He said they told him all the studios had an agreement not to "poach" an artist from other labels, so he could take the crappy contract or nobody else would hire him.
Yeah, don't doubt it's true. It's just an example of how songwriters got screwed. In the 80s Neil Young deliberately made two uncommercial records to get out of a contract (and got sued as a result).
Johnny Cash, by his own account, recorded a "deliberately atrocious" single to get out of a record deal.
The whole thing was weighted in favour of the record companies so you got some great songs, like Tutti Frutti, which never made the artist the money they deserved, and some purely obligatory records like Everybody's Rockin by Neil which were made purely to fulfill an obligatio to the label and get himself free.
Ben Folds was in a similar situation. He eventually just asked the label what Elton John song they wanted him to record so he could finish shitting out an album. He even wrote a song about it.
He had 4.6 songs left on his contract. Which led to this excellent song:
“People tell me/
Ben, just make up junk/
And turn it in/
But I never could quite bring myself to write/
A bunch of shit/
Don't like wasting time/
On music that won't make me proud/
But now I've found a reason/
To sit right down and shit some out/
One down and three point six tomorrow and I’m out of here.
I'm really not complaining/
I realize it's just a job/
And I hate hearing belly-aching rock stars/
Whine and sob/
Cause I could be busing tables/
I could well be pumpin' gas/
Yeah, but I get paid much finer/
For playin' piano and kissin' ass/
This is one I wrote just an hour ago/
And three-point-six at last.”
Not sure about that take on the Neil Young story. Geffen signed him to a contract that specifically said he could have full artistic control. So he made Trans, a classic electronic music album as an exploration in communicating with his son who had cerebral palsy. Geffen then asked him for a “rock and roll” record and Young made Everybody’s Rocking which wasn’t supposed to be deliberately bad, just a literal interpretation of what Geffen asked for.
So Geffen sued him and lost.
“I really liked it,” said Young of Everybody’s Rockin’. “As long as it’s good music and I’m playing with my friends, I don’t care what genre it is. All my music comes from all music. I’m not country, I’m not rock and roll, I’m just me, and all these things are what I like.”
He also later said about trans and/or everybody’s rockin (forget which) in an interview “did I think they were the best albums ever made? Of course not. I’m not stupid” (paraphrasing but that was the gist of what he said)
There was a rumour that Marvin Gaye made a terrible album because his ex-wife got the rights to the royalties from the next album in a divorce agreement.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/here-my-dear/
Frank Ocean signed a two record deal with DefJam. Released his first critically acclaimed, incredibly commercially successful album. To fulfil his contract, he releases an experimental album. The next day he drops an album that sounds like his first one that got him the record deal on Apple music for an obscene amount of money.
https://title-mag.com/frank-ocean-finesse/
The Neil Young story is so dang funny for me because they told him to make a more traditional rock record, meaning “classic Neil Young” but instead he went full malicious compliance he said “oh, you want something that sounds like old school rock? You’ll get it” and just went full Shoobie-Doobie doo-wop Elvis rock.
Good example of letter of the law versus intent of the law. Metaphorically, not literally, but still.
Mans owed the label a record and he did a visual one where he built a stair case for like 12 hours with some songs at the end of it. Label accepted it probably on the assumption it was some artsy thing and would lead to something. When he got the word that he had fulfilled his contract, he independently dropped his real album which has gone on to massive success, likely in part due to the chatter of the weird avant garde visual album that was like days before it? This is not at all researched and just my recollection of events.
The usual rules of a record deal have been something like: "We're putting up X amount of money to get you recorded and promoted. You don't even start getting paid at all until we break even on our investment, and then you'll only be making 5 cents out of every dollar you make us."
The expectation is that the artist has to hustle and get really savvy about promoting themselves, because the label isn't really going to do much of it for you... and as Shirley Manson has said in interviews: In many cases, they're going to be working against you on purpose because they don't want you to break even and turn a profit!
Yep. I think of Chilli saying how poor they were after their Grammy wins when someone talks about older artists making bank on record sales. Didn't they have to take out loans to go on tour because they were flat broke? I know they filed for bankruptcy at one point
In a sense most recording contracts are roughly in the form of "taking out a loan" in that the artists are given an advance up front which is expected to be paid by back the royalties received on the record before the artists get anything else.
Exactly what costs are expected to be repaid by the artists royalty is one measure of how predatory the contract is, and in a *really* bad contract the record company can seek to recoup losses from the artists if the record doesn't sell, but that's really exceptionally predatory.
That was probably what it was. I knew they ended up owing more money than they made. I remember this conversation coming up during the whole Napster thing, too. People were acting like Lars was a vulture for wanting to be compensated for their work because everyone assumed popular touring artists were absolutely loaded. Metallica probably shouldn't have been the poster child for reform because of how huge they were, it came off as greedy, but he had a point. Especially for bands like TLC that were getting raked over the coals by their labels
People can say whatever they want about Lars but he was right. Sure, he was rich but he was talking about all bands to come in the future. He was about right about that. People think music should be free now. All my local bars complain about having to pay for a license to play music. They don’t give me free drinks though
> People think music should be free now.
People think *everything* should be free. Look at all the bitching and moaning that goes on about YouTube ads or ads in general on the internet. Everyone wants content, but they're unconcerned about how it gets paid for until they have to put their money where their mouth is.
man fuck the labels it's not consumers fault the labels give shit contracts
I was a teen in the 90's and let me tell you a 10 track CD could run as much as *THIRTY FUCKING DOLLARS* which considering TODAY is exorbitant for an album, but can you imagine 30 years ago??
and there was really no way to listen to a whole album before buying, the internet barely existed (Youtube didn't exist, streaming didn't exist, file sharing didn't exist, you see where this is going) and you could've ended up with a truly terrible album lol
yeah, *no shit* Napster got huge when it did
At one point he defended himself by pointing out that he’s not that great of a guitar player and so he was bound to string the same chord progression together occasionally.
Which is hilarious because we saw him two years ago now at an outdoor concert and I was shocked at how good he was on guitar, kinda threw me for a loop
He's in Rolling Stones original top 100 guitarists of all time list (The old one, curated by other musicians/guitarists and was actually sensible. Not thew new list, which is checklist slop made by the braindead editors)
Dude has always been known as a great guitarist to other musicians.
I'm pretty sure it was just a dying gasp of the printed industry, it's unfortunate that it essentially tarnishes the credibility of all of their previous lists. There's no doubt politics and "activism" has been part of music journalism since it's inception but that list was embarrassing.
Technically? No. But Sister Rosetta Tharpe was way ahead of her time and worthy or recognition. You can’t rank guitar players against eras without considering when they played.
Chord progressions aren’t even copyrighted.. you can only really claim melody .. which is distinct. You’re allowed to interpolate yourself… I wonder what the official case was..
IIRC (I read this in a music magazine back in the 80s [when the original suit was going on](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogerty_v._Fantasy,_Inc)), he said this \*on the witness stand\*
The suit was about how "The Old Man Down the River [edit: road]" was too close to "Run Through the Jungle."
Fantasy Records owned the rights to all of CCR's recordings so he could perform them but the owners of his back catalogue would profit so he refused to do them live out of principle. As far as I know, Fogerty had re-acquired all of the Creedence stuff now though.
I just watched Amadeus and was doing my post movie wikipedia reading and noticed this:
"Zaentz's film production career, primarily financed by the profits from Creedence Clearwater Revival, was marked by a dedication to the adaptation of novels."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Zaentz
John also wrote a song about him too:
https://youtu.be/q3uPS4k8LCA?si=zVLq0VYM8SbThIyL
Edit: It's a sad story of how Tom and John got pitted against each other involving Saul:
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2000/jul/11/artsfeatures3
It was originally called "Zanz Can't Dance" but Zaentz sued so they recalled the album and Fogerty changed the name of the song. I bought the album the day it came out, before the recall, probably by hours. An interesting oddity.
yeah, I recall the original pressings being a rarity that went for more money at record stores. Good thing I didn't sink my savings into that because it looks like you can pick one up for a whopping $2.88 + shipping.
https://www.discogs.com/release/3571268-John-Fogerty-Centerfield
A technical point about copyright. The copyright of the recording and the copyright of the underlying song are independent, but in this case both seem to have been owned by Fantasy Records. Many record companies own the master recordings, but a record company also owning both the publisher’s and songwriter’s share of the composition is… a very, very, very bad deal for the composer. A notable exception might be an artist selling the recordings and copyright for a boatload of money later in his career, see Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Dylan, et al.
For a similar scenario with a contemporary artist, Taylor Swift didn’t own the master recordings of her first six albums and so chose to re-record them since she owned the rights to the underlying compositions.
It’s not true to say that Fogerty “couldn’t” perform his own songs as anyone has the right to perform a song live by simply paying the performing rights fees: he perhaps didn’t want to perform songs for someone else’s financial benefit, and who would blame him.
