Grimes/Claire Boucher thread

do you think it's possible that as an artist like Grimes gains popularity, they also get deeper in debt to the label and lose leverage? For example, it seems crazy to me that with people buying ever fewer albums, record labels expect someone at her level to crank out a half dozen videos. How do you ever pay that back?

with grimes, the label doesn't pay for recording because she makes the records at home by herself. the label also isn't able to spend much money on the videos, which only get made if many key personnel are willing to work for free. in this case, this generally means many many hours of unpaid labor from grimes herself working as director, editor, colorist, and main performer. the label chips in recoupable dollars for the first one or two videos, and any that appear after that are the result of cash infusions from external sources like the canadian grant system or tidal.

the main differences between majors and indies afaik are the royalty split (50-50 with an indie label, on a major like 80-20 or 90-10? it varies) and the amount of money the label is prepared to spend on marketing. even the larger indies are very small operations compared to the majors and spend much less on marketing. they also spend much less on hiring the staff that perform vital in-house functions like public relations, radio promotion, and digital marketing. major labels have departments full of people doing those jobs. with small indies they might not have anyone doing that stuff, and with a bigger indie there might be one or two people doing digital marketing and the entire cadre of beggars group labels all share that person.

at a major it would be much easier for the label to gain massive leverage over an artist because of the sheer volume of dollars being spent on the artist's behalf. when you see artists on major labels having label trouble, what's usually going on is that the artist has not turned in music that the label believes in, and they have refused to put their vast and expensive collection of resources behind that music. this is why a nicki minaj or an azealia banks will not be able to secure a release date for an album, or why a charli xcx will release a "mixtape" instead of an album that is not accompanied by much in the way of videos and digital marketing and radio promo.

in grimes' case nothing like that is happening. she doesn't take much money from the label and anything she does take is quickly recouped by sales.

if grimes got a 50/50 split from 4AD her manager deserves the biggest bonus of all time

what? are you serious? i don't think i've ever encountered anyone signed to a bigger indie that didn't have a 50/50 royalty rate in the deal.

oh boy

lol

https://i.imgur.com/lJjUg0B.png

So was the post above actual insider details about Grimes' contract or an educated guess? It sounds like labels have become much more generous and fair vs the old days.

Perhaps with physical media sales dwindling, the stakes are lower for the labels.

thread just went supernova

This is why it was suggested at new employee orientation not to discuss your salary with your colleagues!

- very frazzled 4AD Human Resources associate

lol I'm inclined to post a screenshot from my 2016 royalties statement from the Label In Question just for laffs but unfortunately the internet isn't as cozy as it used to be. I will again assert that I would be very surprised if Grimes got a 50/50 split from them, as I know a number of artists under that umbrella who would also be quite pleased to find themselves the beneficiaries of such a split. however, it is a new era, it's true, and the people I knew there, even at the top, are largely gone, so who knows. still, I would be surprised.

i don't think i've ever encountered anyone signed to a bigger indie that didn't have a 50/50 royalty rate in the deal.

out of curiosity I talked to some artist managers I know this morning - their experience does not reflect yours. the only indies I know who do a 50/50 split with anybody are the ones that don't pay mechanicals, standard royalty rates are MUCH lower than that.

indie royalties are a lot closer to an even split than major royalties, no? even if they're not as generous as 50-50

isn't 4AD a major indie

depends on the size of the indie in my experience. a big article on Future of Music Coalition's site states

Here it is important to remember that artists’ contract royalty rate is not statutory, transparent nor is it public. Traditional contract royalties begin at a much smaller “11 –13 percent” and allow for that royalty amount to be further diminished through a process of unfair deductions that are standardized within the industry.

indies do better than that but in my experience only the super-pure-at-heart indies do anything near 50/50. (And, as has been observed for generations, it often turns out that the indie that offers you nice high split like this will ghost at some point and you'll have to hire people to go get what you're owed & then it turns out they didn't even keep track of the master tapes and you wish you'd had a 17% royalty that paid reliably instead of having to waste whole days wondering if scientists have determined how to get blood out of a turnip yet, not that I'd know anything about any of this lol)

