Artist's don't need the RIAA or the record companies anymore.

[whitmark]

Apparently, artists derive only about 10% of their income from record sales. They actually get most of their money from touring, which filesharing only helps to promote. They have been routinely screwed by the record companies for years. So when the record companies and their attack dogs, the RIAA say they're fighting this battle to ensure that artists get paid, they're lying. This whole thing is for their benefit and not anyone else's. Many artists are realizing they don't need these worthless middlemen anymore. Hopefully, they will all eventually realize this fact.

[FutureIverson]

That's a good point, I think most artist should go to only putting their music out on the internet. I wonder what it would do if J'Lo demanded her label take off their RIAA protection. Or if Shady/Aftermath let their music roll. I mean half these artist sell drugs, and have other ways of income. Do your fans a favor, we have several other ways to support you.

[jonnymnemonic]

TOURING musucians don't derive a large percentage of their income from record sales. Stuidio musicians, chamber musicians, etc derive most of their income from record sales.

Also, "artists" doesn't necessarily imply a musician at all. Software developers, writers, movie producers, photographers - I see all their stuff on p2p networks. Not many touring writers or software developers.

Whatever applies to one group of copyright-reliant people has to apply to all of them or it's irrelevant. You can't justify p2p's use to degrade writers' income by saying touring musicians don't make the bulk of their money from record sales. However true that is, it's still irrelevant.

[Lamourlady]

good points, johnny, but whitmark does have a point, that the artists, successful ones, only....don't really need the industry anymore.
again, if the up and coming artists don't have these funds, they could find investors to help them get started.........i think the internet and each artists having their own site and working from there is the way to go.
yes.....i agree......the middle-man must go, hence why the industry is so pissed.......they can see it coming from a mile away.

[jonnymnemonic]

What musician wants to do all the drudgework involved in maintaining a high-volume website, arranging distribution, buying promotional ads (on radio, TV, web), doing all the paperwork for everything, finding appropriate graphic artists to do design work, programmers to write code, and on and on. All that work would suck. The poor musicians don't wanna do it, the rich ones don't wanna do it either.

I'll cite Phish as an example of a rich artist who doesn't want to do all that work. They could easily afford to look around and hire individual people to deal with each individual task. But they chose Elektra to do it all. What that indicates is that Elektra offered them a lot of benefit, at an attractive rate, else Phish would simply have found someone else to do all the work. The convenience of having all the things you want done under one roof probably factored into it, to be sure. But that's no different than a band of lawyers each with their own specialty banding together to offer all THEIR individual specialties under one roof.

If by "middleman" you mean the people who do the work not related directly to the making of the music - the people between the artist and the consumer - they will always exist, because the artists will always WANT them to exist. Otherwise they'd have to do everything themselves and would thus have no time to make music at all.

[Lamourlady]

more good points, johnny.....but even madonna and say eminem, among others, have created their own labels.
i guess it all depends on if they enjoy the business world or not.
that or have extremely huge egos.
i'd like to think they are good-willed artists trying to help the little guy........but more than likely........just greedy and wanting all the power, glory and money......hence....getting rid of the middle-man.

as to websites...


What musician wants to do all the drudgework involved in maintaining a high-volume website, arranging distribution, buying promotional ads (on radio, TV, web), doing all the paperwork for everything, finding appropriate graphic artists to do design work, programmers to write code, and on and on. All that work would suck. The poor musicians don't wanna do it, the rich ones don't wanna do it either.

u just answered your own question.......they would obviously hire people to do all that drudge work. so why not be the president of your own company with many who work for u?
obviously, the net is where even the industry is going, why would it be so bad for an artist to do the same thing?

[jonnymnemonic]

Some artists DO start their own labels, and sometimes it IS to help the little guy. Dave Matthews seems to enjoy helping the little guy. Huey Lewis as well.

Some people will enjoy being "the boss", some won't. Some just want to make music and that's really it (that's Phish). So they hire others to do all the other work. Being "the boss" takes a fair amount of time. And anytime you hire anyone else to do work, tada, you have introduced a middleman to the equation. Even if YOU are employing them, they are still a middleman, in that they aren't the direct producers of the product, and they aren't the consumer of the product.

SOMEONE is going to get paid for doing all those jobs. Who they work for isn't really relevant, is it? The money they get paid is probably going to be the same or close to it, whether they work for you or someone else in terms of the company logo on their door. I guess if you hire your mom to do some job then you can skimp on HER paycheck, but most people don't want their paychecks being skimped.

Whenever there is a group of people who tend to need the same suite of services, companies will form that provide that suite of services for a fee. They will charge more than each individual service (because convenience is valuable - ask 7-11), and they will have customers willing to pay a bit more for that convenience.

There's still room in the market for each individual service (the suite-offerers probably subcontract to them, actually), and there will be room in the market for those who want to do everything themselves, or have mom do it, or whatever. My point, really, is that the middlemen will exist, because there will be customers knocking on their door. Where there is a demand, inevitably someone steps in to fill it, assuming they can make money doing it.

[tMoD]

The label working for the artist and artist working for the label though are two very different things. The current artist-label relationship needs to be reversed in the artist's favor.

[Lamourlady]

Originally posted by tMoD
The label working for the artist and artist working for the label though are two very different things. The current artist-label relationship needs to be reversed in the artist's favor.

i think that's what i was trying to say.
thanks, tMoD.
even though, as johnny says, there would still be a middle-man, the artist would still ultimatelly have the last word.
the way it should be.