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Post by michaelcleary on Oct 30, 2020 11:54:21 GMT -6
• Be the artist • Own the master (be the record company) • Own the publishing • Be the writer • Be incredibly talented, swim with the tide, but still be different enough to stand out this. It also helps to own the recording studio, and to be the engineer and producer...
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Post by Ward on Oct 30, 2020 13:12:18 GMT -6
I dunno man . . . there are still a few redeeming graces, a scattered piece of pulp that is worth reading here and there. It was on Kurt Cobain's shirt on the front of Rolling Stone, man. After they asked the band to show up to the photo shoot wearing clothing with no writing on it. That's the punk and alt-90s attitude that I miss, like with Rage Against the Machine, too. Doh on the Kurt Cobain thing . . . I really tuned out of the 90s between 1992 and 1999. But only cause the non-country music sucked. LOL Oh man, with regards to RATM, have I got a band for you to listen to!!
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Post by professorplum on Oct 30, 2020 14:10:50 GMT -6
Couple years ago Grizzly Bear headlined the Hollywood Bowl, sold out the Wiltern in LA multiple nights, and headlined all sorts of festivals in a single album tour. The singer said recently they lost money on the whole album/tour endeavor and has essentially quit the band to get a psychology degree. I wouldn't classify them as the lavish sort either, who blew a bunch of money on cars or ancient artifacts.
And from what I can tell, they seem to own their own masters since it's listed on streaming pages as "Grizzly Bear Music, LLC. under exclusive license to RCA Records."
So when the argument to make money is: own your masters, tour extensively to make actual money, be frugal, get a dedicated following, have good management/etc., but Grizzly Bear can't do it while headlining the Hollywood Bowl, then exactly how is anyone supposed to make money?
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Post by brenta on Oct 30, 2020 14:57:01 GMT -6
I played a song for an old friend and he wrote it off, "It sounds like Nirvana." I was like, is that supposed to be an insult? I love Nirvana. Someone else once insulted me by saying I was "Trying to write beautiful music." Kind of made me laugh. I guess there's no accounting for taste. There's a lid for every pot. I knew I'd made it when a band told me my recording sounded 'too good', and they moved on to a lesser studio.... I've gotten the "it sounds too good" complaint from bands on my mixes several times (facepalm)
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Post by brenta on Oct 30, 2020 15:22:56 GMT -6
This is the dilemma of our time for everyone trying to eek out a profit in this industry these days. Spotify reported earnings yesterday. Here's an article on it: www.reuters.com/article/us-spotify-tech-results/spotify-adds-more-subscribers-as-music-streaming-gets-back-on-track-idUSKBN27E1IT?il=0Even with the truly pitiful amount they pay to creators, they still lost 101 million euros, or about 118 million dollars this quarter. I know some think there is some fancy accounting to make it look bad for them, but the fancy accounting works the other way around. Publicly traded companies need to report good earnings to their shareholders, otherwise the executives will eventually be replaced. I'm not defending Spotify or saying they are good people doing good things. The point is that they really aren't in a position at this time to pay out more to creators, unfortunately. YouTube/Google on the other hand, pay out a fraction per play of what Spotify does, and Google is making money hand over fist. We can protest it all we want, but they won't care unless Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Kendrick Lamar and the other artists at that level all collectively leave the platforms. Those artists won't do that because the system is working out great for them. In my opinion, the biggest problem is that consumers simply aren't paying enough for music these days. $10 a month to have unlimited access to nearly all music in recorded history is ridiculously low. I was a teenager in the 90's, and back then I was buying at least one CD a week. So I was spending well over $50 a month on recorded music when I was making $6.25 an hour. Now, many of my friends who are music aficionados think even $10 a month is a ripoff. Even one guy I was arguing with on GS, who is presumably trying to make money off of recorded music, said that $10 a month for unlimited recorded music is a ripoff. Unfortunately, Spotify and the other streamers have zero pricing power because they are competing with free. If they charge anything more than $10, people will just go back to stealing the music via bit torrent or whatever the current Napster/Kazaa is these days. $10 a month is just low enough that most people won't go steal the music. But it's not enough for any creators except the top 0.1% to make a living on. I feel like our government and authorities really let us down by allowing widespread, easy theft of intellectual property, and now music has been completely devalued. There are 20 year olds who listen to music everyday who have literally never spent a single penny on recorded music. They just go YouTube or the free version of Spotify and stream it for free. How do we convince those kids to start putting money in the system?
