(TV) Arista/Clive Davis (was Re: Kral comments)

[Joe Hartley <jh@brainiac.com>]

"Michael Carlucci" <michael@recordsnyc.com> wrote:
> Patti herself has never seen a dime from Arista, so how in the
> heck is she suppose to give Ivan some.

Hmmm, a week or so back there was speculation about what Patti would
do now that Clive Davis has been pushed out of Arista (proving again
that record labels are the leeches upon artistry), since she's been
a vocal supporter of Clive's.

So she's got this loyalty to Clive, though she's never seen a dime
from his company?  Interesting.  While it may not be Davis's fault,
this situation isn't right.  Wouldn't she see money from sales of
records in the time where she wasn't recording?

It's probable that it all got sucked back into the machine that
screws both artists and consumers.  This is all going to be different
soon.  It's easier than ever for a band to record decent stuff on
a $1000 computer, making expensive studio time less important.  It's
easier than ever to get that music out to the end user once they know
it's there.  The hard part is still going to be getting the potential
customer to hear about the band in the first place.  Labels are becoming
even less relevant now than they used to be in that regard as well, since
they do a piss-poor job of promoting bands that aren't already major
acts.  Once every 5 years or so you get a fluke like Nirvana which gets
huge despite the lack of effort by a label, which then turns around and
pays attention BECAUSE they got huge.

I want Patti to get my buck for buying Gung Ho or Easter or Horses;
I want Tom and Richard and the boys to get my three bucks for buying all
three of their albums, but it often goes against chargebacks to the band
for insane things.

Robert Fripp has the right idea, I think.  He's got his own label and
distributing company that does not take the rights to the music away
from the artist, and is trying new approaches to distributing music.
Right now, that's priomarily mail order, but they've been experimenting
with alternative methods.  They made available a net-only live show which
was relatively easily burned to a CD, and the new King Crimson album is
available as a pre-release in a mono, lo-fi format (56K RealAudio stream)
so those folks who are that into it can get something without resorting to
Napster distribution of promo copies.  (I also burned this to disk thanks
to TotalRecorder, a $12 program that writes a WAV file on the fly of
whatever the soundcard is playing.  It's great for capturing streaming
audio!  http://www.highcriteria.com/ )

So the hell with getting the shaft from Arista; forget catching Mercury
Poisoning; no more getting screwed by a Virgin.  The rules are changing,
and the labels are going to get caught short because they're trying to
fight the tide with lawyers rather than learning how to adapt.

It'll still be a crap shoot for a band to rise above the thousands of
other bands competing for the listener's attention, but they won't owe
a Porsche-driving, Perrier-swilling asshole hundreds of thousands of
dollars if (when) they fail to be the next big thing.


======================================================================
       Joe Hartley - UNIX/network Consultant - jh@brainiac.com
     12 Emma G Lane, Narragansett, RI  02882 - vox 401.782.9042
Without deviation from the norm, "progress" is not possible. - FZappa

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