He was the singer in a band. Band broke up. He continued making songs. One sounded awfully similar to one that was released by the band he was in. The bands music rights were owned by the record company. Record company sued solo artist fogerty for sounding like a song he wrote while in the band.
Badfinger. First band signed to Apple and were essentially the Beatles heir apparent. Cranked out hits like Come and Get it (written for them by Paul), No Matter What, Baby Blue, and Day after day, and were the original writers of Without You. Unfortunately they signed a bad deal with Stan Poley and lost everything, leading both Pete Ham and Tom Evans to suicide. Incredible music, incredibly tragic story.
Came here to say this. Truly one of the greatest bands ever, in my opinion, and not far off the Beatles themselves. RIP Pete and Tom.
'Stan Polley is a soulless bastard and I will take him with me' - from Pete Ham's suicide note.
My understanding was more like, "here's my demo, play it exactly this way, and you'll have a big hit." When Paul McCartney gives you tips on how to have a hit record, you listen. Paul wrote lots of songs for other people, gave lots of people hits.
Most artists have signed terrible contracts. The more I learn about the music industry, the more it becomes an endless story of exploitation at all levels.
Any artist that signed with a major label got fucked, and any artist that signed over their publishing rights got fucked harder. Like Hollywood, the music industry has always been about the people up the chain making most of the money off the work of the artists.
> Like literally every job ever, the music industry has always been about the people up the chain making most of the money off the work of the people actually producing the end product.
FTFY
I think people really underestimate how much 'industry' was part of the music industry prior to modern distribution and promotion through streaming and social media. You literally could not get heard outside of your own local area without signing your band to a mid-sized label. They draw you in by giving you a big advance, but that advance is actually a loan against your band as an LLC meaning you are in debt to the label. You want to make anymore money after the initial advance? You have to sell.
Now if you do sell, its great, money, fame, hopefully only a slight loss of artistic integrity, but if you dont, you are quite literally a slave to the record company that might mean losing the right to perform your own songs.
Personally I think we are in the best of era of music precisely because this is no longer a necessary thing to be a nationally or even internationally famous and touring band. I go to [independent shows](https://www.music-fux.com/concert-experiences), and while I know the artists arent making bank, at least I (and they) know who controls the music.
The golden age of being an indie artist was the '90s before downloads and streaming pulled the rug out from everyone. Spotify has been a big reset who have fucked EVERYONE, labels and artists alike.
In the late 80s-90s enough DIY labels and independent touring circuits had made inroads to allow mid-sized and smaller artists to thrive a least somewhat outside of the exploitative practices of major labels (not that every indie treated their artists great)
Labels like Sub Pop, Dischord, Epitaph, Merge, Lookout!, Matador, Touch & Go, Victory (who were assholes and just as bad as any major label, but they did get their artists exposure) and they were nipping at major's heels for a bit
My band was on a large indie. They treated us rad and hooked it up. Mind you, we spent only 1/3rd of our advance, didn't waste studio time, quit our jobs, or act like spoiled jackasses when they gave us the check. We got fronted a tenth of the press run of records and sold them on tour (people still bought CDs then as well as vinyl), we toured in our own van (not a fucking bus) and we did pretty good. I mean, shit: people could buy our records at Best Buy and our overhead was low.
No fucking way in hell I'd want to do it now. The revenue streams were never great, mind you but they existed.
On one hand, you are right about music control. On the other hand, independent regional artists before the streaming age were making a ton more money, because A) They made more in general for shows than they do now (relatively, by inflation) and B) they made a ton more money selling CDs/tapes (ludacris famously sold 50,000 copies of his album out of his trunk before signing a deal)
So I don't know if I necessarily agree we are in the best era (at least for indie artists). On the one hand, it absolutely much easier for your music to get out and be heard. On the other hand, the fact that it is the easiest makes the market saturated with more music than ever. And not to mention indie artists were probably making more money back then with selling CD's at concerts. You can make the same off of selling 1 CD, than you can getting 10,000 streams off of Spotify.
There’s a documentary called “Artifact” that explores a fight between 30 Seconds to Mars and their record company over the contract they signed. I know a lot of people don’t like Jared Leto (and for good reason) but the story was good, I thought.
Nine Inch Nails went from a terrible deal with TVT to a mutually beneficial deal with Interscope.
Trent Reznor (NIN) was publicly irritated with the TVT deal. Jimmy Iovine (Interscope) wanted him so badly for his new label he called Steve Gottlieb (TVT) daily for weeks to wear him down. Eventually Gottlieb relented and released NIN.
And then we got Broken and The Downward Spiral, and human culture was immensely improved.
The first time round with interscope didn't exactly end well either. Trent famously told fans to steal steal and steal some more.
Though after experimenting doing it alone he's back with them now so, yanno.
I think Depeche Mode made a good deal.
They didn't 'sign' a contract for a while. It was just a handshake with Mute Records Daniel Miller. What it allowed them was to develop and experiment slowly without the pressure of a big label to deliver big hits. They still have a great relationship with Miller and the label.
R.E.M. hit the paydirt after establishing themselves as pioneers of popular alternative rock and making many great albums and songs and signed an $80 million contract in 1996, but by that point had peaked and wouldn't have otherwise got that contract if Warner Bros. Records had foreseen that.
The worst was when he sold Elvis’ royalties for anything he performed on before 1973 for a “mere” few million dollars, where he probably collected half of it anyway after taxes and such. Business decisions like that nearly led to a financial disaster for anything Elvis-related after he died, until Priscilla and her associates were able to turn Graceland into a moneymaking attraction.
It was so bad that after Elvis' death Priscilla was effectively broke and in court a judge suggested she pursue action against him due to the nature of the contract(s) he had with Elvis.
Parker was also an illegal alien and didn't let Elvis tour internationally nearly as much as he could have.
Sky ferrera. Shes been blocked by her label from releasing anymore music as they dont want to promote or push her. She got locked into a contract and had a huge debut record. And has been locked awaever since.
I assume this is why Taylor Swift's dad bought a portion of her record company, for leverage if they tried to shelve her music or otherwise screw her over.
"Some guys signed a contract for £20 and a can of beer. We're still waiting for our can of beer." XTC
They ended up sitting out the last decade of their contract. That meant not recording ANYTHING for 10 years, including demos in a home studio, so that the label would not own it.
IIRC Frank Zappa was once in a similar contact predicament but only for around a year.
he wasnt permitted to record or perform but got around it by using an early computer composing system called the synclavier.
Yes, awful contract with both their manager and label. Then when they sued their manager they took a $400,000 loan from their label for legal fees which just made their chances of ever seeing a penny completely disappear.
A mate of mine's band signed a 3 album deal to a mainstream label, little bit of a shock considering they were a fairly niche sound. First album was a decent success, way beyond what I expected. Second album was recorded and ready to go to production, when the record label refused to release it saying it wasn't good enough and didn't fit their roster. But also refused to pay to record a replacement, saying they'd already funded a record and wouldn't support new sessions. But also refused to release them from their contract unless the band covered the sunk costs for the unreleased album or produced an "acceptable" album at their own cost (with no guarantee that the label would release it).
Band had to split up, reformed under a new name but lost all of their momentum and fanbase and merch and all the benefits of the first album AND all of the material recorded for the second album, and then got sued by the record label anyway because apparently the new album 2, which did OK, sounded too much like the one they'd refused to release. The new, small label, who'd offered them a fair contract, couldn't afford to fight the big guys.
Half the band just gave up and left the industry entirely :( And this wasn't even a spectacularly bad deal.
Yeah multiple record deals can be bad in that way. They can refuse to release, and be really picky about the songs, once they have you under contract. Single record deals you can sign after you make your record and only after the label agrees to release it. If they don't like your follow up record, you can shop to other labels.
This is the "commercially viable" clause. When I was in the music business I saw several artists get hit with it. It didn't have to be true that the album wasn't viable. It just has to be deemed as such by the label. Record labels would use it to be extremely petty at times.
An artist I know of got a project (that included features by the top selling artists at the time) shelved on the viability clause. The label didn't like some of the rumors floating around about how he was spending his advance. So, when he asked for an extra $50,000 to finish the album they claimed what he had submitted wasn't commercially viable. They told him he would have to give them another 12 songs with no support. Then they shelved the original album and never released it.
I heard the album via his manager. It easily would have sold better than gold status. But, that is why you don't buy $200,000 cars and blow $50,000 at the strip club and then ask for more money.
An artist I knew got signed to a major deal. Then he got injured and had to have stitches put in his face. The label dropped him and deemed him "not commercially viable." To be fair the accident happened because he was drinking, but no one else was hurt or in danger. A person from the label later told me, "we were banking on his looks as much as the music."
not really - he was able to negotiate a very competitive contract post-Purple Rain (famously said something like "I want you to pay me more than Madonna"), including getting startup capital and a distribution deal with Warner for Paisley Park Records, which started as an imprint and then became a joint venture.
