quote:
Originally posted by mattisdada
I was reading an article a while ago (it might be wrong, this was in a magizine btw), they said that for every $25 cd sold, the ARTIST makes $16.
Although it always depends on extremely many things, and you should take in account "reduction of royalties", that rate would be very wrong (even if you don't take reduction of royalties in account). A more realistic rate would be $1 for the artist* out of $17 for the retail price of a CD. And then there is also something like "recoupment" which makes that bands wont even get that $1 before they first sell a certain amount (in the hundreds of thousands usually) of CDs...
* And that $1 is based upon the full royalty rate for when the CD is sold at full price in a retail store. If the CD is discounted (in that same retail store) or sold in clubs, smaller stores, or oversees, or whatever, you even get a far lower royalty rate (quite often 50% less). And most CDs do not sell at retail stores at all.
And before you say: "well then, lets all download some music more since most of the CD retail price goes to the record companies":
- Even that $1 (if that is even what they get) is hard earned money for the artist and he needs it to be able to make his living (which is always hard! Most artists never go in retirement because they simply can not effort it!!! They must keep working to earn a living).
- Many artists need record companies. So even if you would think you would kill off the record company by not buying CDs anymore, you would also bring down the artists with it, because its the record companies who make sure the artist sells, who watch for copyright, who make promotion, buy radio time, who make sure the artist has an audience, is known, etc etc.
- There are artists who make their CDs independant of a record company. They recieve more for each CD sold, obviously. So if you don't buy their CDs, but steal their music instead, you would actually kill them even faster...
Again, I'm talking about the majority of all artists. Not about the extremely rare mega artists, single success wonders who have 5 houses, their own record company and be able to buy an island or whatever, which many people like to use as an example of how "rich" artists are.
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