7 avril, 2005 12:55

By David Mathison

MediaChannel.org

NEW YORK, April 5, 2005 -- In "Sleeping With The Enemy," Jennifer Nix argues that progressive authors need to stop enriching corporate-owned book publishers, and partner with independents instead.

But when it comes to America's abusive relationship with media monopolies, breaking up is hard to do. Nix's numerous citations of "sleeping with the enemy" are not limited to just book publishing -- these slumber parties permeate all media -- books, music, radio, TV, cable, film and print. They include every artist that trades their intellectual property to a conglomerate for their virtue (songs, books, films, etc), each community that hops into bed with a conglomerate in exchange for monopoly rights to our property (the public airwaves and cable rights-of-way), consumers that snuggle up to conglomerate media at bedtime, and elected officials that swap their integrity for corporate media favors.

In "Making Unnecessary Enemies," David Corn responded that he would like to work with an Indy house "if the appropriate deal can be arranged."

But until recently, Indies couldn't match the distribution muscle and financial rewards offered by the majors. Due to unprecedented media ownership concentration, just five companies own most newspapers, record labels, concert venues, movie studios, cable companies, billboards, book publishers, and radio and TV stations. They control almost everything we see, hear and read. And the most important parts of the media value chain -- artists on the one hand, and communities and consumers on the other -- unnecessarily suffer most from these unholy sleeping arrangements:

Book Publishing: Just six firms dominate US book publishing. Two huge national retail chains sell 80% of books. Sales from independent booksellers dropped from 42% in 1992 to just 20% in 1998. Publishers give big advances to authors with a built-in audience, like Bill Clinton. Little is left for mid-list authors and new writers. If they are "lucky" enough to be signed, most authors receive just 7-15% of royalties. Less than 1% of writers make more than $50k a year, just 6% of writers make a living as authors. As Pat Holt, former book review Editor and Critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, points out, this may be why authors "get back" at the greedy and manipulative people in the publishing industry.

Music: The four largest music groups account for 87% of US album sales. The top ten retailers generate 80% of sales. Recent congressional anti-trust investigations found that artists suffer under unfair contracts and accounting practices, and that "pay-for-play" requires huge "promotional" fees of up to $400,000. If an artist is "lucky" enough to be signed and can sell 500,000 CDs, they may still end up broke. As shown in "Courtney Love Does the Math" and Steve Albini's "The Problem With Music," the end result of a seven-figure advance is that "the band members may as well be working at 7-11."

Radio: In 98% of all local markets, the top four radio station owners control 70% or more listeners. Before the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Clear Channel owned just 65 radio stations. It is now has more than 1,240 radio stations, 37 TV stations, and more than 770,000 billboards. Clear Channel has a 95% market share of all concerts in the US. In 2002, it sold 30 million concert tickets, 26 million more than its nearest competitor. A Cornell University study found that Clear Channel's dominance in radio makes it harder for local musicians to get airplay on local radio. 

Cable: The ten largest cable companies account for over 89% of US cable revenues. The top seven possess effective monopolistic control over cable channels and programming to 80% of the nation. Just three media companies own all of the cable news networks. In the San Francisco Bay area alone, Comcast holds over 100 cable franchises, most of which function as monopolies. In an article titled "How About The Fat Chance Channel," Broadcasting and Cable reports "new Nets need at least $100 million just to break even."

Television: Since 1995, there has been a 40% decline in the number of companies owning commercial TV stations. Over 79% of commercial TV stations are affiliated with one of the top seven networks. In 1977, twelve of the top twenty suppliers of prime-time programs were independent production companies such as Lorimar, Mary Tyler Moore, and Aaron Spelling. Since the repeal of the financial-syndication (fin-syn) rules in 1995, the three major broadcast networks have increased their control over prime time programming by 450%, to 65%. By 2002, the top six networks owned 82% of prime time programs, and independently owned programs accounted for only four hours or 6%. As the NY Times reported, "independent TV producers have virtually disappeared."

Film: There have been more federal anti-trust decrees in the film industry than in any other mass media market. Despite this, the ten largest movie studios still account for 99% of US theater revenues. The average cost to produce a Hollywood film is $70 million. Even if a documentary or an independent film gets made, it is extremely difficult to get wide theatrical release -- just ask Michael Moore. The top ten theater chains control 70% of screens. Regal Entertainment Group operates 5,886 screens in 561 theaters in 36 states, nearly one out of every five theaters in the US, and twice that of it's next nearest competitor, AMC Entertainment.

Newspapers: In 1920, 700 US cities had competing daily newspapers. Today, almost every major city's daily newspaper has a monopolistic market. To save money on staff, papers license content from syndicates, giving the syndicates incredible power. The top five syndicates control 96% of the distribution of new features by cartoonists and columnists. Syndicates lock artists into long-term (10+ year) contracts that usually require a 50/50 revenue split, and control over the artist's copyright. An average cartoonist syndicating to 100 newspapers makes barely $40,000 per year.

Clearly, artists are at the mercy of conglomerates. Whether it's an aspiring author attempting to publish a first book, a songwriter's first contract with a record label, a local radio personality aiming for national syndication, a filmmaker trying to get wide theatrical release, a cartoonist or columnist hoping for national newspaper syndication, or a new cable network desiring good carriage - the deck is stacked against independents.

Communities and consumers fare no better - from June 2001 to June 2002, cable rates rose 6.3% compared to a 1.1% increase in Consumer Price Index (CPI), and have jumped 40% since 1996. In the music industry, concert ticket prices have increased at a rate 50% higher than the CPI since 1996. In 2003, the top five US CD distributors and three national retailers agreed to pay $143 million to settle allegations that they cheated consumers by conspiring to keep CD prices artificially high.

By "sleeping with the enemy," we all perpetuate abusive relationships with corporate media. To break free, we need to first admit that we are in an abusive relationship, which is not easy. Harder still is replacing the old "enemy" with new friends. There are alternatives, but like health food, you need to do some extra work to find nutritional media. Nix demonstrated the "new publishing model" in independent book publishing, and thankfully, similar models are being used across all media, enabled by changes in content creation and distribution. Low-cost, digital quality "instant-publishing" technology makes content creation cheaper and easier than ever; and the Internet lets anyone market, publicize and deliver content to global customers - at costs approaching zero.

For artists, the core of this "new model" is to control what you rightfully own, especially your copyright, royalties and customers. For example, artists can use Creative Commons licenses instead of the more restrictive, traditional copyright. According to the Washington Post, "more than 10 million creations have been distributed using these licenses." The online record label Magnatune has 326 albums by 174 artists -- all using Creative Commons licenses. Artists can now directly build a royalty base and a loyalty base for future projects, allowing them to create their own cottage media industry without "selling out" to corporate conglomerates. For example, Director Robert Greenwald sold over 100,000 "Outfoxed" DVD's through House Parties organized by MoveOn.org.

Communities are also taking control of what they rightfully own, such as the public airwaves. Activists in many states are challenging radio and TV station license renewals to hold networks to their requirement to broadcast "in the public interest." San Francisco area activists such as Media Action Marin are using the local cable franchise renewal process to force cable monopolies to improve public access, air tele-courses from local colleges, and to improve connectivity between government, fire, police, hospitals, ambulance and emergency services. Some cities are considering municipal wi-fi networks for Internet access as another way of breaking free of corporate media control.