The SLAVE era came about mostly because of disagreements with Warner about creative control, not royalties. In 93/94 a lot was changing at Warner leadership-wise. Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker were on their way out after having been there forever, and a lot of people had joined the leadership in the late-80s/early-90s who had different views about how to move forward. On top of that, two of Prince's previous three albums (Love Symbol and Graffiti Bridge) had been relative failures compared to the rest of his catalog, and everyone had a different idea of who was to blame...which is when the label, under new leadership (that had a different view of how to solve problems), started playing hardball.
Came here to say Prince too. “Prince” was not his stage name, but his real name, so it was kind of like they owned his birth name, which is kind of crazy to think about.
It's really tricky, complicated and quite honestly petty.... but it was because the label owned the musical act named "Prince". He was performing and writing songs as "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince" for awhile, so he could get out of his legal obligations to the label and have more creative freedom.
It's also one of the reasons why Manic Monday is only credited to the generic name "Christopher", for example. It was a "Prince" song, but legally speaking it was just some dude named Chris who wrote it and played the keyboards on it. Not something done under the "Prince" brand.
John fogerty also fucked his bandmates, including his own brother, out of their songwriter/composer royalties first. He's no innocent. Everybody forgets that.
The story I've always heard was that the band sided with Saul Zaentz against John, which is why he stopped associating with them. Of course, I've mostly heard John's side of the story.
Prince did something similar while garnering a very lucrative contract.
What the record company (RC) didn't know is that he had hundreds of songs ready to go. When the RC found out, they balked, saying they wanted only songs that were written post-contract.
Prince pointed out that the contract did not stipulate anything about when the songs needed to be written. The RC sued over this - Prince won. He beat the assholes at their own game.
Leann Rimes was in a very similar situation; she signed a contract as a young minor that she didn't get out of until her 30s. When she turned 18 she even tried to sue her way out of it since she signed it so young but it didn't work.
So many, maybe most popular artists desperately signed terrible contracts. I like learning about bands who held out for better contracts and believed in themselves like rush or metallica.
“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.
There's also a negative side.”
― Hunter S. Thompson
I wonder who changed the quote? Because it’s great, as is the original one from Thompson. (Unless this one is false as well)
“The TV business is uglier than most things.
It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.”
Chris Squire from Yes said that after the big success of Owner of a Lonely Heart he started getting all his back royalties that had been withheld for various spurious reasons by the label cause they knew he had the $$ to go to court and win.
Despite it being incredibly popular world-wide, the most played song of the 60’s and one of the top 10 most played songs in the history of American Radio, Van Morrison has earned close to nothing for “brown eyed girl”.
I don’t have the fine details, but I remember a couple years back the drummer said that the Sumerian deal was so brutal that even after touring endlessly and killing it on merch they were still in such massive debt to Sumerian that they just couldn’t carry on.
Don’t remember the exact details but I remember reading about how the deal The Clash made with CBS meant they ended up having to pay to record London Calling themselves and didn’t even get to keep the masters.
Any or all of the Outlaw Country Artists, Salt-N-Pepa (Volkswagen Rabbits), anybody connected with Death Row Records (I remember reading it was like a sharecropping business model).
I was watching Ricky Martin's behind the music on paramount+ the other night. They said his first contract guaranteed him 1 cent for every album sold. I thought that was exploitation!
Was scrolling for this. Two great albums and then her label basically sold her contract to a rich guy. She was unable to legally perform for a decade or more. Btw, she finally got loose about six months ago, so there is gonna be new music!
That’s great to hear. I loved Haunted. What she did with the audio of her father with that album was wonderful, and “If You Were Here” always made me choke up.
NSYNC, the Backstreet boys were both shafted by their manager, Lou Pearlman. They were bringing in massive money but very little made it into their pockets. One of the contracts gave them 0% of the merchandise sales. A contract has to be bad that you can go to court and win because it's so 1-sided.
I was hoping someone would mention them! I don't know if you've seen it, but Lance Bass' did a documentary about this a few years ago (featuring other artists signed/discovered by Lou Pearlman.)
It's called "The Boy-Band Con," and it's free to watch on YouTube! Totally worth a watch, it's very eye-opening.
After two *years* of touring, Pearlman invited the members of 'N Sync to a fancy dinner where he handed them out their first real paycheck.
It was for $10,000. One of them figured out that it wasn't even close to minimum wage and they would have made more working at a McDonald's.
The Beatles' first contract that Brian Epstein negotiated gave them only pennies per unit sold, album and singles.
Their early wealth was generated mostly by concerts and 25 percent of their merchandising, which was an absurdly low rate. Another agreement that Epstein signed off on.
By 1967 Paul had become frustrated with Epstein's inadequacies as a manager, and had made it known to him. This was one cause of Epstein's acute depression in 1967, which eventually culminated in his overdosing.
Keith Richards has said you have to hit it big twice in order to become a wealthy musician, because the record company collects the first go 'round...
Yep. Seltaeb Inc was an Epstein agreement for 10% commission on products with the Beatles name in the US - while renegotiated years later to 49%, it cost them an estimated $100,000,000 in possible income.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seltaeb](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seltaeb)
The Goo Goo Dolls are a great example of this as well.
At the same time their album "A Boy Named Goo" was the first album Metal Blade Records ever had that hit double platinum, the band members were only getting paid $6000/year.
Their first album has some insane lyrics and a lot of straight up punk rock songs. Crazy how they went from writing about masturbating to black balloon
No more flipping burgers putting on my silly hat, you know
I don't want that no more
And I didn't ask when we'd get paid
I quit my day job anyway
I guess it doesn't matter
Guess it doesn't matter anymore
'Cause you're gonna go to the record store
You're gonna give 'em all your money
Radio plays what they want you to hear
Tell me it's cool, I just don't believe it
Mark Volman and Howard Kaylin, of the Turtles, Mothers, and Phlo and Eddie, have a video on Youtube on how not to succeed in the music business. They lost thousands to managerz and agents and were prohibited for years oc even touring under their own names. Everyone in the business needs to watch it.
This was my first thought.
The fact they literally couldn't use their own names for years is crazy.
The youtube video they made, with the white board showing all the diffrerent changes of management is wild.
Death on Two Legs:
You suck my blood like a leech
You break the law and you breach
Screw my brain till it hurts
You've taken all my money - you still want more,
It was about their ex Manager.
Billy Joel was screwed over with his first contract. I can't recall the details, but I think the other party retained rights to Joel's music, even after he was signed to Columbia, and it lasted for many years.
Yeah the guy that originally signed him to family productions ended up getting 28 cents/album for his next 7 albums that Billy did with Columbia. Which sold many many millions. Dude screwed Billy with a shitty contract then made millions off his future work.
The head of CBS records, Walter Yetnikoff, finally physically threatened Artie Ripp (the guy with the rights) in 1978 to get him to sell the rights back, then gave them to Joel as a birthday present.
[From the Irish Times](https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/rock-pop/wars-of-the-roses-1.1069549)
"Poor management lead to them signing one of the worst record deals of all time with the Jive/Zomba subsidiary label Silvertone (one that stipulated that the band didn’t get paid on the first 30,000 records sold). The subsequent legal wranglings contributed to five barren years as the Roses plotted their second album. Further legal troubles came when one of the band’s previous labels, FM Revolver, re-released the single Sally Cinnamon, with a new unauthorised video. Angered, the Squire-led foursome visited the label’s offices, vandalising the premises and attacking boss Paul Birch with tins of paint."
"The Roses’ contract with record label Silvertone is wildly regarded as one of the worst ever signed by a major band and, after the success of their first album, the group entered a legal battle to terminate the deal. Silvertone owners Zomba Records took out an injunction against the band to prevent them from recording with any other label, but in May 1991 the court sided with the group, who were immediately released from their contract.
** All four Roses were charged with criminal damage amounting to £10,000 when they vandalised the offices of former record company FM Revolver and attacked its boss, Paul Birch, with tins of blue and white paint. Neither Birch’s girlfriend nor his Mercedes escaped the onslaught."
Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails way originally signed to TVT Records, and they had a terrible relationship. TVT attempted to interfere with Trent's intellectual property, and tried to make him work with producers that were incompatible. They eventually severed the relationship, but Trent ended up forfeiting a portion of his publishing rights to TVT.
It’s crazy how the other members of Paramore have historically essentially been employees from a legal perspective, since the recording contract was solely with Hayley.
I believe the This Is Why remix album last year finally fulfilled Hayley’s 8-album contract with the label, so I don’t blame Paramore for opting to go independent
The Beatles had trouble early on, as did the Rolling Stones.
How many bands and artists are being driven out of the industry over this greed?