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Post by EmRR on Oct 30, 2020 16:03:03 GMT -6
I think they all need to at least try raising prices. It's the only way out.
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Post by brenta on Oct 30, 2020 16:14:11 GMT -6
I think they all need to at least try raising prices. It's the only way out. Agreed, and I think they will. They will likely follow what Netflix has done, which is to first focus on growing the subscriber base, get as many people as possible into the system, then start raising prices.
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Post by donr on Oct 30, 2020 17:58:29 GMT -6
I’ve avoided posting in this thread because I feel bad reading the depressing economic stories around today’s music business distribution and sales.
Am I the only poster here who makes money from streaming? Because I do. I would say at this moment in time, I make more per year now on music recorded 30-50 years ago than I did ten years before there was an internet and radio and physical sales were it.
Yes, you have to have big stream numbers. On Spotify alone, there were 7 million streams of “Don’t Fear The Reaper” in the last 28 days. And it ain’t Halloween yet. But DFTR is not on any chart of the most popular songs on Spotify. Those numbers must be really big. So big money is being made by some artists, and probably more artists than you’d think.
BOC’s new album “The Symbol Remains” has been out about three weeks. We have about 300k streams on Spotify so far. That’s nothing in terms of dollars. Time will tell if it ever makes money on its own. With 45 years of catalog music, all of it available on streaming services, it’s three songs from Blue Oyster Cult that basically drive the royalty bus.
A big problem for small indie artists I think is no one wants to own/play CD’s anymore. I confess, I don’t. I’ve bought less than a handful in the last two years. I don’t display them, or even have a dedicated player for them. I make playlists and do jukebox style listening from streaming services. Yet it’s hard to make any money streaming unless you have a big base of people who want to hear your stuff.
I’m not at all sure the way recorded music business is done today is any more unfair or corrupt than it was in the day of vinyl records or CD’s. At least the accounting is accurate. You know exactly how many plays you’ve gotten, and where.
People with a bad record contract will do poorly on streaming. A good deal treats streams like mechanical licensing, basically a 50-50 split with a record company. I get statements from SONY, who owns our legacy stuff, and I wouldn’t want the job of chasing down all these digital age platforms that stream your music. Our statements are almost 4000 .pdf pages long. I'm talking about artist royalties here, not writing and publishing.
Plus COVID is killing us all. Thanks a lot China. I’m grateful for what I have and where I am in life. I’m getting old. After some lean years in the Napster era, I’m glad people are willing to pay something for recorded music again. Even as the information age has upended every aspect of the recorded music business, as it has most other businesses too.
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kcatthedog
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Post by kcatthedog on Oct 30, 2020 18:12:33 GMT -6
Not certain, I have much sympathy for Spotify, as they pay themselves obscene salaries, as they claim to lose money and pay the large majority of artists a pittance.
Glad to know some artists are actually benefiting, to some extent.