Consumers are waking up to healthy media choices as well. Musicians like Prince and Natalie Merchant have created their own labels so their fans can reward them directly, instead of having most of the price of a CD going to feed a conglomerate's army of over-paid executives, lawyers, accountants, lobbyists, distributors and retailers. Consumers are increasingly transferring their wealth and allegiance from conglomerate media, and instead rewarding independent artists and organizations such as KPFA, Alternet and Democracy Now!

On the federal legislative level, Congress is set to re-write the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which laid the groundwork for today's vertical and horizontal concentration of media ownership. Goals should include re-setting ownership (and cross-ownership) limits to improve local, minority and female ownership opportunities, and a re-instatement of the Fairness Doctrine, which required equal airtime for opposing viewpoints. Breaking up the media cartels will allow Americans to choose from a variety of sleeping arrangements, instead of forcing the majority of artists, communities and consumers into bed with the likes of Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone.

The debate regarding independent media is not limited to progressives, conservatives, or book publishing. It is about core American rights such as freedom of speech and of the press. Communication is a fundamental human right, and a foundation of all social organizing. Everyone has the right to communicate, not just those with the most money, the biggest advance, the loudest microphone, the most lobbyists, or the best publisher. Artists, consumers and communities are waking up to the importance of making healthy choices not just in our physical relationships, but in our mental ones as well.

-- David Mathison is the author of "BE THE MEDIA," the first solutions-oriented book to address the problem of media monopoly. "BE THE MEDIA" helps independent artists create and distribute their content without selling their royalties, rights, or souls in the process. The book will be available in June 2005.

Mathison was previously Chairman and CEO of the Kinecta Corporation, acquired in 2002 by the Stellent Corporation, a provider of enterprise content management solutions with more than 3,500 customers, including much of the Global 2000 (NASDAQ: STEL). Prior to that, Mathison was Vice President with Reuters, Ltd., the world's largest news agency.

By Jennifer Nix, AlterNet

Posted on March 3, 2005, Printed on April 7, 2005

http://www.alternet.org/story/21397/

Editor's Note: This commentary was written by Jennifer Nix, editor-at-large at Chelsea Green Publishing, and will be the opening salvo at the company's soon-to-be-launched weblog. Chelsea Green is also publishing AlterNet's forthcoming book Start Making Sense: Turning the Lessons of Election 2004 into Winning Progressive Politics," due out in April.

How about putting your money and ideas where your mouths are? Why not work with independent book publishers to share with the public your thoughts about progressive politics, social justice, sustainability and media reform ... instead of lining the pockets of the corporate publishers (and ultimately the five or ten rich white men who control nearly every media message we read and hear in the U.S. today).

Let me share with you a story about an independent publisher waging battle against the corporate-owned and fossilized business of book publishing. We could use a little help from you, friends.

Late in 2004, Chelsea Green Publishing did the impossible. We signed George Lakoff, got his book, Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate out in five weeks (!) and then ushered it onto The New York Times and other national bestseller lists less than a month later.

We did this by partnering with progressive activist and indy media groups, to launch the book via e-mail blasts and on various web sites, like MoveOn.org, Democracy for America, Apollo Alliance, Jim Hightower, GreenFestival, AlterNet and more. We also got a lot of help from the blogs, like DailyKos and BoingBoing. We published a book about new, progressive ideals, and rather than going the traditional and lengthy turn-your-hair-gray publishing route (calling on galleys, sales reps, early reviews, and ads), we went directly to progressives to get Lakoff's book out into the world. It worked. We created a new publishing model. And we're not shy about telling you that Chelsea Green and Mr. Lakoff have made a very nice chunk of change.

There is a great deal of talk from progressive leaders these days about how this country needs media reform as part of a multifaceted approach to saving democracy, and winning back the White House and Congress. A woeful lament is sung by our progressive leaders about how the media companies are now concentrated into homogenous conglomerates which, at best, worry only about bottom-line profits, while at their most sinister, are dedicated to furthering the radical right-wing agenda.

We agree! What we don't understand is why these same progressive writers and activists don't walk the walk, and offer like-minded independent book publishers a seat at the table when strategies for media reform are being bandied about.

For the sake of opening up this discussion, I'd like to ask Amy Goodman why she published her last book, The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Love Them, with Disney-owned Hyperion.

Michael Moore: What possessed you to make money for Rupert Murdoch by publishing your book, Stupid White Men, with ReganBooks/HarperCollins, and to then go to AOL/Time Warner's Warner Books with Dude! Where's My Country?, before jumping to a third corporate ship, Viacom's Simon & Schuster, to publish your latest offering, Will They Ever Trust Us Again?

David Corn: When you were underscoring the media's role in spreading W.'s deceptions, in The Lies of George W. Bush, why did you choose not only to go with a corporate-owned publisher, but with Crown – for years now, a member of the German-owned Bertelsmann AG conglomerate, which helped to spread anti-Semitic literature and Nazi propaganda in the years leading up to and during WWII? See here and ironically, here, in The Nation.

Al Franken: When publishing Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, why did you make money for Dutton, a cog in the wheel of British-owned media giant Pearson, rather than help to reform American media by making a commitment to and money for an independent American publisher? And, finally, I really hate to point out to populist Jim Hightower that he, too, made money for that same Brit media giant, by going with another of Pearson's holdings, Viking, when he published his latest book, Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush.

Come on, people. Is it all about the big advances? Hear this: a big advance does not a bestseller make. It should be about how many people buy your book.

As a small, independent publisher, we at Chelsea Green have often heard variations on this particular theme: I'd love to go with a mission-oriented publisher like you, but you just don't have the publicity, distribution and sales strength to get my book out into the world on a grand scale.

Not true. Look at the Lakoff book example, which capitalized on creativity, speed and the harnessing of strategic partnerships and new technology. The book has been a bestseller on The New York Times list for 13 weeks running, and is holding strong on other national lists as well. Don't Think of an Elephant has been featured in several New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and Boston Globe articles, and continues to appear in newspapers and magazines around the country – even in the far-flung red states. Lakoff has appeared on NPR, PBS, CNN, FOX, CBS, ABC, NBC ... and on an alphabet of broadcast stations around the country. What's more? Lakoff's book sits in cash register displays at bookstores from California to Vermont.

There are plenty of other examples of recent independent hits, including Berret-Koehler's tremendous job with John Perkins' bestselling Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, and the runaway hits, "MoveOn's 50 Ways to Love Your Country, from Inner Ocean, and Potomac Books' Imperial Hubris The time has come to marshal our independent might and technology for all progressive-minded books, so that the money made on your books does not, in the end, fund the very same corporate media interests we are all fighting against on other fronts.

This rant is really not meant to excoriate progressive writers, but to draw attention to the fact that you need to do more than talk the talk about media reform. Independent publishers are with you, fighting against what's happening to our media, to our democracy and to our country. How much sense does it make to publish your books with the likes of corporate publishers, with the proceeds going to strengthen the very media and political systems against which you rail so eloquently? Why not make money for yourselves and also funnel profits into strengthening independent presses by giving us a chance to work with your names and ideas?