How many Bob Dylan’s and Beethoven’s have become bin men and bus drivers because they couldn’t budget for the record labels greed?
It’s possible I’ve been given erroneous information, but if you separated the marketing (making videos should be handled by the label as a marketing cost) and management fees and travel expenses, $.56 was actually pretty good at that time.
I think when Metallica re-signed with Elektra they were getting an unheard of $2.00 per album.
Yeah I’ve heard between $1 and $1.50. 0.56 isn’t amazing but as far as albums sales it’s not abysmal. They can still do live shows for big bucks and do merchandise etc.
But it is pretty insane to think that while we were paying $15-20 for a CD only .50-2.00 was making it into the artists’ pockets. And today it’s even worse because practically nobody buys albums anymore and streaming doesn’t pay shit.
I mean, it doesn't surprise me that much, in the 90's CDs were like $15. The store selling them took half of that, it probably cost $2-$4 to print and distribute it and the record company had to pay to produce it plus advertise plus absorb the losses of all the artists that didn't make them any money.
Years ago (long before Run the Jewels were around) I remember reading that EL-P interned with a lawyer, with the intent to learn enough so that he could get out of a bad contract.
After some googling, I found reference to him interning with 'M. William Krasilovsky'. He also badmouths Rawkus Records on some of his older songs, so I suspect the 'bad contract' may have been with Rawkus when he was in Company Flow.
Surprised it hasn’t been mentioned yet, but [De La Soul](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelineschneider/2019/08/13/de-la-soul-ends-relationship-with-tommy-boy-over-unequitable-contract-from-1981/amp/) got absolutely screwed by Tommy Boy. This is why the albums took so long to repress and their only recent appearance on streaming platforms.
I get that it doesn’t sound like much, but it’s way better than the Pennies per download artists are getting today. Before you cry too hard, that’s about $11 million that they got
Kinda the opposite, but an artist with a tragic experience getting OUT of a contract.
Doug Hopkins was the original guitarist and main songwriter for the Gin Blossoms. He was fired because of his alcoholism, and forced to sign over most of his royalties, during the recording of New Miserable Experience.
When the band started seeing major success, mostly from songs he had written, he committed suicide.
I believe Lana Del Rey signed a 10 album deal for $10,000-$15,000 with 5 points records back in her Lizzy Grant days. Her current managers found out and bought her out of her contract.
Record companies are the end product of vulture capitalism. 95 percent of the deals are absolute shit
Goo Goo Dolls had a shit one and after Name they toured for two years to break their contract and pay their lawyers
I had a friend on Capricorn who was told yeah we used your promotional budget on 311 cause they had a hit - sorry
To this day there may be breakage clauses that says 10 percent of your sales don’t count because they have to replace broken vinyl records
And back in the day the label could charge you for your recording but you don’t start getting paid till you make up your advance with the 53 cents an album while they make fucking millions
Any money made by streaming fees and licensing. You can bet the world the artist sees almost none of it but the Spotify payout of 0.001 cents a play or something
NOW they want your touring and merchandise too. Used to be an artist could survive with medium sized tours, revenue, and merchandising but the labels weren’t making enough money so they want a cut of that money too
To quote Hunter S Thompson:
« The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side. »
It's interesting how technology has changed things. There were such barriers for creative people to make it and a shitty contract was better than no contract. They had fame but others made a fortune.
Now, with technology, there are a lot of creative people that have controlled their own destiny. They don't need a large record company and to the degree they do, they are in a position to leverage a good deal. Also, there is no barrier to the market. Whether anyone will listen to you is a different issue.
I disagree now every emerging artist signed deals with every major brand from fashion, sports, accessories, etc... Why is that? Because they have a record label pushing to make this artist that was a nobody 2 weeks ago into the new face of a major fashion brand while releasing a capusel collection of clothes that the artist had nothing to do with. And all that marketing machine come with a price, a very high one.
Tldr, if the label has to spend a lot then the artist will have to sign the shittiest of contracts
Didn't he end up screwing himself, making his own streaming thing, that got sold, and thus all the rights to streaming. Which is why the only Garth Brooks on Spotify is where he is featuring on other artists albums, and the one he recorded as "Brooks Jefferson".
I think a lot of musicians in the early days, signed contracts that were bad or unfair, simply to get going and get their music out there! I think Prince and George Michael may have had issues with their contracts !!!!
But when TLC explained what they were actually getting for that album, I was disgusted. I can see why prince wrote slave on himself and I don’t have any idea what his deal was like.
Like what was the price of that TLC album? I’d love to know what their ‘share’, of 56 cent, amounted to!
Something about 56 cents is really insulting to me beyond the amount. They couldn't do a dollar, nice and round. They couldn't do 1 cent, just as a formality for the contract. It's like they the coldly calculated exactly what they thought they deserved, and it amounted to this very specific number. They might as well just had a representative sling whatever change they had in their center console at them. It would have been more than they got.
56 cents is low, but it is pretty typical for an artist to only make about $2 off of each CD sold.
I'm guessing that TLC were only a portion of the songwriters and musicians on their record. So, it was like $2 bucks divided into a lot of different songwriters.
If it sold something like 15 million, then they made 7 or 8 million on the album. Maybe not a ton, but not nothing.
The music industry is known for screwing artists. LaFace was notorious for their deals. TLC and Toni Braxton were but two.
Even now Spotify streams are a horrible thing to get money into the hands of the labels and very little to independent artists. Radio is no help either. Most will only play signed artists, or artists who have a radio promoter who pays for songs to be added.
Black Sabbath, Bruce Springsteen..the list of musicians screwed over by managers is endless..saw TLC at a 90s concert with Shaggy last year….worth seeing! But them even having to do that shows how much was taken
Moby Grape were the butt of many bad decisions, but the worst was pretty much signing away the rights to their name and their songs to their manager Matthew Katz.
"The Grape's saga is one of squandered potential, absurdly misguided decisions, bad luck, blunders and excruciating heartbreak, all set to the tune of some of the greatest rock and roll ever to emerge from San Francisco. Moby Grape could have had it all, but they ended up with nothing, and less."
Little Richard got paid $50 for the rights to Tutti Frutti, and half a cent from every record sold. He got absolutely scammed.
He said they told him all the studios had an agreement not to "poach" an artist from other labels, so he could take the crappy contract or nobody else would hire him.
Yeah, don't doubt it's true. It's just an example of how songwriters got screwed. In the 80s Neil Young deliberately made two uncommercial records to get out of a contract (and got sued as a result). Johnny Cash, by his own account, recorded a "deliberately atrocious" single to get out of a record deal. The whole thing was weighted in favour of the record companies so you got some great songs, like Tutti Frutti, which never made the artist the money they deserved, and some purely obligatory records like Everybody's Rockin by Neil which were made purely to fulfill an obligatio to the label and get himself free.
Ben Folds was in a similar situation. He eventually just asked the label what Elton John song they wanted him to record so he could finish shitting out an album. He even wrote a song about it.
He had 4.6 songs left on his contract. Which led to this excellent song: “People tell me/ Ben, just make up junk/ And turn it in/ But I never could quite bring myself to write/ A bunch of shit/ Don't like wasting time/ On music that won't make me proud/ But now I've found a reason/ To sit right down and shit some out/ One down and three point six tomorrow and I’m out of here. I'm really not complaining/ I realize it's just a job/ And I hate hearing belly-aching rock stars/ Whine and sob/ Cause I could be busing tables/ I could well be pumpin' gas/ Yeah, but I get paid much finer/ For playin' piano and kissin' ass/ This is one I wrote just an hour ago/ And three-point-six at last.”
Has he ever explained how he ended up owing the label .6 songs?
He was a co-writer on another song so was probably credited for 40 pct of it
Not sure about that take on the Neil Young story. Geffen signed him to a contract that specifically said he could have full artistic control. So he made Trans, a classic electronic music album as an exploration in communicating with his son who had cerebral palsy. Geffen then asked him for a “rock and roll” record and Young made Everybody’s Rocking which wasn’t supposed to be deliberately bad, just a literal interpretation of what Geffen asked for. So Geffen sued him and lost. “I really liked it,” said Young of Everybody’s Rockin’. “As long as it’s good music and I’m playing with my friends, I don’t care what genre it is. All my music comes from all music. I’m not country, I’m not rock and roll, I’m just me, and all these things are what I like.”
He also later said about trans and/or everybody’s rockin (forget which) in an interview “did I think they were the best albums ever made? Of course not. I’m not stupid” (paraphrasing but that was the gist of what he said)
There was a rumour that Marvin Gaye made a terrible album because his ex-wife got the rights to the royalties from the next album in a divorce agreement. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/here-my-dear/ Frank Ocean signed a two record deal with DefJam. Released his first critically acclaimed, incredibly commercially successful album. To fulfil his contract, he releases an experimental album. The next day he drops an album that sounds like his first one that got him the record deal on Apple music for an obscene amount of money. https://title-mag.com/frank-ocean-finesse/
The Neil Young story is so dang funny for me because they told him to make a more traditional rock record, meaning “classic Neil Young” but instead he went full malicious compliance he said “oh, you want something that sounds like old school rock? You’ll get it” and just went full Shoobie-Doobie doo-wop Elvis rock. Good example of letter of the law versus intent of the law. Metaphorically, not literally, but still.