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Post by Bat Lanyard on Nov 1, 2020 23:20:33 GMT -6
I’ve avoided posting in this thread because I feel bad reading the depressing economic stories around today’s music business distribution and sales. Am I the only poster here who makes money from streaming? Because I do. I would say at this moment in time, I make more per year now on music recorded 30-50 years ago than I did ten years before there was an internet and radio and physical sales were it. Yes, you have to have big stream numbers. On Spotify alone, there were 7 million streams of “Don’t Fear The Reaper” in the last 28 days. And it ain’t Halloween yet. But DFTR is not on any chart of the most popular songs on Spotify. Those numbers must be really big. So big money is being made by some artists, and probably more artists than you’d think. BOC’s new album “The Symbol Remains” has been out about three weeks. We have about 300k streams on Spotify so far. That’s nothing in terms of dollars. Time will tell if it ever makes money on its own. With 45 years of catalog music, all of it available on streaming services, it’s three songs from Blue Oyster Cult that basically drive the royalty bus. A big problem for small indie artists I think is no one wants to own/play CD’s anymore. I confess, I don’t. I’ve bought less than a handful in the last two years. I don’t display them, or even have a dedicated player for them. I make playlists and do jukebox style listening from streaming services. Yet it’s hard to make any money streaming unless you have a big base of people who want to hear your stuff. I’m not at all sure the way recorded music business is done today is any more unfair or corrupt than it was in the day of vinyl records or CD’s. At least the accounting is accurate. You know exactly how many plays you’ve gotten, and where. People with a bad record contract will do poorly on streaming. A good deal treats streams like mechanical licensing, basically a 50-50 split with a record company. I get statements from SONY, who owns our legacy stuff, and I wouldn’t want the job of chasing down all these digital age platforms that stream your music. Our statements are almost 4000 .pdf pages long. I'm talking about artist royalties here, not writing and publishing. Plus COVID is killing us all. Thanks a lot China. I’m grateful for what I have and where I am in life. I’m getting old. After some lean years in the Napster era, I’m glad people are willing to pay something for recorded music again. Even as the information age has upended every aspect of the recorded music business, as it has most other businesses too. That has to be the most insightful, helpful, realistic post I've read on my time on this site. Really, it covers the majority of angles of people wanting to "get their music out there". As a fan who jammed to DFTR endlessly as a kid, and then had some good breaks along the way to realize a few songs here and there, thanks for posting this.
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Post by johneppstein on Nov 2, 2020 13:29:02 GMT -6
BTW, that's roughly 9 BILLION a year. I think there's plenty of money floating around in the music biz. It just doesn't seem to be ending up in the right hands..... If you hold stocks in all major steeaming services as a major label you make sure that the majority of the $$$ is not for indipendent artist. Spotify is not lying when they say that more and more indipendent artist make an income from streaming.... but its still as rare as the sudden world success when we were young.... But what is that "income"? $2.93?
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Post by johneppstein on Nov 2, 2020 13:34:03 GMT -6
So I should change what I write to make money. Ok. Good talk. The truth is, that independent might be making a decent wage - but you’ve heard of marketing, right? That costs money. Independents were making money from heavy touring and merch. Now .... Not to mention their jobs as baristas and uber drivers when they weren't touring. I knew guys in SF, moderately successful, who had such jobs to buld up cash to finance their next tour.
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Post by johneppstein on Nov 2, 2020 13:41:40 GMT -6
(One of) The tough answer(s) to your question is one that you and many others in this thread expressed you don't want to entertain. EVERYBODY who writes and plays wants to entertain. That's the whole point.
The prtoblem is that lot's of excellent, very entertainingmusic gets passed on and ignore because it doesn't pass the "focus group test". That test is not about entertaining the audience. That test is about selling advertising time.
Streaming services are all about the playlists. If you can't get on the playlists you have little chance of anything.