No one is asking you to make less money, or to see your books die on the vine due to a lack of publicity, marketing or distribution. Book publishing has always been a crapshoot in corporate hands, and it always will be. Why not align your efforts with nimble, committed folks who are working to reform our media while they sell books? Just as the internet is changing politics, it is changing media – and it is changing the slow and antiquated world of book publishing. We've proven it, and we can keep proving it, with ever more inventive ways of reaching out to the public.

You no longer have to make deals with the devil of corporate might in order to sell your books. Independent book publishers can work with writers to find their audiences, and create new echo chambers with technology and various independent media partners. Together, we can spread word of your important ideas – and turn them into bestsellers.

We just need to be invited to the table. Let's think creatively about new ways to publish books, so we can start making some honest headway on changing our corrupt media system.

It's time to put up – with some commitment to independent book publishing – or to shut up about media reform.

© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21397/

By David Corn, DavidCorn.com

Posted on March 11, 2005, Printed on April 7, 2005

http://www.alternet.org/story/21472/

Editor's Note: This is David Corn's response to a piece Jennifer Nix wrote last week about progressive authors signing book contracts with corporate publishers.

That's the one-line email I sent to Jennifer Nix, editor-at-large of Chelsea Green Publishing, last week. And I never heard back from her.

What prompted my note to her was a piece she wrote for AlterNet that chided Michael Moore, Al Franken, Amy Goodman and me for having published our books with corporate publishers. The article, entitled "Sleeping with the Enemy," was billed as "the opening salvo at the company's soon-to-be-launched weblog." I was tempted to ignore her acting-out article. But it received some pickup on other sites. So allow me to reply.

How about putting your money and ideas where your mouths are? Why not work with independent book publishers to share with the public your thoughts about progressive politics, social justice, sustainability and media reform ... instead of lining the pockets of the corporate publishers (and ultimately the five or ten rich white men who control nearly every media message we read and hear in the U.S. today).

Well, I have an invitation for Nix. How about approaching potential colleagues in a reasonable fashion – rather than attacking them – if you want to run a successful progressive-minded business?

I'd like to ask Amy Goodman why she published her last book, The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Love Them, with Disney-owned Hyperion.

Michael Moore: What possessed you to make money for Rupert Murdoch by publishing your book, Stupid White Men, with ReganBooks/HarperCollins, and to then go to AOL/Time Warner's Warner Books with Dude! Where's My Country?, before jumping to a third corporate ship, Viacom's Simon & Schuster, to publish your latest offering, Will They Ever Trust Us Again?

David Corn: When you were underscoring the media's role in spreading W.'s deceptions, in The Lies of George W. Bush, why did you choose not only to go with a corporate-owned publisher, but with Crown – for years now, a member of the German-owned Bertelsmann AG conglomerate, which helped to spread anti-Semitic literature and Nazi propaganda in the years leading up to and during WWII?

Al Franken: When publishing Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, why did you make money for Dutton, a cog in the wheel of British-owned media giant Pearson, rather than help to reform American media by making a commitment to and money for an independent American publisher? And, finally, I really hate to point out to populist Jim Hightower that he, too, made money for that same Brit media giant, by going with another of Pearson's holdings, Viking, when he published his latest book, Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush.

Come on, people. Is it all about the big advances? Hear this: a big advance does not a bestseller make. It should be about how many people buy your book.

Pardon the royalties out of me. But advances do matter – at least to me. Unlike Moore and Franken, I am not a millionaire. (I am assuming they are, and they better be, given the sales of their books and movies.) I have worked for 18 years (yikes!) at The Nation, making a salary well below my peers in mainstream journalism. (I have also written for AlterNet, which hardly pays Vanity Fair rates.) I have two small daughters. To complete The Lies of George W. Bush in nine months (while still working my day job), I had to take time away from my family. My hard-working wife picked up plenty of slack. The only way I could justify such a project was to guarantee it made economic sense for my family.

That meant being sure I would be well paid for these stress-inducing efforts. An advance against future royalties achieves that. If I had embarked on such a project with no advance – or a low advance – I would have been taking a rather large risk. I would have had to count upon the publisher to sell many books. And I would have had to assume (or hope) that no unforeseen events would derail my book. Let's say an anti-Bush book had been scheduled to come out on Sept. 18, 2001. It would have been subsumed. There would be no sales and, thus, no royalties for the author. If the author of that book had not received an advance, he or she would (in a financial sense) have wasted his or her time. By taking an advance, I and other authors pass the economic risk on to the corporate publisher. Would you work for a year – or years – on a project for little or no money, just hoping that when it is done the stars will line up right and you will be able to make money off the sales? For some people, that might be an appropriate course of action. Well-off authors (the few, the proud) could afford to do so. First-time authors, who are driven to be published, might have no other choice. But those of us in between have to consider other steps.

And while I am at it, let me confess that for years I drove a used Volkswagen. No doubt, Nix disapproves of purchasing vehicles made by a firm with historic links to the Nazi regime. (Now, I am happy to inform her, I ride about in a car from the pacific land of northern Europe.)

Nix claims that her firm knows how to turn a book into a bestseller, pointing to the success it had with George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, which did hit the best-sellers chart. At the time I started work on my book, Nix's house had no track record in turning a political book into a bestseller. And who knows if it can do so again? Suggesting that it's a breeze for an indy and lefty publisher to produce a bestseller, she cites MoveOn's 50 Ways to Love Your Country, which was published by Inner Ocean. I am not impressed by that example. That's no reflection upon MoveOn. I credit the group for being a success story of modern-day political organizing. But if an outfit with nearly 2 million highly committed members cannot produce a book, market it aggressively to its membership, and then land that book on the best-seller list, it is rather inept. (A book can hit the best-seller lists by selling several thousand copies a week.) By the way, when my book came out, I approached MoveOn and asked if it would send out an e-mail to its members notifying them of the existence of my book and other anti-Bush books. I was turned down. The explanation: that would be too commercial an act. Fair enough. But that concern did not stop MoveOn from later pushing ticket sales for Fahrenheit 9/11.

Nix is not so pure herself. She was a staff writer for Variety, which is owned by a gigantic, transnational corporation run by – can you believe this? – a host of white guys. (Was it wrong for her to cover the all-important showbiz world in order to enrich these fellows? Why was she not running a bilingual newsletter for immigrant farmworkers?) She also worked for NPR, a lovely outfit but one that accepts donations from rapacious corporations attempting to enhance their images in order to preserve their hold on the global economy.

Don't get me wrong. I would be delighted to work with an indy house if an appropriate deal could be arranged. And I wish my friends at AlterNet success with the book they are publishing with Nix. But the fact that Nix chose to whack me – without apparently knowing anything about my situation and my needs as an author – leads me to believe she lacks the business sense I would look for in a publisher, corporate or independent.

© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21472/

August 21, 2003

In Holt Uncensored #373, Pat Holt exposes the phenomenon of authors "getting back" at the greedy and manipulative people in the publishing industry. The good news today is that independent authors can use alternatives to find their audience, and they should. Because this industry - like the music and film industries - cares not one whit about the people that butter their bread.

