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Post by Johnkenn on Mar 14, 2018 9:24:17 GMT -6
www.showbiz411.com/2018/03/13/record-sales-plunge-as-top-artists-justin-timberlake-u2-even-taylor-swift-sell-fractions-of-previous-numbersRecord Sales Plunge as Top Artists– Justin Timberlake, U2, even Taylor Swift– Sell Fractions of Previous Numbers ■business■Music by Roger Friedman - March 13, 2018 5:33 pm 0 52855 Record sales are being touted these days as on a comeback. All you hear is: streaming will save us. But things are pretty dire. For example, Justin Timberlake’s “Man of the Woods,” touted so highly on the Super Bowl and a hit in its first week, has been a total sales stiff. As of this week, “MoW” has sold just 285,000 copies. Contrast this with Timberlake’s “20/20 Experience,” which was the best selling album of 2013 with 2.5 million copies. (Luckily, Justin had a smash single last year with “Can’t Stop the Feeling.”) Even worse: U2’s “Songs of Experience” has taught us nothing. It had great songs, like Timberlake, but they didn’t save the situation. “Songs” has sold just 250,000 copies total. Remember U2? Their sales used to be huge. In both cases, the only way to make money is touring. Timberlake and U2 are committed to long tours. Even Taylor Swift has had trouble. Her “Reputation” album has sold 2 million copies, which sounds great. But it’s far less than her “1989” album, which did 5 million total since late 2014. “Reputation” is well past its peak and won’t do anything remotely like that in the end. Columbia Records in particular is suffering. While parent Sony Music has kept up on the charts with the Epic label, and RCA, Columbia’s name has not been on the charts in months. Their Harry Styles solo album has sold only 375,000 copies to date— no amount of PR or touring has moved it close to 500,000 copies and gold status. This past week’s chart should alarm everyone. The top selling CD/paid download was “The Greatest Showman” with just 38,453 according to BuzzAngle. Including streaming, the top seller was “Black Panther” soundtrack with 78,000 copies. Where are the music fans? Back in the day, as they say, artists churned out music. Now it comes in a dribble, drip, drip, drip. A malaise has set in, that’s for sure, among rock stars. There’s no really big name release until May, when pop star Charlie Puth releases an album that was scheduled for some time ago. Otherwise, we’re in a pretty stagnant period. Adele, who ruled the charts two years ago, won’t have anything out in 2018. Even Justin Bieber has no plans for new “music” until later in the year.
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Post by drbill on Mar 14, 2018 17:41:34 GMT -6
I guess with those kinds of numbers, they're going to have to drop the term "Rock Star" down to "Rock Person".
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Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2018 18:52:02 GMT -6
I think you've got to take a a really long-term historical view on this. The huge market in record albums that began in the late 60s and lasted until recently was an aberration. If you go back before that, whether Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Vic Damone or anyone else, the record sales were an adjunct to the real excitement-live performance. Those great acts of the 30s, 40s, 50s lived on the bus, going from gig to gig across the country. The recordings made you want to go to the live show. It was that way right up until 'Rubber Soul' or thereabouts. Recording technology is great (how could I argue otherwise), but somewhere along the line we got the cart in front of the horse. We got to the point that a real 'star' only had to be a musician for a few weeks every couple of years. The rest of the time, they did whatever it is they do.
It's easy to say that because my own focus (classical music) is different, I don't think it is. If I'm making a recording of someone, I'm just trying to capture a small percentage of the joy, excitement and risk of that performer in live performance. Why would it be different in any other form of music? Maybe in studio we use a little bit more compression, a little more EQ, a little more something. But we're just trying to capture some of the love we feel for the sound coming off that soundboard or out of that throat. I really don't see why a performer would complain about having to be in front of an audience every few days,
I think nearly anyone recording music feels they're just humble servants trying to catch a bit of magic. Any diminished regard for what we do is simple misunderstanding--but any kind of work done well is deserving of more respect. I think that music still really, really matters for people.
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Post by Johnkenn on Mar 14, 2018 19:47:47 GMT -6
Respectfully, not everyone that makes music has the ability to tour with a large enough entourage to make a living. In fact, considering there are many, many less venues for live entertainment (willing to pay a band) than there used to be, bands and labels know they will take a loss for the first year or two of touring. And all of that doesn't even consider songwriters. I don't think it's too much to ask for a fair wage for intellectual content. At this point, the enemy might be more the labels than the streaming services. The major labels have sabotaged their own publishing branch's best interest by making deals that secure they rake in the biggest share of the pie for ownership of the masters...long story short, out of the $.005 cents per stream, the streaming service gets about 30% of it, the label gets 60% for ownership of the master recording and the creators - the CREATORS of the intellectual property split the remaining 10%. Things have got to change.
