From: owner-edheads-digest@efohio.com (edheads-digest) To: edheads-digest@smoe.org Subject: edheads-digest V4 #96 Reply-To: edheads@efohio.com Sender: owner-edheads-digest@efohio.com Errors-To: owner-edheads-digest@efohio.com Precedence: bulk edheads-digest Wednesday, June 6 2001 Volume 04 : Number 096 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Edheads: Variety Playhouse [Berkeley Bush ] EFO: Re: Royalty Question [Nicole Carlson ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 20:43:39 -0500 From: Berkeley Bush Subject: Edheads: Variety Playhouse Who's gonna be there other than me? ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 20:45:57 -0700 (PDT) From: Nicole Carlson Subject: EFO: Re: Royalty Question On Mon, 4 Jun 2001, 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]? I'm assuming that he's not copying his own discs (which is of course legal) but rather making a copy of someone else's? As far as your question goes, yup, I'm pretty certain that indie groups make more per album than major label acts. Here's the breakdown from Billboard Magazine: $6.23 -- Retail Markup $3.34 -- Company Overhead, Distribution, and Shipping * $2.15 -- Marketing and Promotion * $1.99 -- Royalties to artist and songwriter $1.08 -- Signing act/Producing Record * $0.85 -- Co-op advertising and discounts to retailers * $0.75 -- Pressing album and printing booklet * $0.59 -- Profit to label *: Billboard doesn't label these as label expenses, but they clearly are So the artist nets $2 out of a $17 CD, while the label grosses $8.76 (and nets $0.59, assuming they haven't fudged the expenses.) (This may not be accurate either--I've heard horror stories about label expenses being recoupable out of artist royalties--but let's not make this any more complicated than necessary.) Now EFO is their own label and frequently their own retail store, so they gross $15 on every CD they sell on their own, and maybe $10 on every CD they sell through record stores (wild-assed guess--I don't know what their wholesale price is). They don't have the economies of scale that the major labels have, so their production/marketing costs are probably higher, but I'll betcha they're doing better than $2 per CD. Courtney Love had a speech about the robber barons that are major labels on Salon.com a while back, with a number of sobering points; I don't doubt that the financial situation for middling-successful major label acts is grim. But that line of rationalization breaks down utterly once you cross the line into indie and DIY bands like a number of our favorites. Appeal to his selfish instincts: tell him that indies support themselves largely through CD sales, and supporting the stuff he likes is the best way to ensure the continued presence of stuff he likes. Thus it's not selfless to pay for a legit copy of music he likes, it's self-SERVING, and your friend wants to look out for himself, right? Remind him that the alternative is the dreck on the radio. I trust he will need no further prompting. :) Warning: speculation ahead Y'know, sometimes I think that if the major labels were *smart* and evil, they'd *encourage* (or at least wink at) copying friends' CDs, etc. Why? Because it's not the labels that would lose the most--it's the indies. Widespread copying would hit indies hardest; a (say) 20% bootleg rate still means millions of bux for the biggest-selling bands, but a similar bootleg rate might wipe out a struggling indie band. There goes the competition; soon the only guys left standing are the major labels. THEN they crack down on infringers. >:> - --nicole twn getting back to work now... *** "Tiromancy: An odd form of divination utilizing cheese."--from the _Encyclopedia of Ancient and Forbidden Knowledge_ Visit Nicolopolis! http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~carlsonn nmcarlson@ucdavis.edu ana.ng@tmbg.org carlsonn@seclab.cs.ucdavis.edu ------------------------------ End of edheads-digest V4 #96 ****************************