Or more to the point, how bands don’t make any money.
Fresh off of reading Steve Albini’s take on The Problem With Music I stumbled upon this article on NPR about The Posies and how bands make money. As it turns out, from the Posies’ hey day in the 90′s they’re still in debt to Geffen for the production and distribution of their earlier releases. Even with singles appearing in the movies Reality Bites and The Basketball Diaries. John Auer says that he never saw a royalty check come back from any album sales until they left Geffen and returned to their original indie label PopLlama.
‘We made a lot of money, I mean, I think we had a $250,000 publishing advance, and I think just off those two movies, we managed to recoup that entire advance and make money on top of that.’
But the band still owes Geffen money. ‘At the time’, Auer says, ‘he was having too much fun being a rock star to pay attention to all the expenses label reps charged to the band’s account.’
‘If you look at what they send you — eventually — these amazing itemized statements, you’re gonna find every hotel room they ever stayed at,’ Auer says. ‘I mean, if [an A&R guy] went and bought baseball cards, they probably put it on your account. It was amazing to sit down and look at and realize it was all on your dime, basically.’
Now days Auer and Stringfellow make a living by producing and engineering other bands albums, such as R.E.M. and Snow Patrol, as well as playing as back up musicians. Even with their short reunion tour Auer estimates that the three stop tour will net each musician $500 a day, which isn’t a bads days work if you can do it day in and day out, which a band can’t do.
We don’t tour with a bus these days. We don’t have four-star hotel rooms. We’re not above rooming with each other if we have to.
It’s no wonder that more and more bands these days are finding way to produce their own album and avoid the labels all together. Labels bring with them big name producers and a means of distribution but it doesn’t sound like they bring much else.
Labels bring with them big name producers and a means of distribution but it doesn’t sound like they bring much else.
Look, I’ll produce the freakin’ music myself, and all distribution could be electronic. 100% virtual. No physical materials. End of story. No mas record labels, por favor. I’m sick of musicians whining about them. My readers are sick of me defending them. Can. We. Just. Move. Along. Now. Please?
Maybe I’m being a touch theatrical, here, but I simply cannot believe either side enters into such nefarious contracts if the artists rarely earn enough royalties to pay back their advances. I’m stumped. Certainly there is more money to be had in music than in music blogging? Right?