Prog royalties - think they got rich?

silverpot wrote: Money is certainly a big driving force but I think that these old artists also are rather proud of their work and have a need for recognition. The audiences are beginning to forget their legacy, so what better thing to do than tour to remind them.  Roger Waters doesn't need the money but he's been putting up his monster show for more than two years now. He wants the applause methinks.

              "Time is the road to nowhere, no Sign, no Light to guide me,

                       "Who could describe my anger, when i was sacked last Friday"

It's hard to fathom - many fairly minor musicians sometimes seem to make a lot of money from music, others you would assume were millionaires are bankrupt or living very poorly. Perhaps it depends on who your manager is?

DiamondDog wrote: It's hard to fathom - many fairly minor musicians sometimes seem to make a lot of money from music, others you would assume were millionaires are bankrupt or living very poorly. Perhaps it depends on who your manager is?

Musician's talent is music. Manager's talent is business. No contest.

OuttaMyndXMetalLLC wrote: This is why many musicians today have began to sale their projects directly from their own sites. Many of them also forming their own labels to avoid the proverbial greedy 'middle-man'. Many musicians have now began legal action to have their publishing returned to them and some of this legal action has been tied up in courts throughout the world for many years now.   I have a terrible pet peeve when I see all these multiple so-called Greatest hits and 'Best of' compilations saturating the market knowing that money will never get in the pockets or bank accounts of our musical heroes and refuse to purchase those albums. I mean seriously I have it already, what are they as a label trying to do sale me more liner notes and a few more photos with the music. Just saying.

I guess that you don't understand the meaning of the word "MARKETING". That's what the big labels do for their artists. An enormous amount of money goes into promotion, money that the artists don't have themselves.
A good example is Dark Side of the Moon. The marketing campaigne was massive to try to break Pink Floyd in the States. Without the efforts from their label and all the money they risked, the album wouldn't have been the outstanding success it became. And the members of the band got very rich indeed.

I work in the book business and it's the same thing there. A big publisher is always a wet dream for any writer since they're the ones who can afford to promote the books.

It's naive and childish to think that an artist can make it completely on his/her own. They need somebody elses money to make money.

Todays problems for artists that aren't mainstream is rather the reverse, no label is willing to risk their capital to promote an obscure musical style. Contrary to the situation in the 60s and 70s when they had very much patience with the pioneers of progressive rock. It did eventually pay off and they got their money back, with interest. As it should be. If you make an investment, you expect it to be lucrative, in most cases.

I'm fed up with all this nonsense about record companies making money and their "poor" artists gets none of it.  


Edited by silverpot - September 28 2012 at 14:28

Well, the truth is probably somewhere in between silverpot and Outtamind's views.   We are probably never going to see a repeat of a DSOTM-like phenomenon again unless labels take risks again.  Bands claim - perhaps rightly - that they didn't make money in the 70s and they don't do so now either so they would rather promote the music themselves and eke out a cottage industry-like survival than only make the music that labels want.  

The point about risk taking here is important.   Labels didn't make money off all the bands back then either, and especially so in the case of progressive rock.   It appears as if there may have been less financial ambition and, curiously, more appetite for adventure at that time which changed with the 80s.   Once the labels decided that they, and not the artists, knew what the people wanted to hear, they basically wrote the epitaph for the music industry.  So today, you have an industry that largely promotes a very generic and cliched brand of pop music and jostles for space with reality TV while on the other hand is a veritable sea of anonymous artists who may make good music but might never get the high profile coverage that they could have in the 70s.   Is this situation sustainable and for how long?  I don't really know.  As of now, it seems to benefit big bands who got swept aside in the 80s but still retained a sizable number of loyal followers to tour and subsist.  I am not sure how much it really helps new bands at all.     

Lots of skint musos out there

I read a recent comment by Keith Emerson that he "is not a rich man". He also said he doesn't "know how Greg (Lake) manages". I thought ELP were Superstars, with massive following and record sales. Did they squander their individual wealth, or didn't they make as much as we thought they did in the first place? 

Not sure if it's already been mentioned, but Pink Floyd didn't make it rich until 1973, then they lost it all thanks to dodgy investments, and had to avoid a gigantic tax bill for money they no longer had by recording an enormous double concept album abroad, them turning it into a mega-huge live show (in which Rick Wright was the only one who didn't lose money, as he was on a wage by then), and then a film.  Making money can often lead to losing money.  When Roger Waters wrote "Money" he was being sarcastic, little realising the song would make him rich for a few years.