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Originally Posted by kane
And the record company put those millions into them up front with no guarantee of any payback. If the band failed and doesn't sell any records the record label doesn't get that money back and they eat the loss. Again, nobody forces anyone to sign a record deal. If you want to be a huge rock star and you want to use the multi-million dollar marketing machine they have you are free to do so and you know what you are getting into. If you don't want to, you don't have to.
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but if i hit, meet the terms of my 5 year deal, should i not have a right to monetize my generated fame. I paid the record company back out of my share, and they got to keep 90% to compensate them for all the other failures.
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You are correct... as long as they are not under contract with the record label. If they leave the label, as Radiohead did, they can and should be allowed do to whatever they want with their new music. If that means give it away for free, so be it. If it means selling CD's for $100 each, that is fine too.
When I have a problem with it is when the record label puts up the money to pay for the recording, promotion and distribution of the album then the band just tells people to download it for free and not pay. They are knowingly trying to cut the label out by doing that. If they want to give it away for free they shouldn't be taking the advances they get and letting the label pick up the check on the recording, distribution and promotion costs. Yes, I know they have to pay that money back to the label, but the label puts the money up in advance. If the album/band fails the label loses that money. It is no different than investing in a business. If the business succeeds you get your money back plus profit. If the business fails you may lose everything you have put into it.
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the record companies are really not taking any risk, they are leveraging their monopoly to squeeze profits out of the system.
If the band succeeds they take 90% off the top, and get paid back in full from the artist 10%
if the band fails they still take 90% which blunts their cost.
the record company gets to basically keep 100% of the revenue until the artist pay back all production cost plus their advance.
so break even point is really quite low.
the artist who fail are in an even worse spot, because they no longer make money of their old music and they lose the support. So both side are taking a major risk.
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Maybe my analogy software isn't correct. In the end this is how I see it playing out in some cases. A label helps an act become hugely famous and successful. The act records 4-5 albums for the label and all is fine. The act then leaves the label at the end of the contract and starts giving away its new music online. No problem. If they want to give away their new stuff, so be it. The act owns the publishing to all their music so the label gets little or nothing from radio play and licensing of the older songs. This leaves the label with the option of still selling the older records. That is fine. That is the deal. To me it undermines the label when the artist then goes out and encourages people to download all of their stuff. The original agreement was they (the label) gets to sell the old records, but the band is undermining that by encouraging fans to just download them. I know the label has already profited from the sales of the records, but the agreement is they still get to sell the old stuff and they should be allowed to defend that agreement if they want to.
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well no the agreement is to tell the old stuff thru the retail channels. anything else would represent an anti-trust level monopoly action.
If you licienced your stuff to a dvd for sale, and then licienced it to the web. The dvd guys saying we have a right to sell, you are now creating competition for us on the web.
You should have a right to do that.
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Again, I say you are the exception. The average person discovers new music by switching the radio station. Maybe in 5-10 years that will change, but for now that is just how it is. It is easy for you, but I know this much, I know a lot of people who listen to music some even consider themselves real fans of music and you are the only person I have heard of doing this. Maybe you are part of a growing trend, but you are still an exception to the rule.
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but that the point, it can never be a growing trend if the record companies are allowed blindly and deliberately lie, claiming that the sharing is not authorized by anyone in the creation cycle. When the artist themselves say they don't care/want it to be shared.