I wonder what’s the rate at Dischord.

just been waiting for my moment to drop "its the roc, baby!" in here

huh weird i got 100% royalties when i signed to 4AD

I gotta give props to 4AD for giving all of ILM sweet record contracts. The Lulu pre-covers really paid off!

lol, i just went and checked the soundcloud for that. pleasant plains's pumping blood has been streamed 4000 times. n/a's pumping blood has been streamed 1600 times.

Someone out there really likes blood.

everyone i know who signed to a bigger indie did so in the bloggy internet boom times when merge and XL were getting number one albums and everyone in that industry thought the dinosaur majors had been vanquished and could never return to power

i'm sure what passed for "normal" during that time did not reflect the experience of everyone from before that time and anyone who will ever come after

ha that was during that window when people were getting rich off TV commercial placements

good times, good times

Venus Fly behind the scenes. So freaking cool.

https://tidal.com/browse/video/70001854

https://i.imgur.com/t7CxXtTl.jpg

Fantastic.

important follow-up to that:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BfmN-YDg6Rl/?hl=en&taken-by=grimes

hides looks good. they should collaborate on a pachinko machine for Konami.

this is cool:

Now she’s returned to social media to offer another update, clarifying that she’s “back in the studio making a million beats” and working on “one final album for my shit label and then my first album on a label of my choosing which im crazy stoked about eeeee. or i might go fully independent, researching options. the second one will be extreme darkness and chaos, the first will be highly collaborative and most glorious light.

https://www.stereogum.com/1984585/grimes-plans-highly-collaborative-final-album-for-her-shit-label/news/?amp=1&__twitter_impression=true

has 4AD done in this in the past / do they have a reputation a la Sub Pop?

So will the last album for 4AD be willfuly bad? She should do some 10 remixes and tape manipulations of “Scream” and call it a day.

Don't think Grimes would do that to her fans. The descriptions of both records sound great. Interesting way to work out a very particular type of angst maybe. We don't exactly what the problem is so might come out in the music. Whatever. I hope she comes thru & at least she's not walled off like Sky Ferreira - I can't believe it'll be 5 years since Night Time, My Time this fall. and I really hope Masochism finally comes out this year.

wasn't the last album technically released under two labels?

cool, hanging out with hideo kojima, he'll be good mentor as far as completing projects and having them come out in a timely manner

oh hush, you

hahaha

Hahahaha

alright, backstory for non-gamers?

hideo kojima made the Metal Gear series

i quit playing video games before i was a teenager but Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty has stuck with me for 17 years and is remarkably prescient

kojima is a living legend

he also has had "problems with the label" recently, so they might have bonded over that

he notably has to be prodded to actually finish a game

Kojima is one of the most famous and ambitious game directors, known for huge budgets and way too many projects stuck in development hell.

Silent hill, man

The PT preview game for Silent Hills was so good and the most terrified I’ve ever been playing a game. I broke my controller against the wall after one of those hallway scares.. not joking. One of his projects I was looking forward the most.

^ amazing game. Buddy projected it on the wall, it was a hellish vortex. Crying babies drove mad

*drove me mad

is that the one in the corridor that you keep going back to?

Yeah that's the one. There is an actual order and steps to be done before going through the corridor each time (while avoiding to be killed by your ex-wife's ghost). By the way some steps were ridiculous like whispering names into the controller's mic at certain points. When completed an actual trailer for the game was revealed (when first launched there was no info on who was behind the mini game just the words PT whic stands for Playable Trailer)

The concept trailer made by kojima and del toro also looked amazing. Really sad this is not happening:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNMseVbyc3g

Also for extra sadness: Junji Ito was going to be involved twitter.com/RealGDT/status/648117433593655296?s=09