How Do We Get Paid?

Today I (Luke) attended a music business seminar at Greenville College (where I teach drums) and it made me realize that a lot of people don’t understand how artists and bands make money (or don’t make money), and all that is involved in that.  Unfortunately it isn’t as easy as, record a cd, sell your cd to people, keep the profit.   Sometimes it can be, but the bigger an act gets, the more complicated things get, and the more hands are stretched out for a piece of the “pie”. 

Here’s one example of how the money flow may happen, but lots of situations are different.  First of all, depending on the artist, they may or may not write their own songs, or at least a few of them.  In genres like pop, and country a lot of the songs the artists record were written by teams of songwriters.  But genres like rock, and hip hop, usually the artist writes the song.   If you are using other songs, a songwriter will give his or her songs to a publisher, usually they are employed by a publishing co.  From there, the publisher decides to “demo” the song, and make a rough recording of it.  This is the first of the costs.  Then after completed the Publishers job is to try to get that song demo into the hands of established artists who may want to “cut” or record this song on their album.  So now, you have a songwriter who owns part of the song rights, along with his or her publishing co. who owns part of the song, who just passed it along to an artist who will be making money of the song as well.   Already, you have 3 people splitting of profits from 1 song.  But the list doesn’t stop there.  Most times a producer will be involved in the recording process of the song.  In a round about way, the producer receives a cut of the money that song makes as well.  Also, in the large scope there is a record company funding alot of this work, who expects to see return on their investment and ownership of the material as well.  Often times this leads to the artist touring to promote these “songs”, which includes booking agents, who get a piece of the pie.  This also usually involves an artist manager to coordinate all this stuff, and represent the artist.  Of course, the manager is guaranteed a percentage of everything the artists makes as well. 

This sounds like a mess, but there is much more too it.  There isn’t necessarily 1 big pot of money that everyone grabs from.  The money is distributed separately from liscensing, royalties, merch sales, live performances, and so on.  But the idea is….. from 1 piece of creativity, a multitude of people reap the rewards.  Every situation is unique in who gets how much, but it’s mind blowing for some people to realize all the places the money goes.   So next time you’re sitting there thinking,… ” Man, (fill in artist name) must be just rolling in the cash, from all the tours, and cd sales, and radio plays”…. well, I would wager the numbers are huge, but only a small percentage of it is actually getting back to the artist.  Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of rich performers out there, but all I’m saying is there are plenty of very rich non-performers  out there, thanks to that artist.  

Hope you enjoyed that little segment on how to not make money…. it’s enough to make you want to go to mechanic school.  not really.

studio crunch time

In just a few days we’ll be hitting the studio again for a full week. We’ve got half the album pretty much completed and we’re just a few vocals and instrumental overdubs short of having another two songs done. So next Monday we’ll be heading back to the studio with only a couple open spots on our album and a hand full of songs that will battle it out Project Runway style to fill those slots.

I think one of the hardest decisions when making an album is what songs make it on and which songs get left off. We’ve done our best to write the best songs that we could come up with in preparation for this album (some even within the last week) and now comes the crunch time when we have to choose. Whatever choices get made next week we are really thrilled with the way this project is coming together.

We’ve got some cool things planned for this blog for next week, so be sure to check back every day to see what kind of progress we’re making.

- Joe

Asking Myself

Here’s a look at a song from the new record… “Asking Myself,” performed at 12th & Porter in Nashville, TN this past weekend…

More Studio Stuff

The last week has seen some more great progress for the new record. We had a weekend of song writing and pre-production at Luke’s house, and were joined by Grammy Award-winning performer/producer Jorge Cosas (Gloria Estefan, Ricky Martin, John Secada).

Later in the week we headed to SoulThink Studios, where we worked with none other than FE co-founder and former guitar player Ben Kesler, who is co-engineering the track, “Don’t Say.” St. Louis-based hip-hop/jazz artist “Luppy” (LP Oustiders) laid down a rap verse (he’s guest-appearing on the track as well).

This week we hit the road for some shows in Tennessee, and will spend the better part of Saturday laying down vocals before our show in Nashville Saturday night.

We’re very excited about how things are going so far. Things are looking to be on track for a late spring/early summer release. Stay tuned for more updates. In the meantime, hope you enjoy the blogs and videos with all the sneak-peeks at the making of the album….

-Russ

(not) getting a record deal

A question that we often get asked is if our goal is to get signed to a record deal. I think most people would expect the answer to be “yes,” but in reality it’s not that simple.

Bob Lefsetz recently wrote this article about the need for record labels to cut costs if they’re going to be competitive (or even stay in business). Here are some highlights of that article:

Major labels provided the capital for production. And controlled distribution. For this, they extracted a pretty penny. Which they made back because they controlled exposure too, and only what they signed sold.

But now anybody can make a record and sell it on the Internet. The key isn’t finding out how to put the genie back in the bottle, how to make the major labels dominant today, but to figure out what your niche is and how to compete!

Used to be that the only way to make serious money as a musician was to be on a major label, and if you were one of the stars of the label you sold units by the tonnage. Today more and more people are finding out about new acts online or through word of mouth rather than the traditional radio/tv methods. This creates more opportunity for a band to survive without the help of a major label.

Your revenues come from recorded music sales, live gigs, merch and any sponsorships/endorsements/advertising you choose to do. LOOK AT IT THIS WAY! You have YOUR OWN 360 deal. Recorded music revenue is just part of the pie. And chances are recorded music is not driving touring sales, but vice versa.

Today we get 100% of the money that we make when we play a show, sell a CD, t-shirt, etc. The struggle is to get more exposure so the amount of people supporting our band increases. Think of it like a small business owner; if you can develop a customer base that supports your business/service you can be self employed and make a decent living.

If we were to sign a record deal it would be like that same small business owner accepting money from an investor. Sure we’d have more resources available to market our product, but now someone else is getting a big cut of any money that the band brings in. At the end of the day it’s only worth it if the added resources puts more money in your pocket long term.

Great music can still be made. And good stuff is sold by word of mouth. Which has the advantage of being instant and vast on the Internet. You can’t control the public the way you used to be able to, you can’t manipulate the consumer. Quality is the start, a relationship is second and managing this connection is third. Most of this requires sweat equity more than cash. Start perspiring.

We’re not anti-record deal, but it would have to be a deal that is profitable for us. Otherwise, we may as well keep working hard on our own to make a living doing what we love.