Simon Napier-Bell, manager of such luminaries as the Yardbirds, Marc Bolan, and Wham! UK, has an interesting insider’s perspective on the meltdown of the music industry. Its death should be cause for celebration among artists and music fans alike:

Imagine the outcry if people working in a factory were told that the cost of the products they were making would be deducted from their wages, which anyway would only be paid if the company managed to sell the products. Or that they would have to work for the company for a minimum of 10 years and, at the company’s discretion, could be transferred to any other company at any time.

Read the full article online at observer.guardian.co.uk

This piece from Meat Puppets drummer Derrick Bostrom serves as an excellent companion to The Problem with Music, Anatomy of a Record Contract, and Sage Words from Dick Dale.

Perhaps it’s beating a dead horse by this point. Everyone knows major labels are evil. They’ve spent most of this decade releasing unlistenable crap and suing nine-year-olds. Nevertheless, Bostrom is in a unique position to look back and reflect on the wreckage of the 1990s. It’s an ugly story of a collision between art & commerce, of how a band can produce a gold record and still come out in debt. And, because of how the game is played (you’re always playing with your own money), the more accommodating you try to be, the deeper in the hole you get:

As the weeks went by and demand for us increased, we found ourselves continually whisked this way and that, back and forth across the country, constantly busy, constantly tired. And all the while, we piled up recoupable expenses for promotion and tour support at a rate of around fifty grand a month. When the dust settled, we were into Polygram for nearly a half a million dollars.

Read the full post at meatpuppets.com

I stumbled across this via the excellent site Downhill Battle. This is what the clauses in a typical record contract actually mean, and why you can sell 250,000 records and still owe your record company money. From the original text:

What we are saying is this:

1. The majority of these clauses exist in the boilerplate language of
   the standard contracts offered to artists by each of the five major
   labels.

2. The majority of these contract clauses are considered “deal
   breakers” for all but the most powerful artists.

3. The majority of artists regularly sign contracts that seem to go
   against their best interest as a concession for gaining access to
   the means of production, distribution and promotion that is increasingly
   controlled by five labels and their parent corporations.

4. Outside of the major label music world many of these clauses are
   seen as an affront to basic logic.

• If, for example, a label is offering a specific mechanical royalty
  rate that is decreed by statute and dictated by law, why should
  they then be allowed to artificially diminish that rate contractually
  through “controlled composition clauses”?

• If easily broken acetate recordings are no longer manufactured
  or sold, why should artists be forced to sign contracts that diminish
  their royalties due to “breakage fees” which entered the
  standard contract language back when a legitimate amount of manufactured
  records were broken before they could be sold?

5. We can’t understand why, in a supposedly fair market economy
   with full competition, one of these five labels hasn’t seen the
   competitive value of removing these seemingly illogical clauses and
   offering a better deal to artists.

For the full article, visit the Future of Music Coalition Website.

This makes an excellent companion to the earlier posts with Steve Albini and Dick Dale.

Steve Albini wrote this rant for the Baffler (which is presently offline) in (I think) 1994, and it has been reprinted in Maximum Rock and Roll and a host of other places since then. It remains the most straightforward critique of what’s wrong with the music industry one is likely to see.

Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end, holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed.

For the rest of the text, go to The Problem with Music.
It makes a nice companion to this little clip of Dick Dale.

The legendary guitarist Dick Dale has some words of wisdom for musicians: stay away from record labels. Do it yourself.