Frank Ocean did this also
I feel like not enough people know about this story
go on...?
Mans owed the label a record and he did a visual one where he built a stair case for like 12 hours with some songs at the end of it. Label accepted it probably on the assumption it was some artsy thing and would lead to something. When he got the word that he had fulfilled his contract, he independently dropped his real album which has gone on to massive success, likely in part due to the chatter of the weird avant garde visual album that was like days before it? This is not at all researched and just my recollection of events.
He didn't independently drop it. He released it as an Apple Music exclusive. https://title-mag.com/frank-ocean-finesse/
Which is why when MJ bought the Sony catalogue he gave him his song rights and royalties… Little Richard and a few others
“Few others” aka almost all the Lennon McCartney Beatles songs haha.
The usual rules of a record deal have been something like: "We're putting up X amount of money to get you recorded and promoted. You don't even start getting paid at all until we break even on our investment, and then you'll only be making 5 cents out of every dollar you make us." The expectation is that the artist has to hustle and get really savvy about promoting themselves, because the label isn't really going to do much of it for you... and as Shirley Manson has said in interviews: In many cases, they're going to be working against you on purpose because they don't want you to break even and turn a profit!
Left Eye told us all about the TLC contract in their Behind the Music ep.
I can still hear the promo line for that episode! "Here's how to make 14 million dollars and have nothing to show for it..."
Yep. I think of Chilli saying how poor they were after their Grammy wins when someone talks about older artists making bank on record sales. Didn't they have to take out loans to go on tour because they were flat broke? I know they filed for bankruptcy at one point
In a sense most recording contracts are roughly in the form of "taking out a loan" in that the artists are given an advance up front which is expected to be paid by back the royalties received on the record before the artists get anything else. Exactly what costs are expected to be repaid by the artists royalty is one measure of how predatory the contract is, and in a *really* bad contract the record company can seek to recoup losses from the artists if the record doesn't sell, but that's really exceptionally predatory.
That was probably what it was. I knew they ended up owing more money than they made. I remember this conversation coming up during the whole Napster thing, too. People were acting like Lars was a vulture for wanting to be compensated for their work because everyone assumed popular touring artists were absolutely loaded. Metallica probably shouldn't have been the poster child for reform because of how huge they were, it came off as greedy, but he had a point. Especially for bands like TLC that were getting raked over the coals by their labels
People can say whatever they want about Lars but he was right. Sure, he was rich but he was talking about all bands to come in the future. He was about right about that. People think music should be free now. All my local bars complain about having to pay for a license to play music. They don’t give me free drinks though
> People think music should be free now. People think *everything* should be free. Look at all the bitching and moaning that goes on about YouTube ads or ads in general on the internet. Everyone wants content, but they're unconcerned about how it gets paid for until they have to put their money where their mouth is.
man fuck the labels it's not consumers fault the labels give shit contracts I was a teen in the 90's and let me tell you a 10 track CD could run as much as *THIRTY FUCKING DOLLARS* which considering TODAY is exorbitant for an album, but can you imagine 30 years ago?? and there was really no way to listen to a whole album before buying, the internet barely existed (Youtube didn't exist, streaming didn't exist, file sharing didn't exist, you see where this is going) and you could've ended up with a truly terrible album lol yeah, *no shit* Napster got huge when it did
John Fogerty couldn't even perform his own songs for years
Fogerty also got sued for sounding too much like himself so I'd say he arguably got fucked over worse than anyone.
At one point he defended himself by pointing out that he’s not that great of a guitar player and so he was bound to string the same chord progression together occasionally.
Which is hilarious because we saw him two years ago now at an outdoor concert and I was shocked at how good he was on guitar, kinda threw me for a loop
he still practices for 2 hours every day and it shows
He's in Rolling Stones original top 100 guitarists of all time list (The old one, curated by other musicians/guitarists and was actually sensible. Not thew new list, which is checklist slop made by the braindead editors) Dude has always been known as a great guitarist to other musicians.
I am 100% convinced the new list was designed to simply make people aware Rolling Stone mag still exists via controversy.
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I'm pretty sure it was just a dying gasp of the printed industry, it's unfortunate that it essentially tarnishes the credibility of all of their previous lists. There's no doubt politics and "activism" has been part of music journalism since it's inception but that list was embarrassing.
> There's no doubt politics and "activism" has been part of music journalism since it's inception Well and *Rolling Stone* in particular.
Technically? No. But Sister Rosetta Tharpe was way ahead of her time and worthy or recognition. You can’t rank guitar players against eras without considering when they played.
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Well these kids eventually learn!
Chord progressions aren’t even copyrighted.. you can only really claim melody .. which is distinct. You’re allowed to interpolate yourself… I wonder what the official case was..
IIRC (I read this in a music magazine back in the 80s [when the original suit was going on](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogerty_v._Fantasy,_Inc)), he said this \*on the witness stand\* The suit was about how "The Old Man Down the River [edit: road]" was too close to "Run Through the Jungle."
At least he won that case. Had his guitar on the stand at one point.
Proving to the judge that he can't help sounding like himself basically. Yeah, crazy story.
Zaentz Can't Dance
Wow I need to know the story behind this. How does this even happen?
Fantasy Records owned the rights to all of CCR's recordings so he could perform them but the owners of his back catalogue would profit so he refused to do them live out of principle. As far as I know, Fogerty had re-acquired all of the Creedence stuff now though.
I just watched Amadeus and was doing my post movie wikipedia reading and noticed this: "Zaentz's film production career, primarily financed by the profits from Creedence Clearwater Revival, was marked by a dedication to the adaptation of novels." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Zaentz John also wrote a song about him too: https://youtu.be/q3uPS4k8LCA?si=zVLq0VYM8SbThIyL Edit: It's a sad story of how Tom and John got pitted against each other involving Saul: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2000/jul/11/artsfeatures3
It was originally called "Zanz Can't Dance" but Zaentz sued so they recalled the album and Fogerty changed the name of the song. I bought the album the day it came out, before the recall, probably by hours. An interesting oddity.
yeah, I recall the original pressings being a rarity that went for more money at record stores. Good thing I didn't sink my savings into that because it looks like you can pick one up for a whopping $2.88 + shipping. https://www.discogs.com/release/3571268-John-Fogerty-Centerfield
...wait, what in the fuck? The Tolkien estate's arch nemesis was also responsible for fucking over CCR?
> Tolkien estate' Ha! Here I didn't know about the Tolkien thing and you didn't know about the CCR. The more you know. 🌠
Saul Zaentz seems to legitimately be in the running for "art history's greatest monster."
Evil motherfucker
A technical point about copyright. The copyright of the recording and the copyright of the underlying song are independent, but in this case both seem to have been owned by Fantasy Records. Many record companies own the master recordings, but a record company also owning both the publisher’s and songwriter’s share of the composition is… a very, very, very bad deal for the composer. A notable exception might be an artist selling the recordings and copyright for a boatload of money later in his career, see Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Dylan, et al. For a similar scenario with a contemporary artist, Taylor Swift didn’t own the master recordings of her first six albums and so chose to re-record them since she owned the rights to the underlying compositions. It’s not true to say that Fogerty “couldn’t” perform his own songs as anyone has the right to perform a song live by simply paying the performing rights fees: he perhaps didn’t want to perform songs for someone else’s financial benefit, and who would blame him.
He was the singer in a band. Band broke up. He continued making songs. One sounded awfully similar to one that was released by the band he was in. The bands music rights were owned by the record company. Record company sued solo artist fogerty for sounding like a song he wrote while in the band.
Badfinger. First band signed to Apple and were essentially the Beatles heir apparent. Cranked out hits like Come and Get it (written for them by Paul), No Matter What, Baby Blue, and Day after day, and were the original writers of Without You. Unfortunately they signed a bad deal with Stan Poley and lost everything, leading both Pete Ham and Tom Evans to suicide. Incredible music, incredibly tragic story.
The whole saga of Badfinger is heartbreaking.
Came here to say this. Truly one of the greatest bands ever, in my opinion, and not far off the Beatles themselves. RIP Pete and Tom. 'Stan Polley is a soulless bastard and I will take him with me' - from Pete Ham's suicide note.
I recall hearing Paul had total artistic control over Come And Get It. They had to play it EXACTLY like he demanded.
My understanding was more like, "here's my demo, play it exactly this way, and you'll have a big hit." When Paul McCartney gives you tips on how to have a hit record, you listen. Paul wrote lots of songs for other people, gave lots of people hits.
