This is also why I don't tend to feel bad for the winners of American Idol that sign their career away to Simon Cowell. There are 100,000 people lined up to take their place, but there are only a few people who have the influence/experience/skill to successfully market a recording artist; therefore, why shouldn't the person marketing them get more of the profit.But more generally, the problem that artists have is not the recording industry. The main problem musicians face is other musicians. There are too many of them.
Pardon me while I make a simplistic, Economics 101 argument here, but it seems to me that the reason almost no musician ever makes much money is that there is a huge excess supply of people who want other people to listen to them sing or play an instrument. When all the primates are vying to get up on stage to impress the other primates, there's little reason to pay the primates much. Get rid of the recording industry and there will still be a huge oversupply of people trying to occupy a limited space on stage, the radio, or your iPod. The market power currently enjoyed by the recording industry will instead pass to the owners of those scarce resources.
As we learned from David Ricardo: bargaining strength comes from scarcity.
(Source: Free Exchange)
3 comments:
I don't feel bad for these bands and singers but for slightly different reasons than mr. arjona. Sure they don't make much money off their cd's, but they make almost all the money when they go on tour. Singing for an audience is how most bands and individual singers make most of their money. Celion Dion, for example, is getting a 100 million dollars for singing at Ceaser's in Las Vegas over 5 years. When a singer goes on tour or actually performs, they are doing most of the work. However, when they come out with a cd, it is the promoter and recording studio that is really putting in the money and hours.
Being an artist you must also be able to be a business person. You must know how to get to the top by not just leaving all of your gigs up to the people who sign you. If there is ever a conflict, you switch to a different company and dislike it, or even you feel like going solo to be able to keep the money for yourself, you must be able to know how to manage yourself. Also knowing how to manage yourself, you are then able to tell when you are being manipulated or used by your company because that is also very common in the music industry. Even though I do agree with the point made above: "When a singer goes on tour or actually performs, they are doing most of the work. However, when they come out with a cd, it is the promoter and recording studio that is really putting in the money and hours. " It is all in how you look at the industry.
-Danielle
that comment on april 10th at 2:47 was by me jacob hormes
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