Another LONG rant about people not paying for music

[zenmindbeginner]

Weren't there several very sobering articles in the late 90's about how much artists really make off of record sales? I read several that illustrated just how very little the artist makes in comparison to the distributor and the record label.

That's always been the case. Now the artists get nothing.

Yeah. Funny how when the "evil corporate suits" were sidelined, everybody stopped making money. Could it be that artist selection and setting up marketing and distribution for worldwide sales are valuable skills? Nah!

Even the one-hit wonders of the '60s usually came away with around $30-60K apiece--in 1960s money.

Interesting... the problem is that there are more suits than ever today. Universal is a gigantic behemoth and owns rights to a significant portion of the recordings made in the last century. BMI, ASCAP, Apple... it's all corporations and suits.

In fact, it's distribution that is one of the main thieves of songwriters. Nothings changed on that end.

Marketing is also as usual, taken out of the songwriter's royalties and represents a HUGE cost to the artist.

Songwriters are making less money because everyone is making less money... it's really a simple correlation and has much less to do with online pirating.

File sharing and piracy hurts the record company and distributor the most, this is a fact. Do not fool yourself and buy the myth that has been perpetrated by the media and outspoken artists.

Piracy and file sharing still have absolutely nothing to do with tour revenues, merchandising, marketing deals and licensing royalties (which are the meat and potatoes of any successful artist's income).

Obviously, if someone lives on royalties alone, then they have every reason to want every single 1 to 3 cents off of every iTunes download.

[Nathan of Brainfertilizer Fame]

But I'm old school in the respect that if I like a song, I'll buy the entire album. I can count on one hand the times I've been burned by doing so and there was nothing else of value on the release. That's an argument I don't get. Yes, the CD era all but eliminated singles as a viable purchase, but none of the people complaining about albums not having enough good material to justify a full-price purchase strike me as the type who were stocking up on Bobby Sherman 45s. When Zep or Bad Company came out with an album, you bought the whole thing. Even younger listeners who dug Black Flag and the Melvins bought entire albums, because those bands weren't even releasing singles.

Zep and Bad Company were from the era of Album-Oriented Rock (haven't you ever heard of AOR radio stations?), where they tried to make every song a quality piece of music.

I love/miss that era.

[MCChris]

Zep and Bad Company were from the era of Album-Oriented Rock (haven't you ever heard of AOR radio stations?), where they tried to make every song a quality piece of music.

I love/miss that era.

Clearly ELO didn't get the memo when they released "Out of the Blue," a double album of pure crap.

[gorch]

Zep and Bad Company were from the era of Album-Oriented Rock (haven't you ever heard of AOR radio stations?), where they tried to make every song a quality piece of music.

I love/miss that era.

Clearly ELO didn't get the memo when they released "Out of the Blue," a double album of pure crap.

Clearly a matter of taste. Taking at is, the crap have been digitally remastered and once again sold. Is that criminal?

Or take Queen i.e. They went to another publisher (Island - Universal) that then re-released the old albums again. Is that criminal? Since they became popular through the advertisement investments of their prior publisher EMI. Island now earns of popularity they did not develop. Shouldn't EMI receive royalties from sales through Island?