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by glenntzke
4636 days ago
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This is the direction in which I was immediately thinking. As a software dev by day and musician by night/weekend/days off with experience living, working, and playing in several major east coast US cities I can say that the musician's job has gotten significantly more difficult as the physical medium dies. Record companies used to provide a lot of money up front for prospective bands - this created much of the rock star persona the world came to love. Now, unless you simply luck out on connection or blatantly craft your music as a sale, it's prohibitively expensive to practice, play, and tour without living in squalor. Without the capital from record companies willing to take a risk, the returns on personal (band) investment in their own recordings are dim. |
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If they were really lucky/good/smart, they weren't in debt to the label when it came time to negotiate a new contract. Then they could hire a decent contract lawyer and get something more than 2 cents an album (before paying back that advance), build their own studio, etc.
Most of those "rock star persona"s have stories of what their lives were like before they signed those contracts. Some of them have some pretty interesting stories of what their lives were like after they signed them, too. Very few of them would believe that major record labels were taking a lot of risks with their money.
If the money has dried up at all, it's simply because the industry has become less predictable/more fragmented. Minor labels have become bigger than ever, and the majors are letting them take the risks (or leverage market expertise to gain a profit where the majors could not).
On the up-side, the costs of making a decent demo (or even album) and distributing it to an international audience are lower than ever, making it much easier for bands to do all of the things rock bands always had to do if they wanted a label rep to show up with a contract and an advance.