What's the future of the music industry?

I am willing to bet that The Messiah could not sell out Broadway and West End theatres for years at a stretch

In the 18th century, maybe.....

Only the most popular albums sell 50.000 here, but in the US or Canadian market, even rather underground acts should be able to shift 50.000 copies.

No, see, that's the problem. A relatively underground band could have sold 50,000 units in the '90s, but not anymore.

Mad kudos to Karen for dutifully keeping a sensible conversation going throughout this mentalism.

(hah, xposts)

here there's a mix of both -- independent promoters and venues that do all their own booking. Though a lot of the promoters don't take much of a cut, just cover costs of posters/flyers -- take 10% of the show's receipts, tops.

Karen I apologise but most people seem to be able to carry on their own conversations and ignore me pratting around. I will now go and start a "Wilfully Confusing Schoenbergs Because It's Friday Afternoon and You're a Git" thread tho.

and by "you're" i meant "i'm" btw

I mean, earlier this year Cake's album debuted with 44,000 sales, and it was the number one record that week!

xpost to myself re: 50k sales

cake is caked up

For this whole discussion of touring and promoters and the way that bands make money off playing live, I really really wish that emsk still posted to ILX. (I mean, you get cases where there are four layers of people trying to make money off one gig - the band, the venue, the promoter and the booking agent - however, having an actual booking agent vastly increases a band's chances of getting a Guarantee, because booking agents don't just control access to Little Indie Band, they control whether the same promoter gets access to Big Wildly Successful Touring Act as well so they have to keep their relationships good)

however, having an actual booking agent vastly increases a band's chances of getting a Guarantee, because booking agents don't just control access to Little Indie Band, they control whether the same promoter gets access to Big Wildly Successful Touring Act as well so they have to keep their relationships good)

Yeah, exactly -- and as a venue booker or indie promoter, you sometimes end up having to take on some acts that you really don't want to in order to keep up relationships w/the booking agent.

Like the music, itself, is often one of the last things on your mind after money, maintaining relationships, and doing favors for the right people

I don't think it's so much "have to take on acts you don't really want" (that's usually more to do with support bands) so much as "if you ask to book a band, you have to pay them a guarantee, and if you can't guarantee the money, you have not proved yourself a good enough promoter to make it worth the band coming out."

Trust me, I'm sympathetic to promoters to a certain point, in that it is one of those jobs where you truly have to balance love of music and the blunt realities of money. But the idea that you can ask a band to drive, with all of their gear, from, say, London to Nottingham, and expect to have them play to 3 of your mates and pay them in drink tickets, that's kind of bullshit.

I mean, sure, the whole money, maintaining relationships and doing favours thing exists, and it sucks, and it exists on every level of the music industry. But this is not *necessarily* that.

it's both. like from the point of view of a booker/promoter, you want to be the go-to person and get first dibs. If you say "no" too often, the agent develops stronger relationships with other promoters and bookers

i'm surprised nobody's linked this article yet.

http://www.littlewhiteearbuds.com/feature/everything-popular-is-wrong-making-it-in-electronic-music-despite-democratization/

it did the rounds a couple of months ago. it starts with a very familiar story but ends up in a pretty surprising place. go read it.

in my experience when we're talking about touring in the US vs touring in the UK we are talking, in every sphere - promoter, clubowner, booker, etc - about two almost completely different things.

And then touring Europe is something completely different again, like getting bumped up to Business Class if you're not expecting it.

tell that to Anvil 8)

(they got paid in goulash in the one venue. they were massively late though)

Annvil 8)))

there is a local band here who put out a new cd and booked a show at a vfw hall where they charged ten dollars at the door and you got a "free" copy of the new cd when you paid your ten bucks. they got a big crowd too. and that's how they advertised it too. record release show and free cd with admission. i thought that was pretty smart!

i realize that they were not the first people on earth to do this, but a little creativity goes a long way.