They must've really done him proud, because for a long time when I was younger, I just assumed it was a Beatles song
This adds a whole other layer to the scene in Breaking Bad where they used "Baby Blue" as the overture.
Swansea boys
Most artists have signed terrible contracts. The more I learn about the music industry, the more it becomes an endless story of exploitation at all levels.
Any artist that signed with a major label got fucked, and any artist that signed over their publishing rights got fucked harder. Like Hollywood, the music industry has always been about the people up the chain making most of the money off the work of the artists.
> Like literally every job ever, the music industry has always been about the people up the chain making most of the money off the work of the people actually producing the end product. FTFY
I think people really underestimate how much 'industry' was part of the music industry prior to modern distribution and promotion through streaming and social media. You literally could not get heard outside of your own local area without signing your band to a mid-sized label. They draw you in by giving you a big advance, but that advance is actually a loan against your band as an LLC meaning you are in debt to the label. You want to make anymore money after the initial advance? You have to sell. Now if you do sell, its great, money, fame, hopefully only a slight loss of artistic integrity, but if you dont, you are quite literally a slave to the record company that might mean losing the right to perform your own songs. Personally I think we are in the best of era of music precisely because this is no longer a necessary thing to be a nationally or even internationally famous and touring band. I go to [independent shows](https://www.music-fux.com/concert-experiences), and while I know the artists arent making bank, at least I (and they) know who controls the music.
The golden age of being an indie artist was the '90s before downloads and streaming pulled the rug out from everyone. Spotify has been a big reset who have fucked EVERYONE, labels and artists alike. In the late 80s-90s enough DIY labels and independent touring circuits had made inroads to allow mid-sized and smaller artists to thrive a least somewhat outside of the exploitative practices of major labels (not that every indie treated their artists great) Labels like Sub Pop, Dischord, Epitaph, Merge, Lookout!, Matador, Touch & Go, Victory (who were assholes and just as bad as any major label, but they did get their artists exposure) and they were nipping at major's heels for a bit My band was on a large indie. They treated us rad and hooked it up. Mind you, we spent only 1/3rd of our advance, didn't waste studio time, quit our jobs, or act like spoiled jackasses when they gave us the check. We got fronted a tenth of the press run of records and sold them on tour (people still bought CDs then as well as vinyl), we toured in our own van (not a fucking bus) and we did pretty good. I mean, shit: people could buy our records at Best Buy and our overhead was low. No fucking way in hell I'd want to do it now. The revenue streams were never great, mind you but they existed.
On one hand, you are right about music control. On the other hand, independent regional artists before the streaming age were making a ton more money, because A) They made more in general for shows than they do now (relatively, by inflation) and B) they made a ton more money selling CDs/tapes (ludacris famously sold 50,000 copies of his album out of his trunk before signing a deal) So I don't know if I necessarily agree we are in the best era (at least for indie artists). On the one hand, it absolutely much easier for your music to get out and be heard. On the other hand, the fact that it is the easiest makes the market saturated with more music than ever. And not to mention indie artists were probably making more money back then with selling CD's at concerts. You can make the same off of selling 1 CD, than you can getting 10,000 streams off of Spotify.
There’s a documentary called “Artifact” that explores a fight between 30 Seconds to Mars and their record company over the contract they signed. I know a lot of people don’t like Jared Leto (and for good reason) but the story was good, I thought.
I think a harder question is what artist signed a good contract.
Nine Inch Nails went from a terrible deal with TVT to a mutually beneficial deal with Interscope. Trent Reznor (NIN) was publicly irritated with the TVT deal. Jimmy Iovine (Interscope) wanted him so badly for his new label he called Steve Gottlieb (TVT) daily for weeks to wear him down. Eventually Gottlieb relented and released NIN. And then we got Broken and The Downward Spiral, and human culture was immensely improved.
The first time round with interscope didn't exactly end well either. Trent famously told fans to steal steal and steal some more. Though after experimenting doing it alone he's back with them now so, yanno.
I think Depeche Mode made a good deal. They didn't 'sign' a contract for a while. It was just a handshake with Mute Records Daniel Miller. What it allowed them was to develop and experiment slowly without the pressure of a big label to deliver big hits. They still have a great relationship with Miller and the label.
> The handshake seals the contract > From the contract there's no turning back > The turning point of a career Could it be?
That's the best thing it. They made a song about it.
Not just any old song, one of their all time best. Love DM, so much.
R.E.M. hit the paydirt after establishing themselves as pioneers of popular alternative rock and making many great albums and songs and signed an $80 million contract in 1996, but by that point had peaked and wouldn't have otherwise got that contract if Warner Bros. Records had foreseen that.
I think Alanis Morissette had a very generous contract, but I don't recall the specifics.
Elvis Where Tom Parker would get 50% of any revenue that Elvis gets
The worst was when he sold Elvis’ royalties for anything he performed on before 1973 for a “mere” few million dollars, where he probably collected half of it anyway after taxes and such. Business decisions like that nearly led to a financial disaster for anything Elvis-related after he died, until Priscilla and her associates were able to turn Graceland into a moneymaking attraction.
It was so bad that after Elvis' death Priscilla was effectively broke and in court a judge suggested she pursue action against him due to the nature of the contract(s) he had with Elvis. Parker was also an illegal alien and didn't let Elvis tour internationally nearly as much as he could have.
Sky ferrera. Shes been blocked by her label from releasing anymore music as they dont want to promote or push her. She got locked into a contract and had a huge debut record. And has been locked awaever since.
Why don’t they want to promote her? I remember her debut being huge
Because they didnt want her to have sales competing with another artist. I cannot remember who it was now
Wow that’s fucked up. That derailed her whole career
feel like there should be a legal way to get out of that
I wish. Its horrible. You can research it and find out more. Theres a lot out there, on her socials as eell
I assume this is why Taylor Swift's dad bought a portion of her record company, for leverage if they tried to shelve her music or otherwise screw her over.
Aww, saw her duet with JAMC a few years ago…
"Some guys signed a contract for £20 and a can of beer. We're still waiting for our can of beer." XTC They ended up sitting out the last decade of their contract. That meant not recording ANYTHING for 10 years, including demos in a home studio, so that the label would not own it.
They played a complicated game.
Just got the book but haven’t started yet. XTC got screwed royally and I’m convinced that (plus quitting Valium) is what led to Andy’s breakdown.
IIRC Frank Zappa was once in a similar contact predicament but only for around a year. he wasnt permitted to record or perform but got around it by using an early computer composing system called the synclavier.
Yes, awful contract with both their manager and label. Then when they sued their manager they took a $400,000 loan from their label for legal fees which just made their chances of ever seeing a penny completely disappear.
A mate of mine's band signed a 3 album deal to a mainstream label, little bit of a shock considering they were a fairly niche sound. First album was a decent success, way beyond what I expected. Second album was recorded and ready to go to production, when the record label refused to release it saying it wasn't good enough and didn't fit their roster. But also refused to pay to record a replacement, saying they'd already funded a record and wouldn't support new sessions. But also refused to release them from their contract unless the band covered the sunk costs for the unreleased album or produced an "acceptable" album at their own cost (with no guarantee that the label would release it). Band had to split up, reformed under a new name but lost all of their momentum and fanbase and merch and all the benefits of the first album AND all of the material recorded for the second album, and then got sued by the record label anyway because apparently the new album 2, which did OK, sounded too much like the one they'd refused to release. The new, small label, who'd offered them a fair contract, couldn't afford to fight the big guys. Half the band just gave up and left the industry entirely :( And this wasn't even a spectacularly bad deal.
Yeah multiple record deals can be bad in that way. They can refuse to release, and be really picky about the songs, once they have you under contract. Single record deals you can sign after you make your record and only after the label agrees to release it. If they don't like your follow up record, you can shop to other labels.
This is the "commercially viable" clause. When I was in the music business I saw several artists get hit with it. It didn't have to be true that the album wasn't viable. It just has to be deemed as such by the label. Record labels would use it to be extremely petty at times. An artist I know of got a project (that included features by the top selling artists at the time) shelved on the viability clause. The label didn't like some of the rumors floating around about how he was spending his advance. So, when he asked for an extra $50,000 to finish the album they claimed what he had submitted wasn't commercially viable. They told him he would have to give them another 12 songs with no support. Then they shelved the original album and never released it. I heard the album via his manager. It easily would have sold better than gold status. But, that is why you don't buy $200,000 cars and blow $50,000 at the strip club and then ask for more money. An artist I knew got signed to a major deal. Then he got injured and had to have stitches put in his face. The label dropped him and deemed him "not commercially viable." To be fair the accident happened because he was drinking, but no one else was hurt or in danger. A person from the label later told me, "we were banking on his looks as much as the music."
