Jim wrote: > RE: runaway from the record biz > > I know that's what she says. I just think it's uh.... incorrect. Let's > break it down. If she wasn't making money, she'd find a way out of her > contract. She's not a victim; she's a survivor. she probably doesn't make any money on her albums. because she works with quality musicians & studio talent and always has rather complex packaging,, it's tough to pay the record company back before sales of about 400,000 (my understanding). now, that's not to say that the record companies don't practice some pretty nasty creative bookkeeping, but the advertising for film & music usually costs more than the production of it. [she still gets those pennies everyday for radio play of records going back 30 years, and she made good choices with early money, which put her in the position of being rich]. > Where I work, we recently contracted a promo CD for a radio station. > The > person in charge of production told me that the printing, cutting, > folding, > and stuffing of the cover cost _more_ than the CD pressing. > > I'm not believing it for a minute. No offense to those accountants and > bookkeepers in the record industry. this is actually true. i've been looking into making VHS dubs for distribution, and this might serve as a good example. the dub will cost approx. $2. 5 cents to put a label on each tape. 5 cents to put each tape in a box or sleeve. i haven't gotten a printing estimate yet, but when we did 4-color small postcards, they cost us 50 cents each - getting both sleeves and labels will be at least 4x as much, plus there's the cost of folding and getting the artwork done. these costs decrease with volume, but they're still relevant to each other. we expect it will cost $4.50-5.50 for each tape all said & done, $2 of which will be the tape itself. and we can make about 80 tapes for the cost of running one 1/4 page b&w ad in a college newspaper. i make mixes as gifts every year, and i've been making double CDs. i made about 60 this year (120 discs in 60 boxes). these are my approximate costs (and i just hand labeled the CDs with markers - didn't print on discs or make disc labels)... $95 - raw CDs $110 - ink $60 - paper $75 - jewel boxes.........ie, just about $5.65 each for materials, 1.60 of which is the CDs themselves. and labor-wise, it takes 25 minutes to burn each CD set, but only 1 minute of that is active labor; while it takes at least 8 minutes of active labor to cut & fold the jacket & insert, label the CDs, and put everything in the case. in a major label situation you'd have these costs be significantly smaller because of volume. if you add the production costs to both of these things, chances are that the studio production, mixing & mastering cost a lot more than the design of the artwork. i would imagine that joni's production costs are in the $200-300,000 range, and design around $40-50,000. but even so, when you distribute those costs per unit, you still end up with packaging higher when you're doing volume. the killer is advertising & publicity - warner's got to have spent at least $1M each on the last few albums. BTW, the way timmins can buy a farm - record label advances (which rarely get made back enough to get any money after the first payment), and royalties for airplay, licensing & covers. licensing is a great way for musicians to make money. ani difranco can get paid $60,000 for the use of a song in a movie. i think that's what's kept jane siberry alive. i think it costs something like $300,000 to use a clip from a beatles song. for TV ads, those licensing fees go up exponentially. i'd also like to add that this is by no means giving record companies an excuse for their outrageous behavoir. they've set it up so they make big profits, not the artists, and far too many artists have been ripped off by the system. barbara np: joy askew, the same desperado PS. about to undergo an address change, replying to me may not work.
