Later, if the information is available without making too much effort, I want to know who paid to do what draft of the script, what pre-buys were made, if the remake rights were sold, how many points the star got etc.
As do I. In movies it's interesting to see the financial side because money is so critical in which movies get made. Looking at the weekend grosses I can probably predict (as anyone can) what's going to come out next summer. The sums of money are staggering, and how Hollywood is financed is endlessly entertaining because you get to watch clowns and eccentrics, idiots and whores, run a major business enterprise. A film is an investment of a hundred million dollars or more (for a mainstream feature) so reading up on the finer points is helpful in knowing how the system works and what to expect in the future.
The music industry is different, however. Except in the most extreme cases, most albums are not anywhere near the financial investment a film is. It is like the movie industry, but much, much smaller in scale, and with fewer factors coming into play. To make an album you need a producer, a band, a studio, and a way to distribute the music. That's a lot, but it's not nearly as much as the cast, crew and distribution needed for a movie. Even the most shoestring-budgeted movie is much more elaborate than, say, the way the Buzzcocks recorded "Spiral Scratch"-- a classic EP as good as anything ever released by a major label.
Morrissey can make music without all the hassle if he wants. He chooses not to because he feels like he's a star and should be pampered like one. I don't mind; he's earned the right to feel that way. More power to him. But talking royalties, lawsuits, etc. is quite different because, at the end of the day, it doesn't have to unfold like that. He can choose a different way and he doesn't.
But back to the comparisons to movies: Woody Allen, who has a movie coming out today, is another legend who pretty much has a built-in audience that won't grow much (it may shrink, because his audience is comprised largely of older people). Instead of fighting that, he has gone to Europe for financing. His work doesn't cost a lot of money to shoot, which is by his design, and he has had to compromise only slightly by writing features that will play in Europe (his British films, and now Barcelona). His movies are going to make a certain amount of money and then vanish to DVD. The glory days of the late Seventies and Eighties are gone. But so what? He's made some good movies, and one of them, "Match Point", was a moderate hit. He may go on making these smaller movies just as he has done for ten or fifteen years. The point is that Woody Allen has had to change to reflect the realities of his business model, but with him it's still about art: writing scripts, making movies, adding to his legacy.
If he can do that in the film industry, Morrissey can do the same in the music business. Would anyone honestly care about record labels, contracts, and royalty streams, or about how high his profile is in the mainstream culture, if Morrissey were releasing one good album and a few singles each and every year, like clockwork? I'd be thrilled.