"They describe a pretentious, power-addicted publishing industry that for too long has given authors the back of its hand yet expected gratitude and obeisance in return.

Everywhere you look, authors have changed their approach. They don't depend on agents or editors any longer .... Today's savvy authors hire their own manuscript consultants and their own publicists.

....The reason is that the industry treats them like garbage - still patronizes them, condescends to them, dismisses them, doesn't read them, sends them out on exhausting tours if they're lucky, and dismisses them if the numbers don't work.

....But until the late 1980s, I had never seen an industry turn against the people who pay all our salaries the way publishers have turned against authors.

The controversial singer takes on record label profits, Napster and "sucka VCs."

- - - - - - - - - - - -

By Courtney Love

June 14, 2000 | Today I want to talk about piracy and music. What is piracy? Piracy is the act of stealing an artist's work without any intention of paying for it. I'm not talking about Napster-type software.

I'm talking about major label recording contracts.

I want to start with a story about rock bands and record companies, and do some recording-contract math:

This story is about a bidding-war band that gets a huge deal with a 20 percent royalty rate and a million-dollar advance. (No bidding-war band ever got a 20 percent royalty, but whatever.) This is my "funny" math based on some reality and I just want to qualify it by saying I'm positive it's better math than what Edgar Bronfman Jr. [the president and CEO of Seagram, which owns Polygram] would provide.

They spend half a million to record their album. That leaves the band with $500,000. They pay $100,000 to their manager for 20 percent commission. They pay $25,000 each to their lawyer and business manager.

That leaves $350,000 for the four band members to split. After $170,000 in taxes, there's $180,000 left. That comes out to $45,000 per person.

That's $45,000 to live on for a year until the record gets released.

The record is a big hit and sells a million copies. (How a bidding-war band sells a million copies of its debut record is another rant entirely, but it's based on any basic civics-class knowledge that any of us have about cartels. Put simply, the antitrust laws in this country are basically a joke, protecting us just enough to not have to re-name our park service the Phillip Morris National Park Service.)

So, this band releases two singles and makes two videos. The two videos cost a million dollars to make and 50 percent of the video production costs are recouped out of the band's royalties.

The band gets $200,000 in tour support, which is 100 percent recoupable.

The record company spends $300,000 on independent radio promotion. You have to pay independent promotion to get your song on the radio; independent promotion is a system where the record companies use middlemen so they can pretend not to know that radio stations -- the unified broadcast system -- are getting paid to play their records.

Since the original million-dollar advance is also recoupable, the band owes $2 million to the record company.

If all of the million records are sold at full price with no discounts or record clubs, the band earns $2 million in royalties, since their 20 percent royalty works out to $2 a record.

Two million dollars in royalties minus $2 million in recoupable expenses equals ... zero!

How much does the record company make?

They grossed $11 million.

It costs $500,000 to manufacture the CDs and they advanced the band $1 million. Plus there were $1 million in video costs, $300,000 in radio promotion and $200,000 in tour support.

The company also paid $750,000 in music publishing royalties.

They spent $2.2 million on marketing. That's mostly retail advertising, but marketing also pays for those huge posters of Marilyn Manson in Times Square and the street scouts who drive around in vans handing out black Korn T-shirts and backwards baseball caps. Not to mention trips to Scores and cash for tips for all and sundry.

Add it up and the record company has spent about $4.4 million.

So their profit is $6.6 million; the band may as well be working at a 7-Eleven.

Of course, they had fun. Hearing yourself on the radio, selling records, getting new fans and being on TV is great, but now the band doesn't have enough money to pay the rent and nobody has any credit.

Worst of all, after all this, the band owns none of its work ... they can pay the mortgage forever but they'll never own the house. Like I said: Sharecropping. Our media says, "Boo hoo, poor pop stars, they had a nice ride. Fuck them for speaking up"; but I say this dialogue is imperative. And cynical media people, who are more fascinated with celebrity than most celebrities, need to reacquaint themselves with their value systems.

When you look at the legal line on a CD, it says copyright 1976 Atlantic Records or copyright 1996 RCA Records. When you look at a book, though, it'll say something like copyright 1999 Susan Faludi, or David Foster Wallace. Authors own their books and license them to publishers. When the contract runs out, writers gets their books back. But record companies own our copyrights forever.

Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)

Last November, a Congressional aide named Mitch Glazier, with the support of the RIAA, added a "technical amendment" to a bill that defined recorded music as "works for hire" under the 1978 Copyright Act.

He did this after all the hearings on the bill were over. By the time artists found out about the change, it was too late. The bill was on its way to the White House for the president's signature.

That subtle change in copyright law will add billions of dollars to record company bank accounts over the next few years -- billions of dollars that rightfully should have been paid to artists. A "work for hire" is now owned in perpetuity by the record company.

Under the 1978 Copyright Act, artists could reclaim the copyrights on their work after 35 years. If you wrote and recorded "Everybody Hurts," you at least got it back to as a family legacy after 35 years. But now, because of this corrupt little pisher, "Everybody Hurts" never gets returned to your family, and can now be sold to the highest bidder.

Over the years record companies have tried to put "work for hire" provisions in their contracts, and Mr. Glazier claims that the "work for hire" only "codified" a standard industry practice. But copyright laws didn't identify sound recordings as being eligible to be called "works for hire," so those contracts didn't mean anything. Until now.

Writing and recording "Hey Jude" is now the same thing as writing an English textbook, writing standardized tests, translating a novel from one language to another or making a map. These are the types of things addressed in the "work for hire" act. And writing a standardized test is a work for hire. Not making a record.

So an assistant substantially altered a major law when he only had the authority to make spelling corrections. That's not what I learned about how government works in my high school civics class.

Three months later, the RIAA hired Mr. Glazier to become its top lobbyist at a salary that was obviously much greater than the one he had as the spelling corrector guy.

The RIAA tries to argue that this change was necessary because of a provision in the bill that musicians supported. That provision prevents anyone from registering a famous person's name as a Web address without that person's permission. That's great. I own my name, and should be able to do what I want with my name.

But the bill also created an exception that allows a company to take a person's name for a Web address if they create a work for hire. Which means a record company would be allowed to own your Web site when you record your "work for hire" album. Like I said: Sharecropping.

Although I've never met any one at a record company who "believed in the Internet," they've all been trying to cover their asses by securing everyone's digital rights. Not that they know what to do with them. Go to a major label-owned band site. Give me a dollar for every time you see an annoying "under construction" sign. I used to pester Geffen (when it was a label) to do a better job. I was totally ignored for two years, until I got my band name back. The Goo Goo Dolls are struggling to gain control of their domain name from Warner Bros., who claim they own the name because they set up a shitty promotional Web site for the band.

Orrin Hatch, songwriter and Republican senator from Utah, seems to be the only person in Washington with a progressive view of copyright law. One lobbyist says that there's no one in the House with a similar view and that "this would have never happened if Sonny Bono was still alive."

By the way, which bill do you think the recording industry used for this amendment?

