*ban*

nice :)

posted January 25, 2008 by Gibbon

But from an "IT professional," who knows not of whence he speaks, I'll take none of it. This business is so utterly unlike anything else, you simply can not compare it to a normal job. And you definitely can't do it on my blog, do it poorly and with a total lack of informed opinion, and expect me not to respond heatedly.

I've often thought of scanning my original recording contract (the one I signed with Wax Trax!) and putting it online. I only recorded one record for them, then they went bankrupt and my contract was purchased, along with all the other "assets" of Wax Trax!, by TVT. So the deal I signed with a small Chicago indie was the deal I worked under for a large New York label. The 3/4 mechanical rate for breaking a new artist was the rate I was paid (heh) when my fourth album came out and I was headlining theaters.

The normal par for the course was to purchase gear for a tour, then immediately that tour was over, sell all that gear at Music-Go-Round, so I could pay bills while we were in the studio. While recording I was generally given $75 a week, to support myself and my wife. The money remaining from show guarantees (after my manager took 20%, my lawyer took 5%, and my booking agent took 15%) was used to pay band salaries, and buy diesel for the bus, so there wasn't anything left over from that. On most tours we did, I didn't take a salary at all. The tours we did after my seven-album deal was cancelled by TVT (after four albums) I generally paid out-of-pocket for.

When I went to mix my third album at Brittania Row, I was given a £300 stipend for expenses. In London. For a month. For myself and my guitar player. My wife had to take a cash advance on a credit card and wire it to me about a week after we got there.

Between the time my fourth album came out and I got dropped (and make no mistake: I didn't get dropped due to poor sales; I got dropped because I was "difficult;" i.e. I complained too much) I made no income at all, because the label wouldn't put me on tour or in the studio, and wasn't shopping my songs to movies. During this time, I racked up a $75,000 credit card debt. Whee.

Two days after I was dropped, I was watching television, and I saw the president of TVT, Steve Gottleib, in a Credit Suisse advertisement, essentially saying how important it was to have Swiss Bankers when you have a lot of money. In the 5 years I was signed, with half a million SMG albums sold, I grossed from record sales exactly zero dollars, zero cents. I made about $35,000 from various deals that my manager put together in order to keep me liquid. In five years. That comes to an average of $7,000 a year. This for a job that essentially takes all your time.

As I said earlier, once I figured out what was going on, right about the time we were big enough to headline, I started burning money. As soon as I realized what TVT would pay for (tax deductible services for the most part) versus what they wouldn't (actually supporting me so I could write songs) I had to work that system to keep my head above water. I had a deal with the studio I wrote at, where they would kick me back cash from over-billings. I regularly had TVT purchase gear, then returned it to Guitar Center the next day. I'd go in to the label and grab as much of the catalog as I could reasonably carry and take the CDs to used record stores. That sort of thing.

Now, one thing to keep in mind here is that you can't just stop. If the label breaks the contract you can sue them. By the same token, if you break the contract (i.e. refuse to record or tour, essentially) they can sue you. It's not something you can walk away from.

All of that said, is it worth it to stand on a stage in Des Moines for an hour in front of a hundred thousand people? Hard to say. In retrospect, I wouldn't be who I am now if I hadn't done that. And as long as you can stay on tour (in a label-provided vehicle) and stay in the black in that regard, you're in pretty good shape. It was the between-the-tour times where we had troubles.

Did I sign a contract that I knew was bad just on the outside chance I would essentially win the lottery and make it out of the loop? You're god-damned right I did. Would I have done it knowing that I would have to live the next decade in abject poverty, with a strain on my marriage that only money problems can cause, and the second half of that decade would be spent working out from under the debt I accrued in the first half of the decade?

Probably not. But I was 21, and demonstrably retarded, like all 21-year-old males. So it's hard to say for certain. I could have just stayed with KMFDM and been far better off.

But that is, as was pointed out, life. I've been to 49 of the 50 states in America, and about two dozen other countries. I have a gold record and a platinum record. I have around 80 albums out there with my shit on them. And I'm pretty wealthy now, by any reasonable standards of judgement. But that money didn't come from making music. It came from making money off people that make music by selling them plugins.

So, I guess I did learn something after all. If you want to make money in the music business, making music is the last way to do it.

-CR

posted January 26, 2008 by Chris Randall

God, I love this business.

-CR

posted January 26, 2008 by Chris Randall

Really... for those that are GURU's maybe you should stick to wii and how to do silly things things on the internet, whether you are wii or not; who the fuck knows...

But when someone who has fucking sold more records than sony has playstation 3ees one would think you really should poke that IT mind away and fucking listen.

I know I hate people ripping this world off... but fucking hell seeing people think in that way now after the *obvious* has been dished out to them like a fresh turkey really makes me wanna go and kill fluro.

Seriously IT dudes go and get a fucking clue.... wankers with high pay and more gear than u can poke a stick at.

You will never feel what Chris did with his music, I cant either... but in saying so he made it from passion... not a fucking stock market

Fucking tossers... :-(

posted January 26, 2008 by Shane

I'm an IT wanker AND I got ripped off by the music biz, so what do I do?
Do I already have a clue? Or have I now lost the clue by my association with web design.
Pretty much every musician I know ended up doing something 'technical' to make ends meet.

posted January 26, 2008 by angstrom

-CR

posted January 26, 2008 by Chris Randall

thanks for the help everyone ;-p

posted January 26, 2008 by angstrom