From: owner-edheads-digest@efohio.com (edheads-digest) To: edheads-digest@smoe.org Subject: edheads-digest V4 #95 Reply-To: edheads@efohio.com Sender: owner-edheads-digest@efohio.com Errors-To: owner-edheads-digest@efohio.com Precedence: bulk edheads-digest Tuesday, June 5 2001 Volume 04 : Number 095 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Royalty Question [Wells Kevin L-FKW017 ] Re: Royalty Question [Mark Bradbourne ] Re: Royalty Question [Paul Sabourin ] Re: Royalty Question ["John Ryan" ] handlebar show on sat [Dawn ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2001 11:02:08 -0400 From: Wells Kevin L-FKW017 Subject: Royalty Question Does anyone know if artists on independent labels make more money from a CD purchase than artists on major record labels? I am having a friendly debate with a buddy at work about copying CD's. He maintains that copying discs is OK because artists make very little money from the royalties, and that most of the money goes to the record label. What about the smaller groups on independent labels like EFO and [insert your favorite independent artist here]? Just for the record, I do not illegally copy EFO discs!!!! :) - -Kevin ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2001 08:29:34 -0700 (PDT) From: Mark Bradbourne Subject: Re: Royalty Question My initial impression would be yes, indie artists make a lot more releasing their disk without the overhead of a record label/agents/PR/advertising. Artist royalties are awful unless you are selling millions of records... I've heard of deals where it is as small as $.02-$.05 a unit. But as artists renegotiate their contracts, these numbers get better (if they are selling millions and millions of records) Indie artists on the other hand, pay for their own production/distribution... but they keep all the profits, no record lable to eat off the top. Depending on the artist, they may have a deal with a manager that a certain % goes to them, but in comparison it's small to what labels take. It really hard to campare the two, becasue indie artists don't get the 'perks' of labels (national 'mainline' distribution, advertising. etc...) Did this make any sense? - -Mark - --- Wells Kevin L-FKW017 wrote: > Does anyone know if artists on independent labels > make more money from a CD > purchase than artists on major record labels? I am > having a friendly debate > with a buddy at work about copying CD's. He > maintains that copying discs is > OK because artists make very little money from the > royalties, and that most > of the money goes to the record label. What about > the smaller groups on > independent labels like EFO and [insert your > favorite independent artist > here]? > > Just for the record, I do not illegally copy EFO > discs!!!! :) > > -Kevin ===== - ------------------------------------------------------------ Mark R. Bradbourne http://www.markbradbourne.com - ------------------------------------------------------------ "The visions of utmost beauty are only able to be created on the canvas of the soul, inspired by words from the heart." - Charles Hass (1973-2001) Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 11:44:51 -0400 From: Paul Sabourin Subject: Re: Royalty Question Speaking as an independent artist myself, I can guarantee you that independent artists see more money than those with the major record labels...at least in theory. To ridiculously oversimplify, basically an artist with a major record label receives a big (or semi-big) chunk of money (called an advance), with which they must make a record. The artist will use that money, (book the studio, hire a producer, buy pizza, etc.) and if there's anything leftover, they can do whatever they want with it (buy a house, buy pizza, etc.). In exchange for providing this big chunk of money, the record label gets a large chunk of the profits from sales of the disc, and the artist(s) get a small percentage, called a royalty. (Sometimes alarmingly small, if they weren't paying attention during contract negotiations) In addition, the band must "pay" back the advance to the record company out of their share of the profits before they can see any money themselves. So sometimes, if they have brokered a really bad deal, gone over-budget on the disc, have huge tour expenses (usually also charged against their sales %), etc., then a band can see very little or actually lose money off of a reasonably successful album. For an interesting (and scary) illustration of how this can happen, see the following article: http://www.mp3.com/news/222.html Independent artists, theoretically, eliminate the middleman. They get to keep the profits (minus the producer's share, lawyer's share, and anyone else who has a piece of the pie), but they have to put up the funds for the recording themselves, and do all of their own grunt-work. And they also usually don't have nearly the distribution network that the majors do. So there's trade-offs to be made, and not every major label deal is evil and disastrous. All that being said, your workmate is full of it when he says copying CDs is okay because the artists don't see much money from them. Tell him that you should be allowed to reach into his wallet whenever you want and pull out all the $1s and $5s, because you can't really buy much with small bills anymore anyway. I try to remain pragmatic about it; CD copying is going to happen, and it can even help smaller groups get more exposure than they might. I've copied music myself, and anyone who says they haven't is lying. But my philosophy is to copy what you want, but if you really dig something, reward the artist and go out and buy the original recording. Soapbox mode off, Paul Sabourin Da Vinci's Notebook. >Does anyone know if artists on independent labels make more money from a CD >purchase than artists on major record labels? I am having a friendly debate >with a buddy at work about copying CD's. He maintains that copying discs is >OK because artists make very little money from the royalties, and that most >of the money goes to the record label. What about the smaller groups on >independent labels like EFO and [insert your favorite independent artist >here]? ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2001 12:53:49 -0400 From: "John Ryan" Subject: Re: Royalty Question Great to hear this answer from another musician. I'm also a musician in a band, and we have a new CD coming out. Just to give you an idea, we had to spend X amount of dollars for studio time, plus money for the CD cover and liner note design. Also, X amount of money just to press X amount of copies of the CD. However, we should get a lot of that money back when it comes out, as we sell it at shows. Being independent means we get ALL of that money, no one else takes anything off the top. That being said, buying a band's CD (or merch) is the #1 way to support the band. I know this because of a tour my band did. Thanks to a couple of awesome merch-selling nights at the end of the short tour, we were able to make it a success, and spurred us on to do a much longer tour this summer. All this because our fans liked us enough to buy our stuff and help us keep going. I've actually gotten quite a few positive responses for a couple of CDs I sent out to California for friends. They got some of their friends to listen to it, and it looks like we'll have a good buzz out there when we go in the summer. That is where CD copying does help, but only because I did it myself, and sent it to close friends. On this kind of level, you aren't going to see wide-spread copying, as burned CDs don't have the liner-notes, and they tend to not have a very long shelf life. I know our new CD will be well-received, and people will buy it to support us. It just adds to the happiness of playing live music in front of music, and having them support you to continue on. Good topic, hope I see more opinions on it. - ----- Original Message ----- From: Paul Sabourin To: Wells Kevin L-FKW017 ; Sent: Monday, June 04, 2001 11:44 AM Subject: Re: Royalty Question ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2001 10:33:44 -0700 (PDT) From: Dawn Subject: handlebar show on sat Is anyone going to the show at the Handlebar on Saturday? I've been to the Handlebar before, but it was a while ago. Has it moved since then, or is it still at the same location? I remember there was talk of it moving to another building, but I don't know what happened after that. Thanks! Dawn Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ End of edheads-digest V4 #95 ****************************