The Record Company Redefinition Act? No. The Music Copyright Act? No. The Work for Hire Authorship Act? No.

How about the Satellite Home Viewing Act of 1999?

Stealing our copyright reversions in the dead of night while no one was looking, and with no hearings held, is piracy.

It's piracy when the RIAA lobbies to change the bankruptcy law to make it more difficult for musicians to declare bankruptcy. Some musicians have declared bankruptcy to free themselves from truly evil contracts. TLC declared bankruptcy after they received less than 2 percent of the $175 million earned by their CD sales. That was about 40 times less than the profit that was divided among their management, production and record companies.

Toni Braxton also declared bankruptcy in 1998. She sold $188 million worth of CDs, but she was broke because of a terrible recording contract that paid her less than 35 cents per album. Bankruptcy can be an artist's only defense against a truly horrible deal and the RIAA wants to take it away.

Artists want to believe that we can make lots of money if we're successful. But there are hundreds of stories about artists in their 60s and 70s who are broke because they never made a dime from their hit records. And real success is still a long shot for a new artist today. Of the 32,000 new releases each year, only 250 sell more than 10,000 copies. And less than 30 go platinum.

The four major record corporations fund the RIAA. These companies are rich and obviously well-represented. Recording artists and musicians don't really have the money to compete. The 273,000 working musicians in America make about $30,000 a year. Only 15 percent of American Federation of Musicians members work steadily in music.

But the music industry is a $40 billion-a-year business. One-third of that revenue comes from the United States. The annual sales of cassettes, CDs and video are larger than the gross national product of 80 countries. Americans have more CD players, radios and VCRs than we have bathtubs.

Story after story gets told about artists -- some of them in their 60s and 70s, some of them authors of huge successful songs that we all enjoy, use and sing -- living in total poverty, never having been paid anything. Not even having access to a union or to basic health care. Artists who have generated billions of dollars for an industry die broke and un-cared for.

And they're not actors or participators. They're the rightful owners, originators and performers of original compositions.

This opinion is one I really haven't formed yet, so as I speak about Napster now, please understand that I'm not totally informed. I will be the first in line to file a class action suit to protect my copyrights if Napster or even the far more advanced Gnutella doesn't work with us to protect us. I'm on [Metallica drummer] Lars Ulrich's side, in other words, and I feel really badly for him that he doesn't know how to condense his case down to a sound-bite that sounds more reasonable than the one I saw today.

I also think Metallica is being given too much grief. It's anti-artist, for one thing. An artist speaks up and the artist gets squashed: Sharecropping. Don't get above your station, kid. It's not piracy when kids swap music over the Internet using Napster or Gnutella or Freenet or iMesh or beaming their CDs into a My.MP3.com or MyPlay.com music locker. It's piracy when those guys that run those companies make side deals with the cartel lawyers and label heads so that they can be "the labels' friend," and not the artists'.

Recording artists have essentially been giving their music away for free under the old system, so new technology that exposes our music to a larger audience can only be a good thing. Why aren't these companies working with us to create some peace?

There were a billion music downloads last year, but music sales are up. Where's the evidence that downloads hurt business? Downloads are creating more demand.

Why aren't record companies embracing this great opportunity? Why aren't they trying to talk to the kids passing compilations around to learn what they like? Why is the RIAA suing the companies that are stimulating this new demand? What's the point of going after people swapping cruddy-sounding MP3s? Cash! Cash they have no intention of passing onto us, the writers of their profits.

At this point the "record collector" geniuses who use Napster don't have the coolest most arcane selection anyway, unless you're into techno. Hardly any pre-1982 REM fans, no '60s punk, even the Alan Parsons Project was underrepresented when I tried to find some Napster buddies. For the most part, it was college boy rawk without a lot of imagination. Maybe that's the demographic that cares -- and in that case, My Bloody Valentine and Bert Jansch aren't going to get screwed just yet. There's still time to negotiate.

Somewhere along the way, record companies figured out that it's a lot more profitable to control the distribution system than it is to nurture artists. And since the companies didn't have any real competition, artists had no other place to go. Record companies controlled the promotion and marketing; only they had the ability to get lots of radio play, and get records into all the big chain store. That power put them above both the artists and the audience. They own the plantation.

Being the gatekeeper was the most profitable place to be, but now we're in a world half without gates. The Internet allows artists to communicate directly with their audiences; we don't have to depend solely on an inefficient system where the record company promotes our records to radio, press or retail and then sits back and hopes fans find out about our music.

Record companies don't understand the intimacy between artists and their fans. They put records on the radio and buy some advertising and hope for the best. Digital distribution gives everyone worldwide, instant access to music.

And filters are replacing gatekeepers. In a world where we can get anything we want, whenever we want it, how does a company create value? By filtering. In a world without friction, the only friction people value is editing. A filter is valuable when it understands the needs of both artists and the public. New companies should be conduits between musicians and their fans.

Right now the only way you can get music is by shelling out $17. In a world where music costs a nickel, an artist can "sell" 100 million copies instead of just a million.

The present system keeps artists from finding an audience because it has too many artificial scarcities: limited radio promotion, limited bin space in stores and a limited number of spots on the record company roster.

The digital world has no scarcities. There are countless ways to reach an audience. Radio is no longer the only place to hear a new song. And tiny mall record stores aren't the only place to buy a new CD.

Now artists have options. We don't have to work with major labels anymore, because the digital economy is creating new ways to distribute and market music. And the free ones amongst us aren't going to. That means the slave class, which I represent, has to find ways to get out of our deals. This didn't really matter before, and that's why we all stayed.

I want my seven-year contract law California labor code case to mean something to other artists. (Universal Records sues me because I leave because my employment is up, but they say a recording contract is not a personal contract; because the recording industry -- who, we have established, are excellent lobbyists, getting, as they did, a clerk to disallow Don Henley or Tom Petty the right to give their copyrights to their families -- in California, in 1987, lobbied to pass an amendment that nullified recording contracts as personal contracts, sort of. Maybe. Kind of. A little bit. And again, in the dead of night, succeeded.)

That's why I'm willing to do it with a sword in my teeth. I expect I'll be ignored or ostracized following this lawsuit. I expect that the treatment you're seeing Lars Ulrich get now will quadruple for me. Cool. At least I'll serve a purpose. I'm an artist and a good artist, I think, but I'm not that artist that has to play all the time, and thus has to get fucked. Maybe my laziness and self-destructive streak will finally pay off and serve a community desperately in need of it. They can't torture me like they could Lucinda Williams.

I want to work with people who believe in music and art and passion. And I'm just the tip of the iceberg. I'm leaving the major label system and there are hundreds of artists who are going to follow me. There's an unbelievable opportunity for new companies that dare to get it right.

How can anyone defend the current system when it fails to deliver music to so many potential fans? That only expects of itself a "5 percent success rate" a year? The status quo gives us a boring culture. In a society of over 300 million people, only 30 new artists a year sell a million records. By any measure, that's a huge failure.