Washington DC band Medications says its not so easy anymore for bands to book their own shows into US clubs and such (this is from last year)

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/music/2010/04/02/the-new-medications-record-is-awesome-so-why-cant-the-band-book-a-tour/

...Trust me, I'm sympathetic to promoters to a certain point, in that it is one of those jobs where you truly have to balance love of music and the blunt realities of money. But the idea that you can ask a band to drive, with all of their gear, from, say, London to Nottingham, and expect to have them play to 3 of your mates and pay them in drink tickets, that's kind of bullshit....
― Karen D. Tregaskin, Friday, May 27, 2011 6:02 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

Totally guilty of being the guy who goes "that's ok, we'll play anyway!!!" thus perpetuating this stuff.

David Lowery OTM

Mostly, but when he hails old school record labels for absorbing cost doesn't he overlook this (from the comments):

Just asking questions here, but don't record labels recoup all of their expenses? The money laid out by most labels, if I'm not mistaken, is a loan to the artist. It has to be paid back from royalties. So, even though labels may have put money up front to develop a band, they get it back when the record sells. So, for instance, as an artist, I may receive $.25 on the dollar from record sales, but if I got an advance of $100,000, that money had to paid back to the label out of that $.25 before I make anything. Not sure how that works with the overall math.

The major labels do not provide "tour support" for free, do they?

costs

I don't see why that matters. If the record sells, the label recoups their money, if it doesn't sell, the label absorbs the costs and drops the act, if I'm not mistaken. Either way, the label fronts the costs. iTunes and Amazon don't front shit.

A lot of records never make back enough to recoup their expenses. You can criticize labels for that, but it's also a function of it being just generally pretty unpredictable what music will take and what won't.

Plus there's a pretty big value to having someone to front that money. Kind of the same way that most people can't just buy a house without a bank, most people don't have a bunch of cash up front to make and promote a record.

The big difference, of course, being that you're not paying interest on your advance and you're not personally responsible for paying it back.

yup. Hurting OTM

maybe some people shouldn't buy houses or make expensive records

Um, so you think only the rich should own houses?

yes

weird, ok

trustfund kids make the best music

maybe some people shouldn't buy houses or make expensive records

lol @ "expensive" records

Steven Corn (BFM Digital) Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Lowry's arguements are fundatmentally flawed. He's comparing apples and oranges (pun fully intended). iTunes is a retailer and not a label (at least not yet). He should compare iTunes to Tower Records if he wants to be accurate.

Further it's incredible myopic and wrong to say that "They [Apple and Amazon] put up ZERO CAPITAL and ZERO RISK and they get 30% of the gross in return."

Apple and Amazon invest a lot of money building their respective stores and technologies. It's always been a bit of a mystery how much profit they make from their respective music stores. Apple is often accused of even using their iTunes stores as a loss leader for their hardware sales.

Regardless, they both put up a LOT of capital and risk.

There are many other holes in Lowry's logic. But an obvious one is that label tour support is really the artist's money since it is recoupable. It's not a gift nor should it be considered profit.

If an artist wants to make the lion's share, they need to take the risk. Otherwise, be content with a smaller share from labels. As for me, i support the former strategy.

but artists don't have the capital - that's the point

then they should attempt less capital dependent forms of music making

http://bfmdigital.com/we/bfm-distribution-partners/

then they should attempt less capital dependent forms of music making

― iatee, Tuesday, February 14, 2012 5:36 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

As long as you're cool with never hearing any of it, that's fine.

I'm cool w/ it

Apple invest lots of money in cheap Chinese labor, they need to get something back

It's really reductive for Lowery to say that all iTunes does is host files. They have a recommendation engine, filterable search database, listener reviews, outgoing marketing based on users' previous purchases, etc. As does Amazon.

Brick-and-mortar stores also had "recommendation engines" known as clerks and searchable databases known as alphabetized, categorized shelves, fwiw. And I don't think they ever took 30%.

Point isn't really whether iTunes is good to artists (although it isn't) but that the "new model" isn't really all it's cracked up to be for artists.

iatee wait till you hear what i cooked up on garageband, hope you like preset synth pads (and i know u do)

people for most if human history seemed to get by w/o a stream of new and well-produced studio music. it sux but the economics behind it prob isn't there in the long-run.

it's gonna happen w/ lots of not-music soon

sad but true

it would be nice if everyone is as matter-of-fact as you are iatee, but sadly that is not the case.