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Post by johneppstein on Nov 2, 2020 13:59:29 GMT -6
This is the dilemma of our time for everyone trying to eek out a profit in this industry these days. Spotify reported earnings yesterday. Here's an article on it: www.reuters.com/article/us-spotify-tech-results/spotify-adds-more-subscribers-as-music-streaming-gets-back-on-track-idUSKBN27E1IT?il=0Even with the truly pitiful amount they pay to creators, they still lost 101 million euros, or about 118 million dollars this quarter. I know some think there is some fancy accounting to make it look bad for them, but the fancy accounting works the other way around. Publicly traded companies need to report good earnings to their shareholders, otherwise the executives will eventually be replaced. I'm not defending Spotify or saying they are good people doing good things. The point is that they really aren't in a position at this time to pay out more to creators, unfortunately. YouTube/Google on the other hand, pay out a fraction per play of what Spotify does, and Google is making money hand over fist. We can protest it all we want, but they won't care unless Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Kendrick Lamar and the other artists at that level all collectively leave the platforms. Those artists won't do that because the system is working out great for them. In my opinion, the biggest problem is that consumers simply aren't paying enough for music these days. $10 a month to have unlimited access to nearly all music in recorded history is ridiculously low. I was a teenager in the 90's, and back then I was buying at least one CD a week. So I was spending well over $50 a month on recorded music when I was making $6.25 an hour. Now, many of my friends who are music aficionados think even $10 a month is a ripoff. Even one guy I was arguing with on GS, who is presumably trying to make money off of recorded music, said that $10 a month for unlimited recorded music is a ripoff. Unfortunately, Spotify and the other streamers have zero pricing power because they are competing with free. If they charge anything more than $10, people will just go back to stealing the music via bit torrent or whatever the current Napster/Kazaa is these days. $10 a month is just low enough that most people won't go steal the music. But it's not enough for any creators except the top 0.1% to make a living on. I feel like our government and authorities really let us down by allowing widespread, easy theft of intellectual property, and now music has been completely devalued. There are 20 year olds who listen to music everyday who have literally never spent a single penny on recorded music. They just go YouTube or the free version of Spotify and stream it for free. How do we convince those kids to start putting money in the system? You can't trust Spotify's "earnings reports", the books are cooked to where the meat falls off the bone. Actually their whole business structure is cooked. They're not losing money, but the profit is expressed in different ways. Don't forget that their major creditors - the Big 4 labels - are also major stockholders.
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Post by Martin John Butler on Nov 2, 2020 13:59:37 GMT -6
I actually got a check for .01 cent. Artists have been cheated excessively for eons. I was once owed $38,000 by Mercury records. Doing the inflation calculation, in today's money that would be over $150,000. My lawyers said I would win the case, but their fees would eat it all up to do so. All I would have gotten then was a reputation for being litigious. So I let it be.
Hopefully at some point reality will set in and music artists will win lawsuits to insure a fair share of royalties. My personal feeling is if a million people listened to my song on a streaming service, I should make at least one penny a play. That's all. Let the services make less profit, they're basically getting their product for free at the moment.
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Post by brenta on Nov 2, 2020 17:57:47 GMT -6
This is the dilemma of our time for everyone trying to eek out a profit in this industry these days. Spotify reported earnings yesterday. Here's an article on it: www.reuters.com/article/us-spotify-tech-results/spotify-adds-more-subscribers-as-music-streaming-gets-back-on-track-idUSKBN27E1IT?il=0Even with the truly pitiful amount they pay to creators, they still lost 101 million euros, or about 118 million dollars this quarter. I know some think there is some fancy accounting to make it look bad for them, but the fancy accounting works the other way around. Publicly traded companies need to report good earnings to their shareholders, otherwise the executives will eventually be replaced. I'm not defending Spotify or saying they are good people doing good things. The point is that they really aren't in a position at this time to pay out more to creators, unfortunately. YouTube/Google on the other hand, pay out a fraction per play of what Spotify does, and Google is making money hand over fist. We can protest it all we want, but they won't care unless Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Kendrick Lamar and the other artists at that level all collectively leave the platforms. Those artists won't do that because the system is working out great for them. In my opinion, the biggest problem is that consumers simply aren't paying enough for music these days. $10 a month to have unlimited access to nearly all music in recorded history is ridiculously low. I was a teenager in the 90's, and back then I was buying at least one CD a week. So I was spending well over $50 a month on recorded music when I was making $6.25 an hour. Now, many of my friends who are music aficionados think even $10 a month is a ripoff. Even one guy I was arguing with on GS, who is presumably trying to make money off of recorded music, said that $10 a month for unlimited recorded music is a ripoff. Unfortunately, Spotify and the other streamers have zero pricing power because they are competing with free. If they charge anything more than $10, people will just go back to stealing the music via bit torrent or whatever the current Napster/Kazaa is these days. $10 a month is just low enough that most people won't go steal the music. But it's not enough for any creators except the top 0.1% to make a living on. I feel like our government and authorities really let us down by allowing widespread, easy theft of intellectual property, and now music has been completely devalued. There are 20 year olds who listen to music everyday who have literally never spent a single penny on recorded music. They just go YouTube or the free version of Spotify and stream it for free. How do we convince those kids to start putting money in the system? You can't trust Spotify's "earnings reports", the books are cooked to where the meat falls off the bone. Actually their whole business structure is cooked. They're not losing money, but the profit is expressed in different ways. Don't forget that their major creditors - the Big 4 labels - are also major stockholders. Sorry, but this is absurd, and demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the goal of publicly traded for-profit companies. If the big four labels are major stockholders, they want the stock price to go UP. Stock prices go up when companies report high profits. The executives of the company have their compensation tied to the stock price as well. They stand to become billionaires if the company can earn enough money to send the stock price to the moon. The idea that they would be cooking the books to make it look like the company is losing money just so they can pay less to artists is asinine, considering that it would result in them losing billions of dollars of personal wealth. Not to mention the fact that it would be criminal accounting fraud for both Spotify and their accounting firm. Besides, the streaming companies have already demonstrated they can more or less pay artists whatever they feel like paying. They don't need accounting tricks to screw you, they can just screw you openly and blatantly.