Maybe each fan will spend less money, but maybe each artist will have a better chance of making a living. Maybe our culture will get more interesting than the one currently owned by Time Warner. I'm not crazy. Ask yourself, are any of you somehow connected to Time Warner media? I think there are a lot of yeses to that and I'd have to say that in that case president McKinley truly failed to bust any trusts. Maybe we can remedy that now.

Artists will make that compromise if it means we can connect with hundreds of millions of fans instead of the hundreds of thousands that we have now. Especially if we lose all the crap that goes with success under the current system. I'm willing, right now, to leave half of these trappings -- fuck it, all these trappings -- at the door to have a pure artist experience. They cosset us with trappings to shut us up. That way when we say "sharecropper!" you can point to my free suit and say "Shut up pop star."

Here, take my Prada pants. Fuck it. Let us do our real jobs. And those of us addicted to celebrity because we have nothing else to give will fade away. And those of us addicted to celebrity because it was there will find a better, purer way to live.

Since I've basically been giving my music away for free under the old system, I'm not afraid of wireless, MP3 files or any of the other threats to my copyrights. Anything that makes my music more available to more people is great. MP3 files sound cruddy, but a well-made album sounds great. And I don't care what anyone says about digital recordings. At this point they are good for dance music, but try listening to a warm guitar tone on them. They suck for what I do.

Record companies are terrified of anything that challenges their control of distribution. This is the business that insisted that CDs be sold in incredibly wasteful 6-by-12 inch long boxes just because no one thought you could change the bins in a record store.

Let's not call the major labels "labels." Let's call them by their real names: They are the distributors. They're the only distributors and they exist because of scarcity. Artists pay 95 percent of whatever we make to gatekeepers because we used to need gatekeepers to get our music heard. Because they have a system, and when they decide to spend enough money -- all of it recoupable, all of it owed by me -- they can occasionally shove things through this system, depending on a lot of arbitrary factors.

The corporate filtering system, which is the system that brought you (in my humble opinion) a piece of crap like "Mambo No. 5" and didn't let you hear the brilliant Cat Power record or the amazing new Sleater Kinney record, obviously doesn't have good taste anyway. But we've never paid major label/distributors for their good taste. They've never been like Yahoo and provided a filter service.

How powerful is management?

Who owes whom a favor?

What independent promoter's cousin is the drummer?

What part of the fiscal year is the company putting out the record?

Is the royalty rate for the artist so obscenely bad that it's almost 100 percent profit instead of just 95 percent so that if the record sells, it's literally a steal?

How much bin space is left over this year?

Was the record already a hit in Europe so that there's corporate pressure to make it work?

Will the band screw up its live career to play free shows for radio stations?

Does the artist's song sound enough like someone else that radio stations will play it because it fits the sound of the month?

Did the artist get the song on a film soundtrack so that the movie studio will pay for the video?

These factors affect the decisions that go into the system. Not public taste. All these things are becoming eradicated now. They are gone or on their way out. We don't need the gatekeepers any more. We just don't need them.

And if they aren't going to do for me what I can do for myself with my 19-year-old Webmistress on my own Web site, then they need to get the hell out of my way. [I will] allow millions of people to get my music for nothing if they want and hopefully they'll be kind enough to leave a tip if they like it.

I still need the old stuff. I still need a producer in the creation of a recording, I still need to get on the radio (which costs a lot of money), I still need bin space for hardware CDs, I still need to provide an opportunity for people without computers to buy the hardware that I make. I still need a lot of this stuff, but I can get these things from a joint venture with a company that serves as a conduit and knows its place. Serving the artist and serving the public: That's its place.

A new company that gives artists true equity in their work can take over the world, kick ass and make a lot of money. We're inspired by how people get paid in the new economy. Many visual artists and software and hardware designers have real ownership of their work.

I have a 14-year-old niece. She used to want to be a rock star. Before that she wanted to be an actress. As of six months ago, what do you think she wants to be when she grows up? What's the glamorous, emancipating career of choice? Of course, she wants to be a Web designer. It's such a glamorous business!

When you people do business with artists, you have to take a different view of things. We want to be treated with the respect that now goes to Web designers. We're not Dockers-wearing Intel workers from Portland who know how to "manage our stress." We don't understand or want to understand corporate culture.

I feel this obscene gold rush greedgreedgreed vibe that bothers me a lot when I talk to dot-com people about all this. You guys can't hustle artists that well. At least slick A&R guys know the buzzwords. Don't try to compete with them. I just laugh at you when you do! Maybe you could a year ago when anything dot-com sounded smarter than the rest of us, but the scam has been uncovered.

The celebrity-for-sale business is about to crash, I hope, and the idea of a sucker VC gifting some company with four floors just because they can "do" "chats" with "Christina" once or twice is ridiculous. I did a chat today, twice. Big damn deal. 200 bucks for the software and some elbow grease and a good back-end coder. Wow. That's not worth 150 million bucks.

... I mean, yeah, sure it is if you'd like to give it to me.

I know my place. I'm a waiter. I'm in the service industry.

I live on tips. Occasionally, I'm going to get stiffed, but that's OK. If I work hard and I'm doing good work, I believe that the people who enjoy it are going to want to come directly to me and get my music because it sounds better, since it's mastered and packaged by me personally. I'm providing an honest, real experience. Period.

When people buy the bootleg T-shirt in the concert parking lot and not the more expensive T-shirt inside the venue, it isn't to save money. The T-shirt in the parking lot is cheap and badly made, but it's easier to buy. The bootleggers have a better distribution system. There's no waiting in line and it only takes two minutes to buy one.

I know that if I can provide my own T-shirt that I designed, that I made, and provide it as quickly or quicker than the bootleggers, people who've enjoyed the experience I've provided will be happy to shell out a little more money to cover my costs. Especially if they understand this context, and aren't being shoveled a load of shit about "uppity" artists.

It's exactly the same with recorded music. The real thing to fear from Napster is its simple and excellent distribution system. No one really prefers a cruddy-sounding Napster MP3 file to the real thing. But it's really easy to get an MP3 file; and in the middle of Kansas you may never see my record because major distribution is really bad if your record's not in the charts this week, and even then it takes a couple of weeks to restock the one copy they usually keep on hand.

I also know how many times I have heard a song on the radio that I loved only to buy the record and have the album be a piece of crap. If you're afraid of your own filler then I bet you're afraid of Napster. I'm afraid of Napster because I think the major label cartel will get to them before I do.

I've made three records. I like them all. I haven't made filler and they're all committed pieces of work. I'm not scared of you previewing my record. If you like it enough to have it be a part of your life, I know you'll come to me to get it, as long as I show you how to get to me, and as long as you know that it's out.

Most people don't go into restaurants and stiff waiters, but record labels represent the restaurant that forces the waiters to live on, and sometimes pool, their tips. And they even fight for a bit of their tips.

Music is a service to its consumers, not a product. I live on tips. Giving music away for free is what artists have been doing naturally all their lives.

Record companies stand between artists and their fans. We signed terrible deals with them because they controlled our access to the public.

But in a world of total connectivity, record companies lose that control. With unlimited bin space and intelligent search engines, fans will have no trouble finding the music they know they want. They have to know they want it, and that needs to be a marketing business that takes a fee.

