Quote:
Originally Posted by troutman
From post #3
The enemy is Spotify, MOG, Rdio et al who license entire music catalogs from labels at great cost. The labels (in my case Warner Bros) then pay a pittance in royalties to the artists. The winners in this vast charade are the labels and venture capitalists.
Believe me I know. I recently received a royalty statement from Warner Bros in which I found that one of our most popular songs, ‘Natural’s Not In It’ had been streamed or downloaded through paid online services, almost 7000 times. That netted me $17.35. Now that was just one song out of our entire Gang of Four catalog. The statement amount in total, my share, came to $21.08. There was a big, red-inked stamped message on the last page that read, “Under $25 do not pay.” |
Spotify, Rdio, etc, are not the enemy. The labels are. He even proved that point. These streaming services have paid a great price to get access to the music catalog of record labels (who control everything in this case) and THEY are the ones who pay the artists a pittance.
If you want to own your music, then don't deal with a label. But a label is (so far) the best way to get your music to the masses.
The best example of the tyranny of labels is Victory Records and Toh Kay/Streetlight Manifesto.
Quote:
Q: I wanted to hear the Toh Kay record. The music video – before Victory took it down – was beautiful and so was the song. My gosh. What happened?
A: Victory had given Streetlight a choice: either completely kill the Toh Kay record (their absurd reasoning was that its sale would “cannibalize” Streetlight sales, ha!) or hand it over to them so they can release it and exclusively profit from it. Streetlight has experienced and documented years of Victory not paying royalties while continuously profiting from their music, so it was a no-brainer. We had to cancel the record, no matter how much we all loved it and how hard the guys worked on it. That music video, by the way, is also “illegal”. So if you saw it – your eyes are criminals.
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Source:
http://streetlightmanifesto.com/pre-orders-faq/
The music industry as it stands is dying. Your best option is to get yourself a following and then strike out on your own. Labels will kill you in the end. You have to market directly to the consumer, or directly with the distribution service.