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Post by johneppstein on Nov 2, 2020 18:03:46 GMT -6
You can't trust Spotify's "earnings reports", the books are cooked to where the meat falls off the bone. Actually their whole business structure is cooked. They're not losing money, but the profit is expressed in different ways. Don't forget that their major creditors - the Big 4 labels - are also major stockholders. Sorry, but this is absurd, and demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the goal of publicly traded for-profit companies. If the big four labels are major stockholders, they want the stock price to go UP. Stock prices go up when companies report high profits. The executives of the company have their compensation tied to the stock price as well. They stand to become billionaires if the company can earn enough money to send the stock price to the moon. The idea that they would be cooking the books to make it look like the company is losing money just so they can pay less to artists is asinine, considering that it would result in them losing billions of dollars of personal wealth. Not to mention the fact that it would be criminal accounting fraud for both Spotify and their accounting firm. Besides, the streaming companies have already demonstrated they can more or less pay artists whatever they feel like paying. They don't need accounting tricks to screw you, they can just screw you openly and blatantly. This shows a basic misunderstanding of Spotify.
AFAIK the stock price IS up, at least adjusted for the current recession. Stock price has not been directly tied to profits for a long, long time. And you need to remember that, as Ek said, Spotify's product is not music, Spotify's product is Spotify.
And I understand how publicly traded stocks work quite well, Among other things, my Dad was a profitable investor who did his own predictions and graphs.
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Post by jacobamerritt on Nov 2, 2020 18:20:23 GMT -6
Couple years ago Grizzly Bear headlined the Hollywood Bowl, sold out the Wiltern in LA multiple nights, and headlined all sorts of festivals in a single album tour. The singer said recently they lost money on the whole album/tour endeavor and has essentially quit the band to get a psychology degree. I wouldn't classify them as the lavish sort either, who blew a bunch of money on cars or ancient artifacts. And from what I can tell, they seem to own their own masters since it's listed on streaming pages as "Grizzly Bear Music, LLC. under exclusive license to RCA Records." So when the argument to make money is: own your masters, tour extensively to make actual money, be frugal, get a dedicated following, have good management/etc., but Grizzly Bear can't do it while headlining the Hollywood Bowl, then exactly how is anyone supposed to make money? Honestly, that sounds more like they needed a better tour manager, and/or business affairs manager. No way they should be losing money on tour dates like that.
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Post by Martin John Butler on Nov 3, 2020 11:09:56 GMT -6
Maybe I'll start a penny a play campaign... hmmm...
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Post by johneppstein on Nov 3, 2020 13:08:09 GMT -6
Maybe I'll start a penny a play campaign... hmmm... Should be able to get lunch in no time....
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Post by Martin John Butler on Nov 3, 2020 14:00:03 GMT -6
I was joking a little, but I think even people in congress who know little about copyrights and content creators would see a penny per play as fair. Streaming services would of course have to raise their rates, but so what. At least musicians could earn a share. A million plays would equal $10,000. Not great for those of us with only a few thousand plays, but even then $150 beats whatever the hell they're paying now.