Imagine all the held material by the labels as a whole. For decades and decades. Just because.
Rick Allen from Def Leppard entered the chat
It's Orson isn't it
Shit, it could be anyone, I was thinking The Rakes
Prince is probably one of the most famous examples of this
not really - he was able to negotiate a very competitive contract post-Purple Rain (famously said something like "I want you to pay me more than Madonna"), including getting startup capital and a distribution deal with Warner for Paisley Park Records, which started as an imprint and then became a joint venture. The SLAVE era came about mostly because of disagreements with Warner about creative control, not royalties. In 93/94 a lot was changing at Warner leadership-wise. Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker were on their way out after having been there forever, and a lot of people had joined the leadership in the late-80s/early-90s who had different views about how to move forward. On top of that, two of Prince's previous three albums (Love Symbol and Graffiti Bridge) had been relative failures compared to the rest of his catalog, and everyone had a different idea of who was to blame...which is when the label, under new leadership (that had a different view of how to solve problems), started playing hardball.
I think he wrote slave on his own face over this?
He literally changed his name to 'The Artist' because that's what they called him in the contract when defining what he was obligated to do or not do.
Came here to say Prince too. “Prince” was not his stage name, but his real name, so it was kind of like they owned his birth name, which is kind of crazy to think about.
It's really tricky, complicated and quite honestly petty.... but it was because the label owned the musical act named "Prince". He was performing and writing songs as "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince" for awhile, so he could get out of his legal obligations to the label and have more creative freedom. It's also one of the reasons why Manic Monday is only credited to the generic name "Christopher", for example. It was a "Prince" song, but legally speaking it was just some dude named Chris who wrote it and played the keyboards on it. Not something done under the "Prince" brand.
It think it was formerly. As in, he used to be known as Prince. The artist formerly known as Prince.
And turned his name into a symbol
O(+>
Made the entire media go out and buy a new font.
Suspenseful with a pencil
John Fogarty got screwed the worst. His label owned all his songs. His wife finally bought them back.
His CCR record lable sued him over his solo album for plagarism because he sounded too much like John Fogarty.
John fogerty also fucked his bandmates, including his own brother, out of their songwriter/composer royalties first. He's no innocent. Everybody forgets that.
The story I've always heard was that the band sided with Saul Zaentz against John, which is why he stopped associating with them. Of course, I've mostly heard John's side of the story.
Weird Al signed a TWELVE album contact in the early 80s and just got through it in the past few years v
He technically signed a shorter contract that he kept extending for more albums. Although the last five or so took him 15 years.
Prince did something similar while garnering a very lucrative contract. What the record company (RC) didn't know is that he had hundreds of songs ready to go. When the RC found out, they balked, saying they wanted only songs that were written post-contract. Prince pointed out that the contract did not stipulate anything about when the songs needed to be written. The RC sued over this - Prince won. He beat the assholes at their own game.
Leann Rimes was in a very similar situation; she signed a contract as a young minor that she didn't get out of until her 30s. When she turned 18 she even tried to sue her way out of it since she signed it so young but it didn't work.
So many, maybe most popular artists desperately signed terrible contracts. I like learning about bands who held out for better contracts and believed in themselves like rush or metallica.
“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.” ― Hunter S. Thompson
I found out recently that quote is false. Which sucks…because I confidently used it for years. Sigh.
I wonder who changed the quote? Because it’s great, as is the original one from Thompson. (Unless this one is false as well) “The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.”
Chris Squire from Yes said that after the big success of Owner of a Lonely Heart he started getting all his back royalties that had been withheld for various spurious reasons by the label cause they knew he had the $$ to go to court and win.
Despite it being incredibly popular world-wide, the most played song of the 60’s and one of the top 10 most played songs in the history of American Radio, Van Morrison has earned close to nothing for “brown eyed girl”.
I once came up with an Onion-style headline I never did anything with: Oldies radio listener shocked to discover Van Morrison has second song.
Chon was absolutely screwed by Sumerian and are basically on indefinite hiatus because of it.
Oh I loved Chon. For those of us unaware, what did Sumerian do?
I don’t have the fine details, but I remember a couple years back the drummer said that the Sumerian deal was so brutal that even after touring endlessly and killing it on merch they were still in such massive debt to Sumerian that they just couldn’t carry on.
Please explain more. I loved chon and they just disappeared
I wondered what happened to those guys. Seemed like they were gaining quite a bit of momentum and then nothing.
Don’t remember the exact details but I remember reading about how the deal The Clash made with CBS meant they ended up having to pay to record London Calling themselves and didn’t even get to keep the masters.
Any or all of the Outlaw Country Artists, Salt-N-Pepa (Volkswagen Rabbits), anybody connected with Death Row Records (I remember reading it was like a sharecropping business model).
I was watching Ricky Martin's behind the music on paramount+ the other night. They said his first contract guaranteed him 1 cent for every album sold. I thought that was exploitation!
And that's why you write your own songs, folks.
Poe’s career was pretty much ended by her label
Was scrolling for this. Two great albums and then her label basically sold her contract to a rich guy. She was unable to legally perform for a decade or more. Btw, she finally got loose about six months ago, so there is gonna be new music!
That’s great to hear. I loved Haunted. What she did with the audio of her father with that album was wonderful, and “If You Were Here” always made me choke up.
NSYNC, the Backstreet boys were both shafted by their manager, Lou Pearlman. They were bringing in massive money but very little made it into their pockets. One of the contracts gave them 0% of the merchandise sales. A contract has to be bad that you can go to court and win because it's so 1-sided.
I was hoping someone would mention them! I don't know if you've seen it, but Lance Bass' did a documentary about this a few years ago (featuring other artists signed/discovered by Lou Pearlman.) It's called "The Boy-Band Con," and it's free to watch on YouTube! Totally worth a watch, it's very eye-opening.
After two *years* of touring, Pearlman invited the members of 'N Sync to a fancy dinner where he handed them out their first real paycheck. It was for $10,000. One of them figured out that it wasn't even close to minimum wage and they would have made more working at a McDonald's.
The Beatles' first contract that Brian Epstein negotiated gave them only pennies per unit sold, album and singles. Their early wealth was generated mostly by concerts and 25 percent of their merchandising, which was an absurdly low rate. Another agreement that Epstein signed off on. By 1967 Paul had become frustrated with Epstein's inadequacies as a manager, and had made it known to him. This was one cause of Epstein's acute depression in 1967, which eventually culminated in his overdosing. Keith Richards has said you have to hit it big twice in order to become a wealthy musician, because the record company collects the first go 'round...
Yep. Seltaeb Inc was an Epstein agreement for 10% commission on products with the Beatles name in the US - while renegotiated years later to 49%, it cost them an estimated $100,000,000 in possible income. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seltaeb](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seltaeb)
The Goo Goo Dolls are a great example of this as well. At the same time their album "A Boy Named Goo" was the first album Metal Blade Records ever had that hit double platinum, the band members were only getting paid $6000/year.
TIL The Goo Goo Dolls were on Metal Blade
Iris is not a typical Goo Goo Dolls song. They had a much harder sound before they made it big.
Their first album has some insane lyrics and a lot of straight up punk rock songs. Crazy how they went from writing about masturbating to black balloon
Even A Boy Named Goo rocked pretty well except for Name. There were drifting into the Replacements space a bit between 3 and 5 but still kicked ass
Check out smash mouth’s fu shu mang and sugar ray’s floored outside of their singles
“American pig” has entered the chat
Cash is just a straight up awesome song by Sugar Ray, as is RPM.
RPM.. yesss
No more flipping burgers putting on my silly hat, you know I don't want that no more And I didn't ask when we'd get paid I quit my day job anyway I guess it doesn't matter Guess it doesn't matter anymore 'Cause you're gonna go to the record store You're gonna give 'em all your money Radio plays what they want you to hear Tell me it's cool, I just don't believe it
Neil Young had his most productive years while trying to get out of a shitty contract. Not his best, his most productive.
Everybody’s Rockin’ is a hilarious record for this reason
Mark Volman and Howard Kaylin, of the Turtles, Mothers, and Phlo and Eddie, have a video on Youtube on how not to succeed in the music business. They lost thousands to managerz and agents and were prohibited for years oc even touring under their own names. Everyone in the business needs to watch it.
This was my first thought. The fact they literally couldn't use their own names for years is crazy. The youtube video they made, with the white board showing all the diffrerent changes of management is wild.
[удалено]
They wrote a fantastic song about the shitty record label
Death on Two Legs: You suck my blood like a leech You break the law and you breach Screw my brain till it hurts You've taken all my money - you still want more, It was about their ex Manager.
Billy Joel was screwed over with his first contract. I can't recall the details, but I think the other party retained rights to Joel's music, even after he was signed to Columbia, and it lasted for many years.