If a record company has a reason to exist, it has to bring an artist's music to more fans and it has to deliver more and better music to the audience. You bring me a bigger audience or a better relationship with my audience or get the fuck out of my way. Next time I release a record, I'll be able to go directly to my fans and let them hear it before anyone else.

We'll still have to use radio and traditional CD distribution. Record stores aren't going away any time soon and radio is still the most important part of record promotion.

Major labels are freaking out because they have no control in this new world. Artists can sell CDs directly to fans. We can make direct deals with thousands of other Web sites and promote our music to millions of people that old record companies never touch.

We're about to have lots of new ways to sell our music: downloads, hardware bundles, memory sticks, live Webcasts, and lots of other things that aren't even invented yet.

But there's something you guys have to figure out.

Here's my open letter to Steve Case:

Avatars don't talk back!!! But what are you going to do with real live artists?

Artists aren't like you. We go through a creative process that's demented and crazy. There's a lot of soul-searching and turning ourselves inside-out and all kinds of gross stuff that ends up on "Behind the Music."

A lot of people who haven't been around artists very much get really weird when they sit down to lunch with us. So I want to give you some advice: Learn to speak our language. Talk about songs and melody and hooks and art and beauty and soul. Not sleazy record-guy crap, where you're in a cashmere sweater murmuring that the perfect deal really is perfect, Courtney. Yuck. Honestly hire honestly committed people. We're in a "new economy," right? You can afford to do that.

I get really freaked out when I meet someone and they start telling me that I should record 34 songs in the next six months so that we have enough content for my site. Defining artistic expression as content is anathema to me.

What the hell is content? Nobody buys content. Real people pay money for music because it means something to them. A great song is not just something to take up space on a Web site next to stock market quotes and baseball scores.

DEN tried to build a site with artist-free content and I'm not sorry to see it fail. The DEN shows look like art if you're not paying attention, but they forgot to hire anyone to be creative. So they ended up with a lot of content nobody wants to see because they thought they could avoid dealing with defiant and moody personalities. Because they were arrogant. And because they were conformists. Artists have to deal with business people and business people have to deal with artists. We hate each other. Let's create companies of mediators.

Every single artist who makes records believes and hopes that they give you something that will transform your life. If you're really just interested in data mining or selling banner ads, stick with those "artists" willing to call themselves content providers.

I don't know if an artist can last by meeting the current public taste, the taste from the last quarterly report. I don't think you can last by following demographics and carefully meeting expectations. I don't know many lasting works of art that are condescending or deliberately stupid or were created as content.

Don't tell me I'm a brand. I'm famous and people recognize me, but I can't look in the mirror and see my brand identity.

Keep talking about brands and you know what you'll get? Bad clothes. Bad hair. Bad books. Bad movies. And bad records. And bankrupt businesses. Rides that were fun for a year with no employee loyalty but everyone got rich fucking you. Who wants that? The answer is purity. We can afford it. Let's go find it again while we can.

I also feel filthy trying to call my music a product. It's not a thing that I test market like toothpaste or a new car. Music is personal and mysterious.

Being a "content provider" is prostitution work that devalues our art and doesn't satisfy our spirits. Artistic expression has to be provocative. The problem with artists and the Internet: Once their art is reduced to content, they may never have the opportunity to retrieve their souls.

When you form your business for creative people, with creative people, come at us with some thought. Everybody's process is different. And remember that it's art. We're not craftspeople.

I don't know what a good sponsorship would be for me or for other artists I respect. People bring up sponsorships a lot as a way for artists to get our music paid for upfront and for us to earn a fee. I've dealt with large corporations for long enough to know that any alliance where I'm an owned service is going to be doomed.

When I agreed to allow a large cola company to promote a live show, I couldn't have been more miserable. They screwed up every single thing imaginable. The venue was empty but sold out. There were thousands of people outside who wanted to be there, trying to get tickets. And there were the empty seats the company had purchased for a lump sum and failed to market because they were clueless about music.

It was really dumb. You had to buy the cola. You had to dial a number. You had to press a bunch of buttons. You had to do all this crap that nobody wanted to do. Why not just bring a can to the door?

On top of all this, I felt embarrassed to be an advertising agent for a product that I'd never let my daughter use. Plus they were a condescending bunch of little guys. They treated me like I was an ungrateful little bitch who should be groveling for the experience to play for their damn soda.

I ended up playing without my shirt on and ordering a six-pack of the rival cola onstage. Also lots of unwholesome cursing and nudity occurred. This way I knew that no matter how tempting the cash was, they'd never do business with me again.

If you want some little obedient slave content provider, then fine. But I think most musicians don't want to be responsible for your clean-cut, wholesome, all-American, sugar corrosive cancer-causing, all white people, no women allowed sodapop images.

Nor, on the converse, do we want to be responsible for your vice-inducing, liver-rotting, child-labor-law-violating, all white people, no-women-allowed booze images.

So as a defiant moody artist worth my salt, I've got to think of something else. Tampax, maybe.

As a user, I love Napster. It carries some risk. I hear idealistic business people talk about how people that are musicians would be musicians no matter what and that we're already doing it for free, so what about copyright?

Please. It's incredibly easy not to be a musician. It's always a struggle and a dangerous career choice. We are motivated by passion and by money.

That's not a dirty little secret. It's a fact. Take away the incentive for major or minor financial reward and you dilute the pool of musicians. I am not saying that only pure artists will survive. Like a few of the more utopian people who discuss this, I don't want just pure artists to survive.

Where would we all be without the trash? We need the trash to cover up our national depression. The utopians also say that because in their minds "pure" artists are all Ani DiFranco and don't demand a lot of money. Why are the utopians all entertainment lawyers and major label workers anyway? I demand a lot of money if I do a big huge worthwhile job and millions of people like it, don't kid yourself. In economic terms, you've got an industry that's loathsome and outmoded, but when it works it creates some incentive and some efficiency even though absolutely no one gets paid.

We suffer as a society and a culture when we don't pay the true value of goods and services delivered. We create a lack of production. Less good music is recorded if we remove the incentive to create it.

Music is intellectual property with full cash and opportunity costs required to create, polish and record a finished product. If I invest money and time into my business, I should be reasonably protected from the theft of my goods and services. When the judgment came against MP3.com, the RIAA sought damages of $150,000 for each major-label-"owned" musical track in MP3's database. Multiply by 80,000 CDs, and MP3.com could owe the gatekeepers $120 billion.

But what about the Plimsouls? Why can't MP3.com pay each artist a fixed amount based on the number of their downloads? Why on earth should MP3.com pay $120 billion to four distribution companies, who in most cases won't have to pay a nickel to the artists whose copyrights they've stolen through their system of organized theft?

It's a ridiculous judgment. I believe if evidence had been entered that ultimately it's just shuffling big cash around two or three corporations, I can only pray that the judge in the MP3.com case would have seen the RIAA's case for the joke that it was.

I'd rather work out a deal with MP3.com myself, and force them to be artist-friendly, instead of being laughed at and having my money hidden by a major label as they sell my records out the back door, behind everyone's back.

