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attorneyatslaw t1_itc6407 wrote

Its always been a mess. Record labels have always signed bands to terrible contracts that take all their rights and don’t pay them much if anything.

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rumpghost t1_iteul98 wrote

Always pour one out for folks like Big Mama Thornton, John Fogerty, countless others before and since. They were robbed.

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Reelplayer t1_itca5pu wrote

And without those record labels you would have never heard of the band

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thorpie88 t1_itcdrrk wrote

Not always. Tame Impala got big because his demo disc ended up on the head of Triple J's desk and he played it on his show. Then modular came along and fucked him over by stealing all the international album sales profit.

Triple J also have a dedicated website where anyone can put their music on and have a chance to be played on air. Like a shit load of Aussie bands have gotten their big break because of it.

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DomesticApe23 t1_itewg1l wrote

Richard Kingsmill has caused the death of more local bands than he ever made famous. Triple J will be better off when he leaves. He's basically Australian music's gatekeeper and he can fuck off.

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Mind43dom t1_itcho07 wrote

Because they ring fence and gate keep the industry. They built the system to ensure you get fucked and they get rich.

Now places like tiktok and social media are cutting them out the loop, if you hit it in tiktok and have released your own music through streaming services with no label you’re laughing.

Touring is still fucked, tickettek and others have deals with venues and gate keep access and ticket distribution.

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Reelplayer t1_itekar5 wrote

>if you hit it in tiktok and have released your own music through streaming services with no label you’re laughing.

That's a rare achievement. You can count how many artists pull this off every year on one hand. It's incredible expensive to record and produce music at a high quality. People who try to do it for themselves usually end up making music that sounds like shit. Then of course there's distribution. Sure, put it out on free sites with tens of thousands of other new songs. You might even get 200 people to listen! At the end of the day, it still takes money to get big. The artist doesn't have money. That's where the labels come in.

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Mind43dom t1_itfxlvo wrote

Hitting it on tik tok is just as “rare” as being signed by a label. If you’re only getting 200 listens you should probably reflect on your music. I’ve had piano jam solos pull thousands of listens.

Not sure why anyone is sucking on the dicks of labels, but hey be my guest.

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RadioFloydHead t1_itiogkv wrote

“It's incredible expensive to record and produce music at a high quality.”

No, it’s not. Without even getting into how affordable at home recording is, studio time is as cheap as it’s ever been. There are tons of decent studios all over where you can record for less than $200 a hour including an experienced engineer. I know Grammy award winning guys who will mix and master an entire album for a few grand to polish it off.

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Reelplayer t1_itjpmd0 wrote

Sound engineer, mix engineer, mastering, studio time, travel, hotels, possibly new gear that actually sounds good... So you're looking at $15-$50k at least to get an album done. Big artists spend a lot more. And you haven't even gotten to marketing and publicity yet. Good luck finding many bands with that kind of start up money.

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RadioFloydHead t1_itju555 wrote

Your comment said it’s expensive to record music at a high “quality”. That’s simply not true. I know of at least ten places you could book this week for $600 to $1000 bucks a day, all with some of the best gear you could want. I’m talking hundreds of thousands in instruments and microphones. Some of these places have recorded many albums that made it big.

There is a reason for the exodus in the studio industry over the last ten years which caused so many big names to close their doors. The reason is that digital recording is dirt cheap to produce. Many newer artists are doing it by themselves at home and so are most professionals. It is entirely possible to record 90 percent of an album at home and finish it off in a studio for next to nothing. I know many people who used to charge $200-300 dollars an hour and, today, they are lucky to average ten percent of that. Again, I’m talking guys that have credits hundreds of albums with big name labels.

For perspective, my band was negotiating with a major label back in 2006 and their proposed budget for recording the album, eight songs, was $20K. It’s practically peanuts compared to what it was in analog times.

Again, I didn’t say anything about marketing and publicity. That isn’t part of recording.

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Fluffy_Little_Fox t1_ite5j7y wrote

Okay, sure. But people who are independent from any record label and sell their albums on Bandcamp probably walk away with more of that money than a big name act would .... Even when people were still buying physical CDs, the bands themselves maybe only got 10 cents from every CD sold.

"The percentage that you receive for each album sold is a negotiating point, but typically it can fall anywhere between 10% and 20%. Most new artists get a royalty percentage at the low end of the range, and 10% is common."

Someone selling their music via a website like Bandcamp is taking more from those sales than a major label artist would.

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Fluffy_Little_Fox t1_ite66u4 wrote

Also, the only reason DIR EN GREY (a Japanese Metal Band) ever got any traction in the U.S. is because of a few English-language websites talking about the band and ILLEGAL FILE SHARING VIA P2P CLIENTS....

Without someone uploading DeG's music to Grokster, Morpheus, Kazzaa, LimeWire etc -- nobody outside of Japan would even know about DIR EN GREY.... And much like Rammstein before them (German band) their big entry point came when they were selected to play the Family Values Tour with Korn.

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SpiffHimself t1_iteijhu wrote

You may eat some down votes, but in the case of 90% of bands that "changed my life" or "defined my youth" this is absolutely true.

Doesn't mean it's right or good, but it's true

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