Not rich, but maybe famous

Since I have a fair amount of music experience, I often get asked why I've never got a record produced, or a contract signed or something silly like that. The truth is, the music industry is in ruines. Not for the record companies, but certainly for the artists.

The problem is, the way record deals are made these days, the artist thinks they're getting a good deal, when really it's nothing but trouble. With the recent (insert your favourite country name here) Idol television shows that glamourise the whole music industry and inspire people to get up off their arses and try to make an attempt at singing only to be shot into pieces has made me come up with this story.

Let me explain in brief what a record contract works like.

Say you sign a deal worth a million dollars. What up and coming band wouldn't say yes to that? However, the record company then tells you, it's going to cost $300,000 to produce the album, another $500,000 for the marketing campaign and $200,000 to promote your album on all the radio stations that are going to play it to death.

What we discover is that the millions dollars you got was more of a cash advance to pay for all these things to get done.

Lets say that the costs were higher, which has been known to happen in some cases, and in particular, one case of a recent Australian Idol winner who did the whole thing so he could set himself up and provide for his family. Only to have recently sold his family home because he could no longer afford to make the mortgage repayments. This wasn't due to the global financial crisis. It was due to the fact that production costs, marketing and radio play cost more than what the artist received. And because of that, he owes the record company hundreds of thousands of dollars they spent on him to produce the one album.

Never mind that the record sold millions of copies, went platinum in the CD sales and the record company not only made back what they spent on the artist, but made a profit of over $6 Million just from the sales of CD's. Taking out all the costs, if you want to call it that.... I'm not sure how billing yourself is a cost... they ended up making just over $3.3 Million dollars. On an investment of $1 Million to the artist, which he never saw a cent of because it wasn't a paycheck. It was a cash advance to pay for the production of the album.

He know works a regular job, trying to pay off a loan to the record company and is also trying to feed and clothe his wife and child.

I'd rather be famous, you can keep your riches to yourself.