[Rumori] re: Songwriters Say Piracy Eats Into Their Pay

[matt davignon]

>David meme <david at locarecords.com> done wrote:
>
>Making music is very very very expensive to do.

Making music WAS very very expensive to do. These days $5000 will not only 
pay someone a small fee to produce/master a cd in a home studio, but it will 
buy all the hardware and software necessary as well.

Arguably, reproducing, promoting and distributing cd's is out of my price 
range, but not that of established record labels.

>While we are all waiting for the radical new business model of free music 
>to miraculously generate an income for musicians the reality is that the 
>labels are not selling enough music, they *are* dropping signed acts left, 
>right and centre and the quality is reduced to easy sellable, mainstream, 
>safe music.  Why do you think labels are merging all the time? And 
>musicians who cannot earn a living instead get jobs. This is not good and 
>not what we want, I hope?

Remember "downsizing"? In the mid 90's, companies were increasing their 
profitability by laying off employees like crazy, even we were in an 
economic boom. Record labels are discovering the same thing. Having a wide, 
diverse catalog and promoting each individual act is not the best business 
approach. It's much more cost-effective to have a smaller amount of artists 
and promote them more aggressively. When 50 Cent comes out with his next 
album, people will already know who he is - it doesn't take so much to get 
his name out.

Even then, most "professional" musicians don't make much from their record 
deals. The smart ones wind up working finding music-related jobs in 
multimedia, teaching and the like. As for the fate of ones who depend on 
their record contracts.... check out this article:
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

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