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Mar 14, 2018 20:37:17 GMT -6
I witnessed the transition from the singles era to the album at Motown. Michael is right. What has changed from the past singles era is that there is dramatically less paying work for musicians today. High school kids could earn as much as $100 a week in the mid '60s which translates to $800 today.
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Post by Blackdawg on Mar 15, 2018 12:35:36 GMT -6
I don't find those numbers that surprising. I'm mean why should they be?
Did they look at how many times JT's last albums was played on spotify? Just the top three most played tracks on Man of the Woods is 143,265,976 plays. 143 MILLION plays from just the 3 top tracks on the album. Taylors big hit on here last album has over 333 million plays. And thats just on spotify..
The fact is people don't buy albums anymore, that isn't new information. Ever since itunes launched and you could buy 1 track at a time album sales have been terrible.
We all know that streaming is the future whether we like it or not. John is right, the pay out scheme of things for streaming is seriously messed up in more ways then it should be acceptable.
I am lucky and also do mostly classical music and some jazz stuff like Michael. And I totally agree that it is a blessing to try and snag the magic of these performers in the moment. There is also no denying though that there are very few places for good live music anymore. Most of the small venues these days are small and cramped, overly loud, and honestly the morons that call themselves "live sound engineers" at most these places have no idea what there are doing. I've done shows in venues where people come up and thank me for not mixing stuff too loud. My favorite comment ever is "I can't remember the last time I heard drum cymbals" because the normal guy at the church I was mixing for that week has the kick drum and bass so loud you can barely hear anything else. Which to me doesn't make for a fun experience most the time to even go to small shows and the same goes for other people out there. The small corner venue is dying off basically. Which just makes it harder for the up and coming band to get going or get good experience to play.
The combination of Streaming for "free" and the shift in the markets of audio/music from professional to prosumer just means things are very different and only going to get worse before it gets better. I mean hell schools all over the country are cutting music from their classes. Thats just sickening to me.
How it ends up getting better I'm not sure. Legal action? Label demanding action? Artists? Nothing major has played out yet from anyone but the pressure is rising and it'll all explode soon enough into something...
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Mar 15, 2018 13:55:39 GMT -6
I think the future is management-publishing companies exactly like Motown.
What exactly did a major label do? They obviously financed artists but other than that, which anybody could do, they co-ordinated live shows, retail exposure, and radio airplay for new artists by pulling in favors for access to their established stars.
Today there are no longer mid-sized, venues, retail is gone and airplay is all focus-grouped muzak. Hello? They talk about "360 deals" but most haven't the management chops to earn that percentage.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 15, 2018 18:23:21 GMT -6
I should be clear that my remarks about the state of the industry shouldn't be interpreted as callousness. Before I went to the 'dark side' of classical music, I spent years playing clubs. It was the Vietnam era (not exactly great days for the country), but you could gig every night of the year. And I did. In military towns, there were nightclubs around every corner and you'd get paid (not much) for playing 5-6-7 hours a night. That gave you serious chops and the ability to deal with just about every situation from a busted mic to a drunk threatening physical violence. Most of all this gave you confidence that you could make it through just about any sort of situation. It's almost impossible for anybody to get that sort of experience these days. I think it shows musically, but it's certainly no fault of the musicians. I actually feel really bad about it.
The past was great, but it's gone. It's always gone. The genius of guys like Berry Gordy and John Hammond was figuring out how to find a niche and turn it into a thriving market. I think those opportunities are still there, but they'll be very different from what they were before.
