“They sold a quarter million copies! Here is the math that will explain just how fucked they are:”
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
“…in 37 years as a recording artist, I've created 25+ albums for major labels, and I've never once received a royalty check that didn't show I owed them money.”
http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html
“We'd like to point out that a major label record contract is the only contract in existence of its kind today. It's akin to doing a deal with the bank when you take out a thirty year mortgage on a house, and, after it's paid for, they tell you that you have to move out -- that you don't own it.”
http://www.puremusic.com/shocked5.html
My suspicions were aroused years ago when I read, in an interview with an aging black blues musician, that he had recently toured Europe and gone in the record stores there. He found his own legitimate albums there that he had never heard of and never received royalties for.
Over the years I kept hearing other strange things. Why did I keep hearing about recording artists attempting to legally audit their own sales? Why were the Dixie Chicks suing to get out of their record contract after becoming massively famous? How is it possible that John Fogerty - leader and songwriter of Creedence Clearwater Revival - would quit playing his own songs, complaining that he didn‘t own them and refusing to work for his label any more? Why did both Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty, early on in already very successful careers, find it necessary to stop recording for long periods while they fought their labels?
I eventually realized that regarding a recording career as the path to riches was a bit naïve. I spent some time researching the music business and the way contracts between artists and record companies are written and fulfilled. Now I believe that the record companies are dying because they deserve to die. They live by fraud and theft. Massively over-complicated contracts that favor the companies are the norm, and once an artist becomes famous and begins selling CD’s, every effort is made to defraud him or her, including falsifying sales quantities, writing off sales as “breakage”, or simply making up statements from scratch.
The record companies, represented by the RIAA, have been crusading against the pirates that illegally download and distribute their “property”. They have a point… sort of.
The real pirates are the record companies. Aside from stealing every cent they can from their artists, they have started a campaign of intimidation against their customers (the RIAA lawsuits), they are complicit with the movie industry and Disney to extend copyright durations by bribing congressmen, and they have ruined the musical culture of America and the world by refusing to support music that doesn’t sound just like the last bad hit record in order to ensure their own profits.
Stealing from these creeps is like lifting a wallet from Blackbeard.
