When this guy can't get on the radio, somethings wrong.

Forgive me Bob and John, if I jump in here.

What the internet has done is reduce a sound recording to a 3-4mb piece of data easily transferred across the world for no cost, instead of a physical product you'd have to obtain with money from a third party retailer.

There's no piracy in the sense of someone counterfeiting the content owner's product and re-selling it. There's no selling going on. That's the problem.

What the internet has done is diminish the value of recorded music. And video. And printed text, especially newsprint.

Apple saved what's left of retail ownership of music. The record companies failed miserably at any digital sales model, and they should kiss Apple's ass for saving their bacon.

But the present and future is subscription. I want to subscribe monthly to ALL recorded music, current and passed, to access whenever I want on any platform at reasonable fidelity, for a modest fee, a fee much less than my current cable TV bill. I'd probably be willing to pay $20/mo, which is twice as much as I pay for Spotify now, if I could have EVERYTHING, That would be random access, "radio" as we understood it, and dedicated content if there was a demand for that.

Geez, I haven't bought a physical music product in about two years. And I'm IN this business.

Wow!!! Thanks 4 that Maestro

But those people are anomalies...I realize that life isn't always fair, but you would think that a multi-billion dollar industry would have the lobbying power to influence law. Hell, every other industry does it. Well, really, no more laws need to be made - just current ones enforced...Like the old, 'Do not steal'...Right now, there are no consequences, so why should anyone obey the laws? I posted somewhere in the Songwriting forum (Is this the end of piracy?) about a company that's easing the Draconian measures of the past and focusing on working through the ISP's to hunt down, collect and threaten with dropping of service. Do this on a MAJOR scale and it will be a deterrent.

There are Songwriter organizations that lobby Congress for different things - SGA, the PRO's, NSAI, etc. But there are no true unions in the sense that a common wage is agreed on. I assume the reason for this is that the ceiling for earnings are so high, that no one wants to limit potential earnings. But it's somewhat fool's gold. The overwhelming majority of professional songwriters never have a song in the Top Ten...and if they do, that usually only translates into maybe $100K. So, divide that one time earning over a period of 30 years. Also, contracts are unbelievably in the publisher's favor. There is not a SINGLE publisher in Nashville that doesn't take 100% of a writer's publishing share unless they have the leverage. Sure - they are putting up the advance of a salary to the writer (usually just enough to pay the bills), but the contracts written out are absolutely shameful.

Here's a common first time writer's deal.
$15,000 advance per year. Recoupable from Mechanical Royalties (Sales of albums)
Publisher retains 100% of Publishing and Writers Share of Publishing - Writers share of Publishing does not count towards recouping.
Writer retains Performance Royalties (Writer is paid by PRO if song is on the radio or internet radio)
Publisher pays for demos, but half of demo costs are recoupable.

So - lets say the writer is in his second year at said publisher. They have now paid him $30K and paid $15K in demo bills. So, now, the writer is $37,500 "in the hole.' Then lets say that the writer gets a cut on Luke Bryan's record. Lets say Luke sells 1 Million records (maybe 4 artists that actually get close to that number). So - writer's get 9.25 cents per record for mechanical royalties. But the writer co-wrote this song. So, now he only gets 4.65 cents per album. So 4.65 x 1,000,000 = $46,500. Then the publisher's share is half of this number, so now it's $23,250. So - the writer would get $23,250 for this deal with a co-write on a million selling record.
But wait - the advance/demo costs are recoupable. So, subtract $37,500 from that $23,250...So - after all of that, the writer is still $14,250 in "debt" to his publisher and doesn't receive a DIME from his song being on a platinum record.

Now, if said writer had never gotten that cut, then the publisher would end his contract and they would part ways - and the writer doesn't have to pay back any of that salary out of his pocket. BUT the publisher owns those songs and can make money for perpetuity from them. The writer still has writer credit on them, but doesn't own them. He can't sell them and doesn't have any rights over who can and does cut them. He was basically a "hired gun" for the publisher.

Lets say that same song goes No. 1 on Country radio. Same song, so same situation. The PRO's (ASCAP, SESAC, BMI) all fluctuate on what they pay (none will tell you how they calculate what they pay and they get a 7% cut for collecting)...but lets just say an average Country No.1 is paying $600K right now. So - the publishers immediate get half of that pie for the Publisher's Performance Share. So now, the writer's split $300,000 of the Writer's share of the Performance Royalty. So, $150K apiece. Pay 35% in taxes up front and the take home for a No.1 song is around $97,500. (Songwriters are no longer able to amortize their earnings by federal law) The writer gets to keep that. Do you know how few people get a No.1 song? Do you know how many of the same writers continue to get No.1 songs? About ten of them.

Also, a No.20 song is worth about 80% less. So, real money is only having a song in the Top 12.

But - there's more! Since album sales are down dramatically, now publishers are starting to move towards making Performance Royalties recoupable. That means - that $97,500 would go towards paying off the writer's advance first - then the remainder would go to the writer.

