News from Nick Barrett (Pendragon)

I admit to having done some things related to album leaks I'm not proud of, but since I don't have much of an income and mu lust for discovering new music is insatiable, I think my situation is understandable. I have bought every Pendie's album I have, I believe, even Acoustically Challenged. I do wish circumstances would have been in my favor when getting The Masquerade Overture, so I could magically have the new issue with the bonus older material!

Edited by stonebeard - May 15 2007 at 20:44

We have no choicw, we have to support our prog bands. BUY every album, go to every show, go ahead get a shirt.

If I see an album by them, I'd get it. They seem like an interesting band and I've been meaning to check them out. No, I have not downloaded any of their cds.

darqdean wrote: I really hope that the next Pendragon CD won't be the last.   I do not doubt Nick's figures, but the 300 people who downloaded the 10 album package would never in a million years have gone out and bought all 10 CD's, some of them might, but not all. It is impossible to calculate the actual loss incured because it is impossible to predict how many of those 300 people would have even bought 1 CD, but it would not have been all 300. However, it would have been some, so Toff Records,Pendragon and Nick have definitely lost out.   The sorry fact is that the majority of non-mainstream bands do not make money and only few of them are lucky enough to be able to do the job full-time. The maths of CD sales, royalties and label contracts are readily available on the net and it is so scary and weighted in the record labels favour that you wonder why anyone would even bother trying in the first place. If you are self-financed or unsigned then mechandise is the only way of recovering some of the recording costs, because you won't get them back by CD sales alone.   I don't approve of downloading, or "try before you buy" as it is <SPAN lang=EN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; mso-ansi-: EN">euphemistically called</SPAN>, but if a band has some tracks on MySpace, I'll listen and if I like I'll buy.

Speaking for myself, I did not actively go out and seek the leaked copies of the new Rush and DT--they were offered by a co-worker. It would be hard for anyone NOT to give them a listen.

E

Nick Barrett wrote: yeah....too right, where is the poll , is the heat gettin too much in the kitchen boys? fanks for the other support messages! Luv NB

Bob Greece wrote: Nick Barrett wrote: yeah....too right, where is the poll , is the heat gettin too much in the kitchen boys? fanks for the other support messages! Luv NB   Nick, is that really you?!

I wonder too...check the profile

A quick question in relation to sales of albums (either in CD or Vinyl format).

Geck0 wrote: A quick question in relation to sales of albums (either in CD or Vinyl format).   When someone sells an album on (e.g. on eBay), am I correct in saying that the artist(s) will see none of the money?   Am I correct in saying that artist(s) will only make money from the initial sale of an album, from the distribution company?  Therefore they won't make money when someone sells an album on via eBay (I mean through private vendors)?   How does the system work?  I'm curious.  If Nick or Rachel (or anyone else for that matter), could answer this, I'd be pleased to hear from them.

Geck0 wrote: Unless like me, you have remastered copies of albums and no longer need the originals.

Gee,,...so many questions ! So little time....er where to start [btw. I love it though...you guys are asking and that gets the juices going!!!!!]

Darqdean : Yes of course you are right. However, I made some adjustments to those figures because, if you take 300 people x 10 albums x £10 [approx cd price] that does in fact make £30,000, [not the £15-£25k I reported!] so I already took into account a certain amount of eliminating factors.......also bear in mind this is only one site, even if only 10% of those 300 people did not buy a single cd, across all the download/pirate sites the income lost is fairly huge.
There is a site in Russia that offers our stuff for absolute peanuts , the site claims they pay the artists royalties, utter rubbish, we have never received any royalties whatsoever from one of these sites, DON'T BUY FROM THEM!!

[bear in mind the poll that was deleted here on PA showed that 53% of people who took part said they downloaded as 'anything on the internet was fair game']

All I can tell you is that our back catalogue album sales virtually stopped dead since 2001, [I spoke with Martin from IQ yesterday who agreed they had the same thing] Backcat sales was our lifeblood because in lean times it kept 'the boat afloat', also now a new album will hit its peak sales within 6-8 weeks of release and then almost completely stop dead, Before 2001 the sales would continue to drift reasonably along for approx 18 months and drag more backcatalogue sales along with it.

Bob Greece: Yes it's me mate...can't you tell from my avatar?? Hee hee.. You said "Sadly I don't think that this message will be heard in the mainstream media".

The mainstream media never really got prog and I don't have much time for them either, but it's our little world-o-prog that needs the support, if ALL the people who genuinely liked this music with the depth I think they do, bought the cds, it would be a pretty strong force to contend with, with or without mainstream press, we would survive... hugely!
It's utter b*ll*cks [as some have said on other forums] that the prog scene would become staid if only a few bands could make a living, in the 90's we had more money and were promoting bands and signing others to Toff Records.
We had an imports company Impy Imports that got hold of many rare 'hard to get' cds like Galleon, Aragon etc. The word was spreading....


GeckO; A very interesting point James! Yes you are right....mostly , as occasionally record labels and bands sell their own stuff on ebay, therefore the band get a royalty.
However, one of the most difficult aspects for musicians/label to stomach is that often an individual will buy a new album [at this point the musician gets their royalty] then burn it and sell the original on ebay for half what he paid, figuring that getting back half what he paid is better than nothing, this original CD then travels from pillar to post being burnt , the same cd could be sold 25 times, but earning the musician just 1 royalty payment for 1 cd. This happens!

We are currently looking into ways of making some thing special for people who buy from us, ie the possibility of a free exclusive additional release when you buy something from us, that would hopefully cut the 'ebay copy and pasters' down.

Buying straight from us is the best way for us, and for most fans . Sometimes people say but it's more expensive to buy from the bands directly. But if you have a mail order system the band have to pay to ship and pack the individual CD, whereas the usual store will not, they may have some courier costs but I can tell you it doesn't cost HMV £1.50 for transport for every cd they stock !
Also there is a new scam going of not paying the VAT, we have noticed these pop up where companies appear not to be declaring VAT, there are "back doors" offering cheap cds, some cheaper if you pay by cash. As we have all our mail order sales go through a secure PDQ credit card system, all our sales are logged and there is no chance to fraud the system of VAT, so we have to pay 17.5% of what we charge onto HM Customs + Excise.
Because we have also paid for :
the recording/artwork/musicians/pressing/promotion/distribution of the initial cd, our costs are higher, these costs are not generally borne by stores, dealers and distributors.

Royalties, even on a small label like Toff are paid directly to the artists usually on a quarterly basis, for all records sold through that label that the artist played on . For radio play there is a publishing copyright royalty for which the artist who wrote the music is paid each time the record is played , but this usually only occurs when the song is played on a big station, for example in 1983 when we played a session on the Friday Rock Show BBC [3 songs] we got about £300 , from the agency called PRS that collects these royalties on our behalf. We would probably get nothing from an entire evening of Pendragon music broadcasted on yer average Los Calchakis Radio in downtown Buenos Aires , but instead obviously we would get the exposure we sorely need from them.

Cheers

Nick B