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Re: The Who Mailing List Digest V9 #152
>Courtenay Love explains how it is a band has a hit record and ends up in
debt to the record company.
Except she leaves out many factors, all expenses incurred by the label, all
the bands they finance who don't make them a penny and they never recoup
penny one. What she's calling "profit" for the label is really their gross.
How much does it cost to run the label? How much did they lose on the 20
other bands they financed but didn't make it? She's clueless.
If the situation is so bad for the record companies, then they need to go
out of business. They may yet, if artists can find a way around the
promotion and distribution problem. That's basically what the record
companies do for artists. Unless the artist is handling it (like Pete off
Eelpie.com), then the cds are as much a give-away as radio time.
And she doesn't appear to be suffering with a convenience store pay
lifestyle, does she? What do you want to bet she was smiling when she
signed the contract? No one forced her to do it. The Who all seem to have
done pretty well under a label, Pearl Jam, Metallica, etc. etc. Who gave
former sheetmetal worker Daltrey the money to buy that salmon farm? You
can't mean that he bought it with a convenience clerk's salary! And that in
a country that taxes to the extreme! It just doesn't add it, this math of
hers!
But it wasn't the cds that financed the farm--The Who went broke when they
stopped touring. This is because John and Roger (without the extra
songwriter's cut) don't make enough from the cds to break even. The cds
have always been a bum deal.
This is where young bands are going wrong. They think that if they put out
a cd and get a hit, then they'll be rich. It ain't so. I'd say Clear
Channel is trying to move in on the touring $$, too.
keets
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