The Seeker of Good Songs
Well-Known Member
"$0.02" or "$0.10"
I was reading in the Cocteau Twins forum today, and this question was asked.
Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins had a reply:
"With our deal with 4AD I recieve $.02 per track downloaded.
Do the math. I'm not getting rich anytime soon.
I happened to mention this fact on my weblog, maybe last year, and asked if someone in the music industry could possibly explain why this is so and I was answered by Mr Martin Mills, owner of 4AD who took this opportunity to remind me of the massive overheads involved and other such 'facts'. The dialog can be found in my weblog archives and makes entertaining reading, if nothing else. The whole issue regarding the exploitation of CT material is rather depressing and somewhat immoral.
Please forgive me for living my life in the present and not always looking back to those 'good times'.
Speaking for myself, as I don't know the arrangments of Elizabeth or Simon, the best thing that you can do these days in order to make sure that some of the money you spend actually goes to the artist, is to simply download some of the post CT work which is readily available on iTunes and many other download services."
Quote:
August 08, 2006
Downloads....
For anyone who is interested, my albums Imperial and Continental have just become available at the iTunes store. The exclusive EP Waiting for Dawn is also there and Everlasting will be available shortly. So instead of hitting purchase for some old Cocteau Twins track where I will earn $0.02 of the $0.99 that you are charged per download please humour me and hit purchase on one of my tracks so that I can earn $0.50 of the $0.99 that you are charged per download.
It would appear that most of you folks imagine us artists as getting a fair royalty with digital downloads but actually the opposite is true. Old record contracts are adhered to vigorously and we, the starving artists, get f***ed even more. If the there is someone from 4AD or any other f***ing record company that would like to reply to this and explain to me the morality of paying the artist 2 cents per track then I, and I'm sure a lot of other people, would be interested in what you have to say. Don't you just love this business? I'm getting close to where Henry Miller must have been when he published his open letter to the public asking for donations of paper and typewriter ribbon. Well, at least it feels that way when I have to shamelessly promote myself like this in order to guilt trip one of you slackers into downloading an album or two.... OK, what if I say please?, um OK what ever. - Robin Guthrie
Quote:
i'll answer this, robin firstly, 4ad does not pay you 2 cents per track, it pays you 10 cents
that's more than our contract stipulates, because we didn't think it was fair to apply territorial or packaging deductions in the digital space
and the difference between our 10 cents and your 50 ? well we made the original financial investment in your cocteau's music, whereas you're making it in what you're doing now
for that we have the right to a return - ok, we're making money, but we lose money on many other great artists, and the nature of a label is that you have to make money on some to allow you to stay doing what you're doing whilst losing money on others - as you will know from bella union
of course in the download price there's also i-tunes margin
we're also doing all the work and paying all the expense on the cocteau's tracks that you're dealing with on yours - handling all the metadata, digitising, delivering, paying mechanical royalties, all that back room stuff
so yes you make more on your own, and so you should.....bet your capitol and universal tracks don't make you 10 cents a time
martin mills
4ad
Quote:
Well Martin, it is possible that there is some miscommunication between yourself and your royalty dept but I think on closer examination you will find that CT receives 6 cents per download of which my share is of course 2 cents. Not much really, is it? You make a fine point about initial investments and the like, after all you did pay the 900 pounds for the recording of garlands but it's very difficult for me to imagine that you haven't made that back plus perhaps just a little profit in the last 25 years. Yes, as you said you have a right to a return, I wouldn't deny you that and I am, of course, grateful to be in the position that I'm in now as it is due, in part, to your support of CT over the years. But that is neither the point not the issue here. The issue is that you are making a disproportionate amount of money from downloads. A dollar is quite simply a dollar and if the subject was approached with any sense of ethics or morality then the artist share would be somewhat higher than it is at the moment. We are talking about catalogue items here, music which has been turning you a healthy profit for many, many years. There is no new investment, no packaging, no marketing, merely a cynical way to expand your profits at the expense of the artist. With the advent of the necessary technology to make digital distribution a reality should come a reappraisal of how the system works. I presume that on our original contract you are still deducting 10% for breakages during manufacture and the like, something that was out dated in contracts even in 1981 when it was signed - well I can't remember any Cocteau Twins records released as 78 rpm's anyway....
Well that's you're thing and I guess you don't lose much sleep over it but from my viewpoint, somewhere I like to call the moral high ground, I think it's a little seedy and more than a little greedy. What you may have lost contact with, existing in the elevated stratosphere of being a big music industry tycoon, is that these things affect peoples lives and their ability to continue producing the art which, not only makes you cash, but can also touch the audience in such a way that the world becomes a more beautiful place. I am blessed for I know how that feels. I guess you don't. I suppose it may be easy to forget if you have your head in spreadsheet all day but if you look deep inside yourself you may remember a certain enthusiasm for more than just exploiting young bands. A passion for music perhaps. You're in a powerful position, you could actually use that power for some good, don't you know. You don't have to be magnanimous, only just. Sure there will always be willing victims lining up waiting for their chance of fame and success, so I doubt that my words will have any impact on you, I don't expect you to become a charity for f***s sake, but I would expect you to remember that the bands that you exploit and the music that they created are the people who put you where you are today.
Excuse me if that sounded a bit harsh but, well you know, knowing that a huge body of my work and a huge chunk of my life benefits neither myself, Liz or Simon and in the future will not benefit our children is, well how can I put it, f***ed.
Thanks..
For our next discussion Mr Mills and myself will discuss the merits of selling Cocteau Twins records as Mid-Price releases thus avoiding paying any substantial royalties whatsoever.
