Quote:
Originally Posted by
Alter 
I worked in the industry for a bit and agree with all of this. Most of the band's money, which is definitely less than $1.00 a disc with a major label, will go back to the label to recoup all of their marketing and promotional costs. If the band was fronted money for recording or tour support then that has to be paid back first, too. Even if a band starts making it big off of a record, the label starts spending more and more on promotion to try to get it to blockbuster status. Again, the artist has to pay all of those costs back before they see any of the profit. The bands don't usually realize this at the time because they are on tour and making good coin off of the concert and merch sales. It isn't until the record stops selling that they realize that they didn't actually get any checks from the record company. Around this point it dawns on them that all of the limos and hotels and champagne that the labels were arranging for them were being paid for out of their pocket. The only exception would be if the artist held on to 100% of their publishing rights and were able to recoup all of their mechanical royalties from the label but many bands sign this away. The few bands that do eventually make money from record sales are the ones that survive through their first contract which was probably for 3-5 records that can re-negotiate a new contract with more leverage.
You basically reiterated everything I said. I'm glad there's at least one person here who knows what the hell they're talking about. When milocz said a dollar a record I almost fell out of my chair. Mechanical royalties really don't amount to much anyway. And so few people have their own publishing. It's a moot point now because if you want to be rich as a musician, you had better be touring because your albums couldn't make you rich even if you did have a great deal.
