The Great Music Industry Swindle
I’m wondering just how desperate people are going to get in order to sell stuff in what is a rapidly diminishing world market with inflationary living costs. Maybe there is a link between all these con-merchants and how the current music business is being run? You know, selling the idea of music, pay to play etc. It seems to me that there are quite a number of Internet companies and specialist music publications encouraging musicians to go it alone as an independent. It’s fast becoming a growth industry that, in my humble opinion, is completely embroiled in over-optimistic spin and could easily end up costing musicians much more than they bargained for…
As I said, a growth industry, if you sign up to garageband .com they are charging 200 dollars per track to be listed on live365.com. Apparently you get listed on a database that Live365 Dj’s have access to. There’s no actual guarantee you’ll ever get your stuff played, and if it does get played you will not receive any royalties because as far as I am aware they do not submit to the collection societies. Of course this in my view is a form of ‘pay to play’. More worryingly, it appears the Internet has spawned a number of companies that work on similar lines. It seems the industry is not exactly running out of ideas when it comes to scamming money out of musicians. I was told recently that various promoters are charging bands to sell tickets, this is pay to play…They should pay you!! And there are companies charging to enter a battle of the bands competitions…battle of the bands shows are scams to make scumbag promoters money. What do you win anyway? Take it from me, what ever it is, nobody gives a fuck…And we wonder why the music industry is so corrupt…maybe it’s the bands that let it happen……
A recent article in Sound On Sound (UK based pro muso mag for sad geeks like me who like to indulge in the monthly misery of reading about the latest gear they’ll probably never be able to afford) entitled ‘start your own record company’. Now being a very impatient sort of bloke with a very low boredom threshold I didn’t actually read the article from start to finish but from what I could gather the majority of it was about joining the royalty collection societies (PRS, MCPS, PPL etc..) which is fine but being a member of these societies does not in itself generate income. In respect of the PRS it relies on radio/tv play for royalties which are passed onto you as a writer and or publisher member. I am a member of the PRS and I have been fortunate with some radio play credits, but my god it’s not easy to get. Try getting radio play from any station in the UK that submits their playlists to the PRS. I would say almost impossible no matter how good you think your music is. The reason; the major publishers, they’ve got it sown up; it’s more or less a closed shop. What sickens me about it is that the BBC ( a publicly funded broadcaster) are subsidising these large private publishers/companies out of what is essentially public money, which the BBC are legally entitled to in that every household in the UK that has a television is legally bound to pay a licence fee to the BBC. This amounts to a whopping 3 billion a year in revenue for the BBC.
There can be no doubt that being a musician in the UK is a bit like being a leper at a health farm. Good musicians, through no fault of their own, unless you happen to be Sir Elton, by and large live outside society. If you’re a musician here in England there are only two things that command respect ‘sales’ and lineage. The most common question I’m asked when meeting people face-to-face is “how many CDs have you sold then”? The depressing reality is that the actual music is of little consequence; this is why I try and keep what I do under wraps, as it were, especially when enduring certain social gatherings, after which I usually end up saying “well, it was a pressure meeting you and I thoroughly endured it”.
It is absolutely true that the vast majority of people here in Britain know the price of everything and the value of fuck-all. Tell them you’ve sold a million albums and you can actually see the attitude change before your very eyes. Tell them you’ve not sold that many but you managed to get some decent reviews, and take it from me you’d be better off telling them that your best mate is Gary Glitter and your dad was Fred West.
The problem is- as soon as you utter the very word ‘musician’ it unfortunately conjures up negative imagery; lazy drunken drug-taking sexual deviancy and general loutish behaviour. What’s wrong with that? On top of this there are many people who simply do not understand the value of what you do as a musician, especially if it doesn’t earn buckets of cash. I sometimes think that most women think that men are born with a fucking hammer in their hands, playing the piano, that’s not a job! I suppose this works the other way doesn’t it, you know, most men think that women are born with a dish cloth in their hands, it is of course equally absurd.
Then there are gigs. Ah well, I’ve done my share, for most it’s a means to an end. Most musicians are not playing what they actually want in public. To me playing stuff you don’t particularly like to people you can’t stand is to be in the 7th circle of hell which is why I rarely play in public nowadays…Is it a good way to promote yourself? Errrr, no, not really. I’ve known musicians spend their entire lives gigging and still no-ones heard of them. Recently I had a slight exchange with one of the guys that run Nimbit (download service) he was bemoaning the fact that he never gets well paid for a gig. I simply replied “what the fuck are you talking about; it’s only the likes of Sting that gets well paid for a gig”. Unless it’s a packed football stadium being televised, forget it. Playing to small audiences is absolutely fine but don’t ever think its worthwhile promotion in the great scheme of things, especially if you are trying to generate enough interest to justify the expense of recording an album – then there’s band politics, pffffffffff.. It’s all very fine when musicians get on with each other but when musos fall out, look out!. I’ve been on stage when the guitarist and bass player have actually had a fight on stage; this was far more entertaining than the music I might add – and then there was the time when the drummer actually defecated in the bass player’s shoes when they had some minor disagreement. Laugh? I nearly sh**.
You must be wondering what sort of bands I’ve played in……don’t ask!
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