Posts by Simon Grigg
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Re your back catalogue. why were you having problems getting a deal with distribution for it? hell I've even been offered distro deals for my shit and none of them asked for ownership.
No, no problem getting a distro, it's just that I was made an offer. I think they hit Pagan at the same time from memory.
The point is its worth hanging on to back catalogue if you are a major, a few grand here or there is not worth selling it for for a raft of reasons
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They're still in the same game, making money from distributing music. none of them are going to take a loss for an artist, or else they won't be in business long. leave that to the small labels and artists.
No they are not, one is a making money situation as you say, the other is involved in increasing the value of the company, hence Warners share price is more important than the fact the Josh Grogan is number one and the biggest album in the US. They two are often unrelated in a major label. In an indie the current chart has more immediate value, life=cashflow. The value of the major label is it's asset base, not its chart success. Which is why PolyGram / UMG bought Island, A&M and all the other dozens of labels. Even in NZ, when PolyGram offered me a deal of the Propeller back catalogue years ago it had a purchase option. When deleted that the offer was withdrawn.
I've not seen Swervedriver's contract but I could fill pages with the names of acts who have unsuccessfully tried to gte their masters from majors. The asset is the ownership regardless of success. The major is much better off NOT selling it and maintaining and extending their catalogue. There were a couple of bands from the 80s who tried to get their masters back from Universal last year in the US. Never issued on CD, and never sold, but got a resounding no.
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As we speak, Bill Gates' minions are winging their way to Bali to give you a right kicking. Save yourself and point the finger at Shepherd.
yep the BSA has hell of a pull in Bali, or anywhere in SEA to be sure.
Survey last year said that 87% of software in government PCs in Indonesia is pirated......I was surprised it was that low. You can't even buy the real stuff here if you want to.
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Richard Ram
Richard was the great provider for quite a few of us. He used to come over to my High Street office in the early 90s and sit over coffee explaining the future. He installed my first modem (9600kbs) on my recently upgraded 486 which allowed me to tap into the newsgroups via an Auckland University line. And then came Mosaic.
It was Richard too that arranged for Flying Nun and us to jointly source and pay for an edition of Office, which we installed in both offices. The only downside was having to say "This is Mr. Shepherd" when ringing for support.
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ownership of masters all depends on who paid for the recording. you don't sign that away in a deal if you paid for them, you sign for exclusive use to exploit them for a specified time period, usually 6 years. you never lose ownership of the recordings (unless you're incredibly stupid), just the right to exploit them for a time period.
like I said Rob, you need to rewrite a lot of established fundamentals then (and find a company who is willing to do that). You seem to be edging ever closer to Radiohead's position, who incidentally, with all their power were unable to achieve the relationship with EMI that you describe as the optimum.
One of the raison'record for majors is catalogue acquisition..it's a key fundamental and the reason Universal and EMI are so powerful. I'm not sure how they'd take your suggestion that they walk away from that.
And if you don't think there is a difference between XL, Domino and Sony?? Seriously?
NZ: there is a reason they are artist funded..I don't see why any multinational in their right corporate mind would invest in most NZ acts...seriously. You could probably count one hand the number of NZ acts that have broken even signed directly to a major in the past decade. It's only the passions of certain people at said companies in NZ that has led to that investment in the past. Oh, and the fact that funding was also available from a third party.
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Rob, if you think a major is gonna sign an international deal with an act that doesn't include those things then you are wiping away 100 years of recorded history. What he is saying is that we can justify what we do by doing these things. I say, hire a publicist. Its the same thing, its just that one takes all the return and makes you pay the costs out of your very small share.
Radiohead needed to put CDs in stores, they didn't sign to a label, they did a distribution deal with an indie, XL, to put CDs in stores. That is the whole point of their model, you use people to do what you need and you control the process. I would imagine XL takes a fee for each copy sold, that's it. The EMI deal (and the standard record company deal..the one you say bands seem happy with) says that they pay you a small percentage of the return out of which all costs come, and they own the masters for the duration of copyright (which is 50 years in the UK various parties are trying to extend). Despite everything that is largely what is still on offer globally, just reworded at times.
Using the facilities a label can provide without doing that sort of deal is worthwhile and happily that's the way it has gone in NZ in recent years, primarily because it's a tiny, rather insignificant market and labels simply can't viably sign acts.
The XL deal was another win-win situation.
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So Mr Castle is saying that for the privilege of having a publicist, you should pay over all your income and hand over all master copyrights? Someone should tap him on the shoulder and say the world has moved on.
Trent clearly needs to hire both a manager and a publicist and get back to making rekkids.
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only one?
I can point you to hundreds that would have broken even who haven't in the current climate reputedly healthy or not.I wonder what percentage of acts never saw a cent from the labels system. There was a good thread on the velvet Rope last year about acts that had never recouped and hence not been paid a cent, primarily because they system was stacked to recover all costs from the 5 or so percent due to the act after packaging deductions and every other deduction. Some of the acts on that list were amazing.
The point about the act I mentioned was that he had made one album in NZ for a major and it sold about 2-3000 copies more than the one he released himself. Because of the system he was way off recoupment. Doing it himself (same recording budget more or less) he was in profit. Easy lesson there.
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although I'm not sure of your current experience in it as the whole game has changed in the last 3 years.
reasonably extensive actually as I have several joint venture deals, am consulting on recording contracts in 4 countries and I talk to people all over the world in the recording industry daily..does that count?
Why is it healthy..because vastly more music is being made and consumed than ever before, thanks to technology. We all have access to so much more. The labels system which meant that so few options were available to the consumer is being broken down, and the per sale return to the act is hugely increased. One NZ musician I know recorded his album last year, released it himself via all forms of distribution, and 4000 sales later (it didn't even chart..that's the old system) he is in profit and moving ahead. There are tens of thousands of acts around the world doing the same. It's very very healthy. Labels like Domino in the UK do a 50/50 cost/return split with their acts.
The big labels, as they merged slowly committed suicide as they reduced the amount (ie the music on offer) from themselves proportionally and reduced their relevancy. And their increasing reliance on immediate hits as a result was self defeating. In the current atmosphere a major label would be unlikely to deliver a nutured act like Pink Floyd, or Bob Marley (although he came out of Island, an indie). The majors have lost track of A&R.
Also people have ipods with many thousands of tracks on them (yes many downloaded but since most folk had less than a hundred or so albums in the vinyl / CD era is very hard to argue those are lost sales).
Paul McGuinness..no I'm talking about industry response..commentators, music industry forums and the like. It was fairly dismissive to my eyes.
But as I said Rob, this is going around in circles...I'm happy to leave it.
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gee you really don't like mr McGuinness do you. was it just this speech or have you had a life long loathing for him?
a) it was a joke but I guess there is some substance in the claim that downloading is killing music is the rough equivalent to the claim that Saddam has WMDS. It's hot air to further an end
b) heaven knows where you got the idea that I hate the man. Having read through I said nothing to imply such. Disagreeing with someone (and outside the BPI and you it seems most people do) does not come close to 'loathe' and I would suggest that Paul's comments have slightly more to do with positioning for U2's expiring contract, and the fact that the last U2 collection was a bonafide turkey.and radiohead were obviously not keen to have someone else profit from their brand hence the cease and desist,
ah, no, the C&D didn't come from Radiohead it came from Warner-Chappell who in turn were told by R/H to cease and desist their cease and desisting. Incidently in two recent interviews R/H have said the figure you are quoting is way way off.
This is getting rather pointless, going round and round.