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Mar 15, 2018 20:10:24 GMT -6
John Hammond is fascinating. In addition to finding artists and hooking them up with managers, he would pay lawyers to negotiate for them against his employer. None of the artists who told me about this knew that there were others. I asked a former vice-president of Columbia about this. His face turned red and a strange voice came out of his mouth saying "I tried to get Hammond fired for doing that and Goddard Lieberson told me John Hammond hired me!" We had a guy like that at Motown named Leroy Lovett. He was constantly teaching us about the music business. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leroy_Lovett |
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Post by johneppstein on Mar 16, 2018 13:49:24 GMT -6
Respectfully, not everyone that makes music has the ability to tour with a large enough entourage to make a living. In fact, considering there are many, many less venues for live entertainment (willing to pay a band) than there used to be, bands and labels know they will take a loss for the first year or two of touring. And all of that doesn't even consider songwriters. I don't think it's too much to ask for a fair wage for intellectual content. At this point, the enemy might be more the labels than the streaming services. The major labels have sabotaged their own publishing branch's best interest by making deals that secure they rake in the biggest share of the pie for ownership of the masters...long story short, out of the $.005 cents per stream, the streaming service gets about 30% of it, the label gets 60% for ownership of the master recording and the creators - the CREATORS of the intellectual property split the remaining 10%. Things have got to change. You're overlooking the fact that, at least in the case of Spotify, the labels also own 18% of the streaming company, for which they do not need to pay anything to anybody. How is that not a major conflict of interest? |
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Post by Johnkenn on Mar 16, 2018 13:54:46 GMT -6
I witnessed the transition from the singles era to the album at Motown. Michael is right. What has changed from the past singles era is that there is dramatically less paying work for musicians today. High school kids could earn as much as $100 a week in the mid '60s which translates to $800 today. Exactly what I'm saying. There's nowhere for the average musician to make money. |
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Post by Johnkenn on Mar 16, 2018 13:56:49 GMT -6
Respectfully, not everyone that makes music has the ability to tour with a large enough entourage to make a living. In fact, considering there are many, many less venues for live entertainment (willing to pay a band) than there used to be, bands and labels know they will take a loss for the first year or two of touring. And all of that doesn't even consider songwriters. I don't think it's too much to ask for a fair wage for intellectual content. At this point, the enemy might be more the labels than the streaming services. The major labels have sabotaged their own publishing branch's best interest by making deals that secure they rake in the biggest share of the pie for ownership of the masters...long story short, out of the $.005 cents per stream, the streaming service gets about 30% of it, the label gets 60% for ownership of the master recording and the creators - the CREATORS of the intellectual property split the remaining 10%. Things have got to change. You're overlooking the fact that, at least in the case of Spotify, the labels also own 18% of the streaming company, for which they do not need to pay anything to anybody. How is that not a major conflict of interest? How did I say it wasn't a conflict of interest. It's dirty as hell. |
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Post by johneppstein on Mar 17, 2018 20:36:12 GMT -6
I think the future is management-publishing companies exactly like Motown. What exactly did a major label do? They obviously financed artists but other than that, which anybody could do, they co-ordinated live shows, retail exposure, and radio airplay for new artists by pulling in favors for access to their established stars. Today there are no longer mid-sized, venues, retail is gone and airplay is all focus-grouped muzak. Hello? They talk about "360 deals" but most haven't the management chops to earn that percentage. What good is a publishing company if the artists you want to license catalog to don't have any sales? Where's the money going to come from? We need a complete LEGAL overhaul of the entire market/industry. And it ain't gonna come from anybody I've seen around Washington recently, from any of the various cabals. |
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Post by johneppstein on Mar 17, 2018 20:41:01 GMT -6
You're overlooking the fact that, at least in the case of Spotify, the labels also own 18% of the streaming company, for which they do not need to pay anything to anybody. How is that not a major conflict of interest? How did I say it wasn't a conflict of interest. It's dirty as hell. didn't. Unfortunately, nobody who's in a position to do anything about it does. |
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Mar 17, 2018 21:53:33 GMT -6
There is still significant broadcast and live venue income from outside the United States. Knowledgeable publishers can probably still make writers a lot of money.
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Post by johneppstein on Mar 19, 2018 13:41:12 GMT -6
There is still significant broadcast and live venue income from outside the United States. Knowledgeable publishers can probably still make writers a lot of money. So who's gonna front my band's tour expenses to Europe? The foreign royalty situation can be a bit weird. As we know, Euro acts get broadcast royalties in addition to songwriter royalties. However many, if not all those countries refuse to pay performer royalties to US acts because we don't pay them to their acts on US plays. I've also heard that it can be difficult for US writers to collect Euro royalties for various arcane reasons. I don't know any details though. |
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Mar 19, 2018 14:05:27 GMT -6
John, you are confusing broadcast artist royalties with broadcast writer royalties. Assuming worldwide play, the majority of a writer's income should be coming from Europe. The U.S. royalties are pathetic.
In Europe, music publishers do all of the promotion. After Motown signed a 50/50 co-publishing deal for Europe with Carlin Music, a British publisher, our net worldwide royalty income went up by five times over DIY collections and our artists began outselling the Beatles there.
