. Doesn't feel a damn bit different to me.
- niggler 14y agoVery astute observation. Different companies, different "models" with spotify and rdio and other radio, but the underlying dynamics for the artists really haven't changed