This is a long depressing read, telling tales of corporate greed and corrupt practices prevelant in the music industry.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,2241544,00.htmlThe record industry is careering towards meltdown. A good thing too, says Simon Napier-Bell, after 40 years of working with its most notorious moguls.
Artists had to pay their own recording costs yet companies ended up owning the records. 'The bank still owns the house after the mortgage is paid,' is how Senator Orrin Hatch described it. Could we imagine film stars having to pay the costs of the movies they starred in and then giving the rights to the company that distributed it?
Artists also had to pay a packaging deduction of around 15 per cent. This, despite the fact that packaging rarely cost more than 5 per cent. The remaining 10 per cent was enough to pay the record company's entire cost of manufacturing the record. All in all, it meant an artist who sold 200,000 copies of a first album would still owe the record company although the record company had made a profit of a million.
But the worst thing about being signed to a major was that you lost the freedom to run your life. And though top artists could sometimes re-negotiate an unfair contract, it soon became clear that in the music business you didn't get out of an unfair record contract to get into a fair one; you get out of an unfair contract to get into another unfair one, but with slightly better terms.
This mans story is one of corporate greed and so many corrupt practices, false accounting, payola, drugs, and the worst aspect, the systematic destruction of a signed talent to ensure a contract could never be fully fullfilled by the artist and ensure the recording company retained the rights to the works already "in the bag", I for one am more than happy to see these parasites of humanity disappear.
The days of the middle man are numbered.
