Originally Posted by Robbie

I don't think it's always the girls. With the piracy issues and sales dropped so badly causing studios to shoot less...I'm thinking that the agencies have also seen a huge drop in revenue and are desperately trying to figure a way to get the income back to the level it was before the shit hit the fan with the economy and everybodies full DVD's and members areas all over the tubes and torrents.

I saw the same thing in the music club scene for bands. I was booked by King Music Agency, Fantasma Productions, Showtime Entertainment, and CMC...and between them they booked every A circuit room east of the Mississippi. BIG money for them in the 70's and 80's.

Walter B. Walters owned King Music and I would to to his mansion on the intercoastal waterway in Miami in the early 1980's and stare in wonder at his Excalibur car and his diamonds and gold jewely and $1,000 suits.

And my band and a hundred others were making him 15% off every gig we played. Problem for us was...it was like $3,000 for a 7 night week. We were a 5 piece band with a 3 man road crew. Had to pay for gas for the truck to move our P.A. and 120 par can lightshow. Had to pay for hotel rooms in every town (except the ones that had a band house). And then out of that 3 grand we had to give Walter his $450 cut. Meanwhile, I'm making like $100 and eating bologna sandwiches. lol

Anyway, my point is...the agents got used to living a big lifestyle as they would each have dozens of clubs under exclusive booking contracts. And you couldn't play them without the agent.

Then when the club music scene died out in the early 1990's they pretty much did the same thing as what I'm thinking is happening now with the agents for these girls. They started trying to jack up the prices for us to play gigs.

And that hastened their own demise as the club owners stopped using their agencies and started hiring local cheaper bands and only doing weekends. Finally by the mid 1990's all the club agents were gone. We booked ourselves from that point forward.

I'm guessing the same thing is starting to happen now in LA with the porn biz agents.