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Post by drbill on Nov 3, 2020 15:34:02 GMT -6
I was joking a little, but I think even people in congress who know little about copyrights and content creators would see a penny per play as fair. Streaming services would of course have to raise their rates, but so what. At least musicians could earn a share. A million plays would equal $10,000. Not great for those of us with only a few thousand plays, but even then $150 beats whatever the hell they're paying now. I don't disagree with you Martin, but the reality is - their business model would not work if they paid content creators 1 penny per play. They would be bankrupt in one quarter because the public is not used to that, and they won't pay it after they've essentially been getting it for free. Without virtually "free" or next to free content - virtually ALL streaming services from Spotify to Netflix to Amazon to .... would fail. Any business model that does not capitalize itself through advertising the way that network TV and radio capitalized itself thru advertising is a non workable business plan. And frankly - who wants to hear advertisements for 20 minutes out of every hour these days?
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Post by professorplum on Nov 3, 2020 23:11:26 GMT -6
Couple years ago Grizzly Bear headlined the Hollywood Bowl, sold out the Wiltern in LA multiple nights, and headlined all sorts of festivals in a single album tour. The singer said recently they lost money on the whole album/tour endeavor and has essentially quit the band to get a psychology degree. I wouldn't classify them as the lavish sort either, who blew a bunch of money on cars or ancient artifacts. And from what I can tell, they seem to own their own masters since it's listed on streaming pages as "Grizzly Bear Music, LLC. under exclusive license to RCA Records." So when the argument to make money is: own your masters, tour extensively to make actual money, be frugal, get a dedicated following, have good management/etc., but Grizzly Bear can't do it while headlining the Hollywood Bowl, then exactly how is anyone supposed to make money? Honestly, that sounds more like they needed a better tour manager, and/or business affairs manager. No way they should be losing money on tour dates like that. I agree it seems unbelievable that they could lose money or break even after 15ish years experience in the major label recording/touring game, but maybe there's some facets of it we/I just don't realize. They seem fairly tight lipped about most things and don't do many interviews, so when the singer says they lost money I believe him, but who knows. Regardless of the specifics, I think the general idea that you can headline the Hollywood Bowl and even be having a conversation about money is a reflection on the current music industry. If you played venues like that just 10-20 years ago, everyone assumed you were swimming in money. Not to mention the 1970s/80s, etc...
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Post by the other mark williams on Nov 3, 2020 23:18:37 GMT -6
This is going off memory, but...
...I believe it's in the book "Bono: In Conversation," that the author essentially asks Bono, "When did you guys finally know you were going to 'make it,' and that the band was going to survive?" Bono's answer (again, if I remember correctly) was sometime after the Pop Mart tour, when they managed to pull off that tour without going bankrupt.
Obviously, there are issues of scale here, in terms of what they were trying to pull off, but it's still remarkable that the band wasn't sure they were financially sound even after Unforgettable Fire, Joshua Tree, Rattle & Hum, and Achtung Baby.
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Post by jacobamerritt on Nov 4, 2020 0:15:14 GMT -6
I agree it seems unbelievable that they could lose money or break even after 15ish years experience in the major label recording/touring game, but maybe there's some facets of it we/I just don't realize. They seem fairly tight lipped about most things and don't do many interviews, so when the singer says they lost money I believe him, but who knows. Regardless of the specifics, I think the general idea that you can headline the Hollywood Bowl and even be having a conversation about money is a reflection on the current music industry. If you played venues like that just 10-20 years ago, everyone assumed you were swimming in money. Not to mention the 1970s/80s, etc... I'm speaking with a degree of personal insight and knowledge - I toured with various artists who absolutely are making a solid living and they are playing 500 cap rooms up to say 3000. Definitely making an excellent income. I know it's a bit of a tangent from the thread, but yes- bands selling out Hollywood bowl or even 250 cap rooms should be making a solid income if their business and tour management affairs are in order. Although even those artists are suffering almost overnight now that the touring industry has basically ground to a halt.
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