Misspent Sunday afternoons in front of the radio…
I’ve been trying in my previous posts to give you an idea and a little bit of background in the whole world of being a musician, and quite what the costs are involved in getting involved in such an industry. This post hopefully will allow me to tie up any other thoughts, and then from here on in we can start looking at what is going on with the filesharing issue in particular and also the ins and outs of things we should know, understand and appreciate when deciding whether to go out and buy a cd or to jump on Pirate Bay or something similar to download the track.
Firstly this whole phenomenon is nothing new – I’m sure I’m not alone in sitting recording the tracks on radio 1 chart show when a bit younger in order to catch the top forty. Annoyingly of cause the dj would start talking just before the end of the song thus wrecking the end of the song, but you would then religiously listen to on your way to and from school. There was then of cause CD, minidisk and a whole host of other mediums to copy music from one place to another. This is even before making mixtapes for your latest beau and friends.
So what has changed this time? We often hear people say that copying music has happened forever, this is just the latest in the line of ways of exchanging tunes and that people shouldn’t get so upset about it. To a certain extent I would say this is true (remember although this is probably borderline anti-filesharing I still haven’t made a decision which way I am swinging on the issue…) but the differences are stark. For a start the ease of getting whatever your wanting to listen to. Whereas before you’d have to find a mate with the cd of the band your wanting to listen to, then convince them to tape it for you, then get the damn thing back again and then being able to listen nowadays you can jump on the internet, neatly dodge the porn and its there nicely in your player for your aural pleasure.
Depending on where you look on the internet, to the point that I wouldn’t even like to start quoting the numbers I have seen you can find a whole array of figures that have been spun by various industry ‘officials’ but we do know it is affecting sales – just taking a walk around HMV (or wanting to have a stroll round Virgin) would show that where there were once mountains of CDs are now games. Ironically of cause many of these games allow you to play along on virtual guitar with bands playing their hits, but where there once were CDs, there are now games.
But has it affected the industry as much as we are made to believe? Is there a way to keep recorded music at a high quality, when there is no money available to develop the ideas and sounds that can only be found and developed in a studio?
That my friends is for next time…
The Industry involvement…
I don’t want you to think that in my last post, or this one, I’m moaning about the costs of being a musician. Quite the contrary, there is no more brilliant thing in the world of shopping than going into a music shop with your hard earned cash in your pocket and buying some new amazing toy thats going to make everybody jealous. You pay your money and take your choices. My point in these couple of articles is to give you the idea that the shiny disk, or mp3 you have in your hand and ipod is not the beginning and end for these people. Certainly the introduction of programs such as X-Factor have made this concept more alien – you walk into a room, you sing a song, you get Christmas number 1 and you’ve made it. Going off topic I think the worst thing about these programs is that it gives anyone and everyone the idea they could do it. If you really want it, get into the pubs and clubs, get your act sorted and see what happens from there.
I digress. So we’re about to burst into the murky world of the music industry as a career rather than as fun. This bit is very simple. You get signed to a label, which means you have a whole world of marketing, production, contacts to name but three at your disposal that noone would have given you the day before. But this costs money.
I’m going to keep this purely hypothetical and certainly different artists have different contracts, but I’m going to try to keep it as a average type of thing. Normally bands and artists sign a deal for say 3 albums. For those albums the record label gives you a certain amount of money (lets say £500,000 *at the moment thats a lot in the industry!). This money is essentially a loan, you’ll have to pay it back with a huge amount of interest on top. Out of this money you need to pay for your recording and all that goes along with that (mastering, production etc), your marketing and plugging for magazines and radio stations, and your touring costs – this is not simply money for your back pocket!
The first £500,000 you make belongs (more or less) to the record company. No one should ever think of people in the music industry as fans of music, they are hard nosed stoney hearted business men. If it all goes pearshaped you will still be expected to give this money back. If they decide they don’t like what your doing and drop you from the label (essentially make you redundant) you still have to pay this money back. On top of this money they will take a lovely big cut of anything else you make. Think of it as a tin of beans from Tesco, they buy it from the supplier, push it around a bit, sell it for a bit more, keep the profits. The music industry is no different in many many ways.
Other things currently happening include labels now starting to take cuts from touring royalties, merchandise that maybe made to sell at gigs, appearance fees etc etc - traditionally all the things that would take the humble musician from being someone who earns a bit of cash but nothing special to being the more affluent type of human.
And that my friends is why you’re hearing about lots of musicians talking about file sharing, yet very little from the actual record label. But more on that next time!
