Artists Rejecting Record Deals More And More

[DeBro]

I read this article posted on  Bobby Owsinski's blog and I'm posting a link to it below so as to garner some feedback on the topic in this forum.

Artists Rejecting Record Deals

[Byron Dickens]

Record executives make lawyers and politicians look absolutely  saintly by comparison. 

[craigb]

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

    ~ Hunter S. Thompson

[synkrotron]

10 hours ago, DeBro said:

so as to garner some feedback on the topic in this forum.

I could probably spend the rest of my life only listening to artists that are NOT signed. There is a wealth of great material out there now...

[Grem]

Interesting read.

Before I sign anything, I want a lawyer to look at it with an eye out for who ends up with the copyrights and publishing rights.

 

Man I am so glad I didn't get caught up in that s**t when I was younger. I would have gotten chewed up and spit out. No telling where I would have ended up.

[craigb]

34 minutes ago, Grem said:

Interesting read.

Before I sign anything, I want a lawyer to look at it with an eye out for who ends up with the copyrights and publishing rights.

 

Man I am so glad I didn't get caught up in that s**t when I was younger. I would have gotten chewed up and spit out. No telling where I would have ended up.

Well, I hate to break this to you, but even without that you ended up in the Coffee House (v2) forums... ?

[Bapu]

Are we allowed to say "Perpetuate Everything New In Sight" here? 

[craigb]

Please exclude nuances in sentences.

*Looking at you Ed!* ?

[slartabartfast]

The issue here is that for the one in a million artists who can hit the lottery by producing a viral song and entrain a following, the record companies have less to offer and more to gain than in the old system. For the artist it is the opposite. In the days of record company releases, the companies arguably took some risk and provided substantial benefit, both by filtering out artists competition to only the few hundreds of contracted artists they pushed, and by promoting the work of their exploited artists. Without that promotion, in the days of vinyl and CD, an artist was unlikely to ever get to a large audience.  With the ease of access to streaming, artists can now present their work without record company backing. The competition is now enormous (potentially millions of other artists), but it is inevitable that some unknown artist will break through. The record companies see this as an opportunity to back/exploit a winner without having to "discover" him or promote him, and with a guaranteed audience out of the box. Furthermore, the emergence of the "360 deal" in which the contracts being offered give the recording company a big piece of not only CD sales, but streaming, live performance, and merchandising, makes signing with them much less advantageous for the artist than in the past. Forgoing an advance is not a big issue now either. In the past the advance was always better for an agent (paid up front) than an artist who would often be in hock to the company for years as a result.  Canny artists might have used the advance to promote a tour, or capitalize merch under the old system and show some profit, but under the new system those options are largely foreclosed by the 360 contract. 

For the struggling artist without millions of followers on social media, the new system may actually be worse. He is now in competition with a horde of other artists of highly variable merit, on systems in which it is very difficult to discover a particular artist, and is subject to exploitation by a new breed of public relations consultants who promise to make him famous for a fee, or burdened with a new task of self promotion which is of dubious utility. For someone in that situation, the "exploitation" of his work by a recording company might still be advantageous.