Posted by: robin guthrie at October 5, 2006
originally at: http://www.cocteautwinsforums.com/showthread.php?t=18770
I was reading in the Cocteau Twins forum today, and this question was asked.
Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins had a reply:
"With our deal with 4AD I recieve $.02 per track downloaded.
Do the math. I'm not getting rich anytime soon.
I happened to mention this fact on my weblog, maybe last year, and asked if someone in the music industry could possibly explain why this is so and I was answered by Mr Martin Mills, owner of 4AD who took this opportunity to remind me of the massive overheads involved and other such 'facts'. The dialog can be found in my weblog archives and makes entertaining reading, if nothing else. The whole issue regarding the exploitation of CT material is rather depressing and somewhat immoral.
Please forgive me for living my life in the present and not always looking back to those 'good times'.
Speaking for myself, as I don't know the arrangments of Elizabeth or Simon, the best thing that you can do these days in order to make sure that some of the money you spend actually goes to the artist, is to simply download some of the post CT work which is readily available on iTunes and many other download services."
Quote:
August 08, 2006
Downloads....
For anyone who is interested, my albums Imperial and Continental have just become available at the iTunes store. The exclusive EP Waiting for Dawn is also there and Everlasting will be available shortly. So instead of hitting purchase for some old Cocteau Twins track where I will earn $0.02 of the $0.99 that you are charged per download please humour me and hit purchase on one of my tracks so that I can earn $0.50 of the $0.99 that you are charged per download.
It would appear that most of you folks imagine us artists as getting a fair royalty with digital downloads but actually the opposite is true. Old record contracts are adhered to vigorously and we, the starving artists, get f***ed even more. If the there is someone from 4AD or any other f***ing record company that would like to reply to this and explain to me the morality of paying the artist 2 cents per track then I, and I'm sure a lot of other people, would be interested in what you have to say. Don't you just love this business? I'm getting close to where Henry Miller must have been when he published his open letter to the public asking for donations of paper and typewriter ribbon. Well, at least it feels that way when I have to shamelessly promote myself like this in order to guilt trip one of you slackers into downloading an album or two.... OK, what if I say please?, um OK what ever. - Robin Guthrie
Quote:
i'll answer this, robin firstly, 4ad does not pay you 2 cents per track, it pays you 10 cents
that's more than our contract stipulates, because we didn't think it was fair to apply territorial or packaging deductions in the digital space
and the difference between our 10 cents and your 50 ? well we made the original financial investment in your cocteau's music, whereas you're making it in what you're doing now
for that we have the right to a return - ok, we're making money, but we lose money on many other great artists, and the nature of a label is that you have to make money on some to allow you to stay doing what you're doing whilst losing money on others - as you will know from bella union
of course in the download price there's also i-tunes margin
we're also doing all the work and paying all the expense on the cocteau's tracks that you're dealing with on yours - handling all the metadata, digitising, delivering, paying mechanical royalties, all that back room stuff
so yes you make more on your own, and so you should.....bet your capitol and universal tracks don't make you 10 cents a time
martin mills
4ad
Quote:
Well Martin, it is possible that there is some miscommunication between yourself and your royalty dept but I think on closer examination you will find that CT receives 6 cents per download of which my share is of course 2 cents. Not much really, is it? You make a fine point about initial investments and the like, after all you did pay the 900 pounds for the recording of garlands but it's very difficult for me to imagine that you haven't made that back plus perhaps just a little profit in the last 25 years. Yes, as you said you have a right to a return, I wouldn't deny you that and I am, of course, grateful to be in the position that I'm in now as it is due, in part, to your support of CT over the years. But that is neither the point not the issue here. The issue is that you are making a disproportionate amount of money from downloads. A dollar is quite simply a dollar and if the subject was approached with any sense of ethics or morality then the artist share would be somewhat higher than it is at the moment. We are talking about catalogue items here, music which has been turning you a healthy profit for many, many years. There is no new investment, no packaging, no marketing, merely a cynical way to expand your profits at the expense of the artist. With the advent of the necessary technology to make digital distribution a reality should come a reappraisal of how the system works. I presume that on our original contract you are still deducting 10% for breakages during manufacture and the like, something that was out dated in contracts even in 1981 when it was signed - well I can't remember any Cocteau Twins records released as 78 rpm's anyway....
Well that's you're thing and I guess you don't lose much sleep over it but from my viewpoint, somewhere I like to call the moral high ground, I think it's a little seedy and more than a little greedy. What you may have lost contact with, existing in the elevated stratosphere of being a big music industry tycoon, is that these things affect peoples lives and their ability to continue producing the art which, not only makes you cash, but can also touch the audience in such a way that the world becomes a more beautiful place. I am blessed for I know how that feels. I guess you don't. I suppose it may be easy to forget if you have your head in spreadsheet all day but if you look deep inside yourself you may remember a certain enthusiasm for more than just exploiting young bands. A passion for music perhaps. You're in a powerful position, you could actually use that power for some good, don't you know. You don't have to be magnanimous, only just. Sure there will always be willing victims lining up waiting for their chance of fame and success, so I doubt that my words will have any impact on you, I don't expect you to become a charity for f***s sake, but I would expect you to remember that the bands that you exploit and the music that they created are the people who put you where you are today.
Excuse me if that sounded a bit harsh but, well you know, knowing that a huge body of my work and a huge chunk of my life benefits neither myself, Liz or Simon and in the future will not benefit our children is, well how can I put it, f***ed.
Thanks..
For our next discussion Mr Mills and myself will discuss the merits of selling Cocteau Twins records as Mid-Price releases thus avoiding paying any substantial royalties whatsoever.
Posted by: robin guthrie at October 5, 2006
originally at: http://www.cocteautwinsforums.com/showthread.php?t=18770