So - with this writer 2 years in their contract having an absolute MIRACLE happen of having a song on a Platinum record and going to No.1 - the end result is around $100K. I would say only a third of 1% of songwriters ever get a No.1. If he had signed the contract with the publisher recouping on performance royalties, he would have made a grand total of $60,000.

This is not the business you want to get in to make money.

Play basketball, football or baseball. Your chances of making it are drastically better and they literally earn No.1 money PER GAME.

Indeed we are an ant farm. How the looting got out of hand was that the woman running the RIAA was a free speech advocate having little intellectual property experience. Most of the industry assumed this was a student hacker issue that a couple lawsuits would make go away. Then they got clobbered by a multi-million dollar legal defense from consumer technology investment bankers. By the time they woke up the labels couldn't get an injunction because Napster was claiming only an artist had status to sue rather than record labels because masters can not be works for hire. That and other stalling tactics flooded the world with looted music.

It is true that new title sales especially new artist sales went right in the toilet during the '90s. Consumer tech industry encouragement of looting has made raising money to solve the problems that created this downturn all but impossible.

Wow...I hadn't heard this one, but it's No.1 this week...Wow...

"Play It Again"

She was sittin' all alone over on the tailgate
Tan legs swingin' by a Georgia plate
I was lookin' for her boyfriend
Thinkin', no way she ain't got one
Soon as I sat down I was fallin' in love
Tryin' to pour a little sugar in her Dixie cup
Talkin' over the speakers in the back of that truck
She jumped up and cut me off

She was like, oh my God, this is my song
I've been listenin' to the radio all night long
Sittin' 'round waitin' for it to come on and here it is
She was like, come here boy, I wanna dance
'Fore I said a word, she was takin' my hand
Spinnin' me around 'til it faded out
And she gave me a kiss
And she said, play it again, play it again, play it again
And I said, play it again, play it again, play it again

I'd gave that DJ my last dime
If he would have played it just one more time
But a little while later
We were sittin' in the drive in my truck
Before I walked her to the door
I was scannin' like a fool AM, FM, XM too
But I stopped real quick when I heard that groove
Man, you should have seen her light up

She was like, oh my God, this is my song
We've been listenin' to the radio all night long
I can't believe that it came back on, but here it is
She was like, come here boy, I wanna dance
'Fore I said a word, she was takin' my hand
Spinnin' in the headlights she gave me a goodnight kiss
And I said, play it again, play it again, play it again
And she said, play it again, play it again, play it again

The next Friday night we were sittin' out under the stars
You should have seen her smile when I broke out my guitar

She was like, oh my God, this is my song
I've been listenin' to the radio all night long
Sittin' 'round waitin' for it to come on and here it is
She was like, come here boy, I wanna dance
'Fore I said a word, she was takin' my hand
Spinnin' in the headlights she gave me a goodnight kiss
And she said, play it again, play it again, play it again
And I said, play it again, play it again, play it again

Yeah, play it again, play it again, play it again
Somebody, play it again, play it again, play it again

I'm with Ward on the mp3 thing. Data compression, file sharing and broadband internet killed the business model of the recording industry, which depended on the labels controlling distribution of recorded music. Record labels fought every tech advance enabling duplication and sharing recordings from cassette tape on without success and at the cost of customer ill will. Even the RIAA suits brought against file sharers were ill received by a public unsympathetic to the interests of the copyright holders. The net result is recordings have diminished in value compared to the glory days when you had to buy a recording to hear it when you wanted to at home, and if your buddy or sweetheart wanted a copy, they'd have to buy their own. That horse left the barn and is gone. It's just what's so.

Record labels failed miserably transiting online and monetizing music distribution. They're lucky anyone pays for music at all online, and they've been essentially bystanders in the effort to salvage what's left of the online music ownership model. Hopefully there will be equitable agreements hammered out in the future for streaming and subscription music distribution, but I feel that recorded music will never be worth what it was when you had to buy records, for distribution reasons, and also because music now competes with all kinds of new entertainments for the attention of consumers.

"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."

Attributed to Hunter S. Thompson

It's enough to drive a man to drinking. While sitting on the bed of his pickup truck, down by the crick, under the moonlight, with (I swear) a perfect lookalike of Jenna Jameson (circa 1992) in his lap. The catfish ain't biting though, because the crick went dry back in the '70s. Damn desert, it's not altogether very romantic - not like them cricks Down South.

I can't think of anything more romantic than telling the tale of two middle-school graduates sitting awhile on a hard steel tailgate in the depths of a mosquito-infested swamp. Drinking cheap whiskey, of course, and maybe puffing a bit on that wackey tobaccey. Sign me up.

Your wrong Tony. It's "my daddy's tractor". A youngster would have to have a J.O.B. to be able to afford their own. That ain't happening with this generation of derelicts. I actually had a young man tell me once that what he wanted to do for a living was sell his sperm. And that he loves bro country.