3 ms·

The artist's share of income from record sales and radio play has been next to nothing throughout the history of the record industry. Any experienced artist wil

by max13 13y ago

The artist's share of income from record sales and radio play has been next to nothing throughout the history of the record industry. Any experienced artist will tell you the real money comes from live shows and merch (which can still be pressed discs). This is why file-sharing only hurts the labels, not the artists. The artists actually get more exposure without losing much royalty income from the illegal downloads, which actually help promote the band and draw bigger live crowds to gigs where they can actually make some money.

tptacek 13y ago
This isn't true. Artists could make a middle-class living off record sales, augmented somewhat by touring and merchandise, during the major-label days. It's true that they made very little on royalties from album sales --- but that was often because they'd been advanced more money than they could ever expect to recoup. That's a business model common to all of publishing (music and books and otherwise), and it offered artists a predictable income stream in exchange for selling more of the upside to labels. The closer you look at record labels, the more they look like venture capitalists. (If you wanted to make a pointed critique of venture capitalists, I suppose you could also invoke the comparison in the other direction.)
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
tunesmith 13y ago
This isn't true, it's more an amalgamation of half-truths and repeated statements from other people. The first sentence is only (occasionally) true in the cases of artists signed to big-label contracts - very out of date in today's day and age, where most indie musicians don't even consider trying to get signed to a label. Meanwhile, the labels DID get money from record sales. Piracy hurt labels and not artists because piracy hurt record sales, which went towards the labels' bottom lines and not the artists. But in a world where the record sales actually go to the artists' bottom lines, piracy does hurt the physical sales of the artists. The real money does not come from live shows and merch. This is generally debunked elsewhere.

by max13 13y ago

tptacek 13y ago

This isn't true. Artists could make a middle-class living off record sales, augmented somewhat by touring and merchandise, during the major-label days. It's true that they made very little on royalties from album sales --- but that was often because they'd been advanced more money than they could ever expect to recoup. That's a business model common to all of publishing (music and books and otherwise), and it offered artists a predictable income stream in exchange for selling more of the upside to labels. The closer you look at record labels, the more they look like venture capitalists. (If you wanted to make a pointed critique of venture capitalists, I suppose you could also invoke the comparison in the other direction.)

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

tunesmith 13y ago

This isn't true, it's more an amalgamation of half-truths and repeated statements from other people. The first sentence is only (occasionally) true in the cases of artists signed to big-label contracts - very out of date in today's day and age, where most indie musicians don't even consider trying to get signed to a label. Meanwhile, the labels DID get money from record sales. Piracy hurt labels and not artists because piracy hurt record sales, which went towards the labels' bottom lines and not the artists. But in a world where the record sales actually go to the artists' bottom lines, piracy does hurt the physical sales of the artists. The real money does not come from live shows and merch. This is generally debunked elsewhere.