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Post by yotonic on Mar 19, 2018 17:04:00 GMT -6
I am a "Club Owner". I have owned bars, nightclubs, and restaurants all of my adult life. For the last several years I have owned a 1000 cap concert hall in New York. Technology has changed everything on my end of the business. I recently saw a timeline of when AOL internet accounts caught on (1996), when the early cell phones caught on (2002), then smart phones, Facebook etc. In the late nineties (before social media) people would come out to clubs and bars to meet each other, and I could pay a band $1,000 to play with no cover charge at the door because the place would be packed. Today the bar business is decimated. Kids hook up on Tinder and don't need to go bar hopping. Entertainment content is at their fingertips and UberEats delivers to their house. Additionally the internet has made young people demand more for less and a lot for free.
It's almost impossible in "B markets" or medium sized cities to make a good living with a local bar open 7 days a week with live entertainment, it's grueling hours and at the end of the year not exactly great pay. You could do better working an upper management job at an accounting firm or sales for a Fortune 500. In my business (1000 cap concert halls) I'm not even open unless I have a tour stop. I would love to be able to have a small band from Nashville stop in and play but many headliners out of Nashville are lucky to sell 500-600 tickets in a B Market. I'm not interested in working for free anymore than the artists are. So there are only certain sized artists I can book that make the model work. There is barely any money left in this business "all of the way around". It's hard to pay for bus tours, 16 hour days, staff, security, advertising, an endless list of expenses on just beer & liquor sales and a $25 ticket. The CD & record sales definitely used to inject much needed wealth into the system, it's gone, and it has made it really, really hard to keep the show on the road. In my personal opinion concert tickets are about as high as they can realistically go so without another revenue stream added to the mix (recordings) it looks grim. Merch helps for some tours but it's not big bucks on the average.
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Mar 19, 2018 18:26:26 GMT -6
The solution is creating a scene that people want to be a part of. Albert Grossman did it in Chicago, took it to the big 10 campuses, merged it with the Toronto scene, took it to Boston and then New York making history all the way. Chet Helms did something similar in Austin, left a thriving scene there and did it all over again in San Francisco. Then Bill Graham took it national. This can be done again.
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Post by Johnkenn on Mar 19, 2018 20:24:28 GMT -6
John, you are confusing broadcast artist royalties with broadcast writer royalties. Assuming worldwide play, the majority of a writer's income should be coming from Europe. The U.S. royalties are pathetic. In Europe, music publishers do all of the promotion. After Motown signed a 50/50 co-publishing deal for Europe with Carlin Music, a British publisher, our net worldwide royalty income went up by five times over DIY collections and our artists began outselling the Beatles there. So all you have to do is have a worldwide hit. |
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Post by Blackdawg on Mar 19, 2018 20:44:05 GMT -6
John, you are confusing broadcast artist royalties with broadcast writer royalties. Assuming worldwide play, the majority of a writer's income should be coming from Europe. The U.S. royalties are pathetic. In Europe, music publishers do all of the promotion. After Motown signed a 50/50 co-publishing deal for Europe with Carlin Music, a British publisher, our net worldwide royalty income went up by five times over DIY collections and our artists began outselling the Beatles there. So all you have to do is have a worldwide hit. Sounds easy enough!  |
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Post by johneppstein on Mar 19, 2018 21:35:53 GMT -6
John, you are confusing broadcast artist royalties with broadcast writer royalties. Assuming worldwide play, the majority of a writer's income should be coming from Europe. The U.S. royalties are pathetic. In Europe, music publishers do all of the promotion. After Motown signed a 50/50 co-publishing deal for Europe with Carlin Music, a British publisher, our net worldwide royalty income went up by five times over DIY collections and our artists began outselling the Beatles there. Not confusing at all. And there's a difference between the treatment of those with major league representation and those without it. |
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Post by johneppstein on Mar 19, 2018 21:40:09 GMT -6
The solution is creating a scene that people want to be a part of. Albert Grossman did it in Chicago, took it to the big 10 campuses, merged it with the Toronto scene, took it to Boston and then New York making history all the way. Chet Helms did something similar in Austin, left a thriving scene there and did it all over again in San Francisco. Then Bill Graham took it national. This can be done again. I would really, really like to believe that... |
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Post by johneppstein on Mar 19, 2018 21:42:35 GMT -6
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Post by johneppstein on Mar 19, 2018 21:43:58 GMT -6
To answer the title question of the thread - steaks.
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