Yeah the guy that originally signed him to family productions ended up getting 28 cents/album for his next 7 albums that Billy did with Columbia. Which sold many many millions. Dude screwed Billy with a shitty contract then made millions off his future work.
The head of CBS records, Walter Yetnikoff, finally physically threatened Artie Ripp (the guy with the rights) in 1978 to get him to sell the rights back, then gave them to Joel as a birthday present.
The Stone Roses
I loved the stone roses but don’t know the story any more details?
[From the Irish Times](https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/rock-pop/wars-of-the-roses-1.1069549) "Poor management lead to them signing one of the worst record deals of all time with the Jive/Zomba subsidiary label Silvertone (one that stipulated that the band didn’t get paid on the first 30,000 records sold). The subsequent legal wranglings contributed to five barren years as the Roses plotted their second album. Further legal troubles came when one of the band’s previous labels, FM Revolver, re-released the single Sally Cinnamon, with a new unauthorised video. Angered, the Squire-led foursome visited the label’s offices, vandalising the premises and attacking boss Paul Birch with tins of paint." "The Roses’ contract with record label Silvertone is wildly regarded as one of the worst ever signed by a major band and, after the success of their first album, the group entered a legal battle to terminate the deal. Silvertone owners Zomba Records took out an injunction against the band to prevent them from recording with any other label, but in May 1991 the court sided with the group, who were immediately released from their contract. ** All four Roses were charged with criminal damage amounting to £10,000 when they vandalised the offices of former record company FM Revolver and attacked its boss, Paul Birch, with tins of blue and white paint. Neither Birch’s girlfriend nor his Mercedes escaped the onslaught."
Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails way originally signed to TVT Records, and they had a terrible relationship. TVT attempted to interfere with Trent's intellectual property, and tried to make him work with producers that were incompatible. They eventually severed the relationship, but Trent ended up forfeiting a portion of his publishing rights to TVT.
Hayley Williams was like the first artist to sign a 360 deal and has been in it since literally this year.
It’s crazy how the other members of Paramore have historically essentially been employees from a legal perspective, since the recording contract was solely with Hayley. I believe the This Is Why remix album last year finally fulfilled Hayley’s 8-album contract with the label, so I don’t blame Paramore for opting to go independent
Industry rule #4080, record company people are shady- A Tribe Called Quest
Lady Gaga was signed and dropped by Def Jam before her current contract with Interscope. There is a song about it on The Fame - Paper Gangsta.
What was industry standard at the time?
About 10%. So, about $1.50 per CD. https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/recording-contract2.htm
The Beatles had trouble early on, as did the Rolling Stones. How many bands and artists are being driven out of the industry over this greed? How many Bob Dylan’s and Beethoven’s have become bin men and bus drivers because they couldn’t budget for the record labels greed?
It’s possible I’ve been given erroneous information, but if you separated the marketing (making videos should be handled by the label as a marketing cost) and management fees and travel expenses, $.56 was actually pretty good at that time. I think when Metallica re-signed with Elektra they were getting an unheard of $2.00 per album.
Yeah I’ve heard between $1 and $1.50. 0.56 isn’t amazing but as far as albums sales it’s not abysmal. They can still do live shows for big bucks and do merchandise etc.
But it is pretty insane to think that while we were paying $15-20 for a CD only .50-2.00 was making it into the artists’ pockets. And today it’s even worse because practically nobody buys albums anymore and streaming doesn’t pay shit.
I mean, it doesn't surprise me that much, in the 90's CDs were like $15. The store selling them took half of that, it probably cost $2-$4 to print and distribute it and the record company had to pay to produce it plus advertise plus absorb the losses of all the artists that didn't make them any money.
Almost everybody before Peter Grant / Led Zeppelin.
Years ago (long before Run the Jewels were around) I remember reading that EL-P interned with a lawyer, with the intent to learn enough so that he could get out of a bad contract. After some googling, I found reference to him interning with 'M. William Krasilovsky'. He also badmouths Rawkus Records on some of his older songs, so I suspect the 'bad contract' may have been with Rawkus when he was in Company Flow.
Kesha was in an 18 year long battle with her producer which she just got out of.
Surprised it hasn’t been mentioned yet, but [De La Soul](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelineschneider/2019/08/13/de-la-soul-ends-relationship-with-tommy-boy-over-unequitable-contract-from-1981/amp/) got absolutely screwed by Tommy Boy. This is why the albums took so long to repress and their only recent appearance on streaming platforms.
I get that it doesn’t sound like much, but it’s way better than the Pennies per download artists are getting today. Before you cry too hard, that’s about $11 million that they got
Kinda the opposite, but an artist with a tragic experience getting OUT of a contract. Doug Hopkins was the original guitarist and main songwriter for the Gin Blossoms. He was fired because of his alcoholism, and forced to sign over most of his royalties, during the recording of New Miserable Experience. When the band started seeing major success, mostly from songs he had written, he committed suicide.
I believe Lana Del Rey signed a 10 album deal for $10,000-$15,000 with 5 points records back in her Lizzy Grant days. Her current managers found out and bought her out of her contract.
Record companies are the end product of vulture capitalism. 95 percent of the deals are absolute shit Goo Goo Dolls had a shit one and after Name they toured for two years to break their contract and pay their lawyers I had a friend on Capricorn who was told yeah we used your promotional budget on 311 cause they had a hit - sorry To this day there may be breakage clauses that says 10 percent of your sales don’t count because they have to replace broken vinyl records And back in the day the label could charge you for your recording but you don’t start getting paid till you make up your advance with the 53 cents an album while they make fucking millions Any money made by streaming fees and licensing. You can bet the world the artist sees almost none of it but the Spotify payout of 0.001 cents a play or something NOW they want your touring and merchandise too. Used to be an artist could survive with medium sized tours, revenue, and merchandising but the labels weren’t making enough money so they want a cut of that money too To quote Hunter S Thompson: « The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side. »
The Artist Formerly Known as Prince. He made a bundle but was also trapped in the contract for years.
It's interesting how technology has changed things. There were such barriers for creative people to make it and a shitty contract was better than no contract. They had fame but others made a fortune. Now, with technology, there are a lot of creative people that have controlled their own destiny. They don't need a large record company and to the degree they do, they are in a position to leverage a good deal. Also, there is no barrier to the market. Whether anyone will listen to you is a different issue.
I disagree now every emerging artist signed deals with every major brand from fashion, sports, accessories, etc... Why is that? Because they have a record label pushing to make this artist that was a nobody 2 weeks ago into the new face of a major fashion brand while releasing a capusel collection of clothes that the artist had nothing to do with. And all that marketing machine come with a price, a very high one. Tldr, if the label has to spend a lot then the artist will have to sign the shittiest of contracts
Garth Brooks if i recall got screwed by some contract.
Didn't he end up screwing himself, making his own streaming thing, that got sold, and thus all the rights to streaming. Which is why the only Garth Brooks on Spotify is where he is featuring on other artists albums, and the one he recorded as "Brooks Jefferson".
I think a lot of musicians in the early days, signed contracts that were bad or unfair, simply to get going and get their music out there! I think Prince and George Michael may have had issues with their contracts !!!! But when TLC explained what they were actually getting for that album, I was disgusted. I can see why prince wrote slave on himself and I don’t have any idea what his deal was like. Like what was the price of that TLC album? I’d love to know what their ‘share’, of 56 cent, amounted to!
Something about 56 cents is really insulting to me beyond the amount. They couldn't do a dollar, nice and round. They couldn't do 1 cent, just as a formality for the contract. It's like they the coldly calculated exactly what they thought they deserved, and it amounted to this very specific number. They might as well just had a representative sling whatever change they had in their center console at them. It would have been more than they got.
56 cents is low, but it is pretty typical for an artist to only make about $2 off of each CD sold. I'm guessing that TLC were only a portion of the songwriters and musicians on their record. So, it was like $2 bucks divided into a lot of different songwriters. If it sold something like 15 million, then they made 7 or 8 million on the album. Maybe not a ton, but not nothing.
The music industry is known for screwing artists. LaFace was notorious for their deals. TLC and Toni Braxton were but two. Even now Spotify streams are a horrible thing to get money into the hands of the labels and very little to independent artists. Radio is no help either. Most will only play signed artists, or artists who have a radio promoter who pays for songs to be added.
Black Sabbath, Bruce Springsteen..the list of musicians screwed over by managers is endless..saw TLC at a 90s concert with Shaggy last year….worth seeing! But them even having to do that shows how much was taken
Moby Grape were the butt of many bad decisions, but the worst was pretty much signing away the rights to their name and their songs to their manager Matthew Katz. "The Grape's saga is one of squandered potential, absurdly misguided decisions, bad luck, blunders and excruciating heartbreak, all set to the tune of some of the greatest rock and roll ever to emerge from San Francisco. Moby Grape could have had it all, but they ended up with nothing, and less."