How dare they behave in such a horrified manner in regards to copyright law when their entire industry is based on piracy? When Mister Label Head Guy, whom my lawyer yelled at me not to name, got caught last year selling millions of "cleans" out the back door. "Cleans" being the records that aren't for marketing but are to be sold. Who the fuck is this guy? He wants to save a little cash so he fucks the artist and goes home? Do they fire him? Does Chuck Phillips of the LA Times say anything? No way! This guy's a source! He throws awesome dinner parties! Why fuck with the status quo? Let's pick on Lars Ulrich instead because he brought up an interesting point!

I'm looking for people to help connect me to more fans, because I believe fans will leave a tip based on the enjoyment and service I provide. I'm not scared of them getting a preview. It really is going to be a global village where a billion people have access to one artist and a billion people can leave a tip if they want to.

It's a radical democratization. Every artist has access to every fan and every fan has access to every artist, and the people who direct fans to those artists. People that give advice and technical value are the people we need. People crowding the distribution pipe and trying to ignore fans and artists have no value. This is a perfect system.

If you're going to start a company that deals with musicians, please do it because you like music. Offer some control and equity to the artists and try to give us some creative guidance. If music and art and passion are important to you, there are hundreds of artists who are ready to rewrite the rules.

In the last few years, business pulled our culture away from the idea that music is important and emotional and sacred. But new technology has brought a real opportunity for change; we can break down the old system and give musicians real freedom and choice.

A great writer named Neal Stephenson said that America does four things better than any other country in the world: rock music, movies, software and high-speed pizza delivery. All of these are sacred American art forms. Let's return to our purity and our idealism while we have this shot.

Warren Beatty once said: "The greatest gift God gives us is to enjoy the sound of our own voice. And the second greatest gift is to get somebody to listen to it."

And for that, I humbly thank you.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Courtney Love is the lead singer of the rock group Hole, and has starred in films like "The People vs. Larry Flynt" and "Man on the Moon."

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Salon.com >> Technology

_______________________________________________________

by Steve Albini

Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed. Nobody can see what's printed on the contract. It's too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody's eyes water. The lackey shouts to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit. Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there's only one contestant left. He reaches for the pen, but the Lackey says "Actually, I think you need a little more development. Swim again, please. Backstroke". And he does of course.

Every major label involved in the hunt for new bands now has on staff a high-profile point man, an "A & R" rep who can present a comfortable face to any prospective band. The initials stand for "Artist and Repertoire." because historically, the A & R staff would select artists to record music that they had also selected, out of an available pool of each. This is still the case, though not openly. These guys are universally young [about the same age as the bands being wooed], and nowadays they always have some obvious underground rock credibility flag they can wave.

Lyle Preslar, former guitarist for Minor Threat, is one of them. Terry Tolkin, former NY independent booking agent and assistant manager at Touch and Go is one of them. Al Smith, former soundman at CBGB is one of them. Mike Gitter, former editor of XXX fanzine and contributor to Rip, Kerrang and other lowbrow rags is one of them. Many of the annoying turds who used to staff college radio stations are in their ranks as well. There are several reasons A & R scouts are always young. The explanation usually copped-to is that the scout will be "hip to the current musical "scene." A more important reason is that the bands will intuitively trust someone they think is a peer, and who speaks fondly of the same formative rock and roll experiences. The A & R person is the first person to make contact with the band, and as such is the first person to promise them the moon. Who better to promise them the moon than an idealistic young turk who expects to be calling the shots in a few years, and who has had no previous experience with a big record company. Hell, he's as naive as the band he's duping. When he tells them no one will interfere in their creative process, he probably even believes it. When he sits down with the band for the first time, over a plate of angel hair pasta, he can tell them with all sincerity that when they sign with company X, they're really signing with him and he's on their side. Remember that great gig I saw you at in '85? Didn't we have a blast. By now all rock bands are wise enough to be suspicious of music industry scum. There is a pervasive caricature in popular culture of a portly, middle aged ex-hipster talking a mile-a-minute, using outdated jargon and calling everybody "baby." After meeting "their" A & R guy, the band will say to themselves and everyone else, "He's not like a record company guy at all! He's like one of us." And they will be right. That's one of the reasons he was hired.

These A & R guys are not allowed to write contracts. What they do is present the band with a letter of intent, or "deal memo," which loosely states some terms, and affirms that the band will sign with the label once a contract has been agreed on. The spookiest thing about this harmless sounding little memo, is that it is, for all legal purposes, a binding document. That is, once the band signs it, they are under obligation to conclude a deal with the label. If the label presents them with a contract that the band don't want to sign, all the label has to do is wait. There are a hundred other bands willing to sign the exact same contract, so the label is in a position of strength. These letters never have any terms of expiration, so the band remain bound by the deal memo until a contract is signed, no matter how long that takes. The band cannot sign to another laborer or even put out its own material unless they are released from their agreement, which never happens. Make no mistake about it: once a band has signed a letter of intent, they will either eventually sign a contract that suits the label or they will be destroyed.

One of my favorite bands was held hostage for the better part of two years by a slick young "He's not like a label guy at all," A & R rep, on the basis of such a deal memo. He had failed to come through on any of his promises [something he did with similar effect to another well-known band], and so the band wanted out. Another label expressed interest, but when the A & R man was asked to release the band, he said he would need money or points, or possibly both, before he would consider it. The new label was afraid the price would be too dear, and they said no thanks. On the cusp of making their signature album, an excellent band, humiliated, broke up from the stress and the many months of inactivity. There's this band. They're pretty ordinary, but they're also pretty good, so they've attracted some attention. They're signed to a moderate-sized "independent" label owned by a distribution company, and they have another two albums owed to the label. They're a little ambitious. They'd like to get signed by a major label so they can have some security you know, get some good equipment, tour in a proper tour bus -- nothing fancy, just a little reward for all the hard work. To that end, they got a manager. He knows some of the label guys, and he can shop their next project to all the right people. He takes his cut, sure, but it's only 15%, and if he can get them signed then it's money well spent. Anyways, it doesn't cost them anything if it doesn't work. 15% of nothing isn't much! One day an A & R scout calls them, says he's 'been following them for a while now, and when their manager mentioned them to him, it just "clicked." Would they like to meet with him about the possibility of working out a deal with his label? Wow. Big Break time. They meet the guy, and y'know what -- he's not what they expected from a label guy. He's young and dresses pretty much like the band does. He knows all their favorite bands. He's like one of them. He tells them he wants to go to bat for them, to try to get them everything they want. He says anything is possible with the right attitude.

They conclude the evening by taking home a copy of a deal memo they wrote out and signed on the spot. The A & R guy was full of great ideas, even talked about using a name producer. Butch Vig is out of the question-he wants 100 g's and three points, but they can get Don Fleming for $30,000 plus three points. Even that's a little steep, so maybe they'll go with that guy who used to be in David Letterman's band. He only wants three points. Or they can have just anybody record it (like Warton Tiers, maybe-- cost you 5 or 7 grand] and have Andy Wallace remix it for 4 grand a track plus 2 points. It was a lot to think about. Well, they like this guy and they trust him. Besides, they already signed the deal memo. He must have been serious about wanting them to sign. They break the news to their current label, and the label manager says he wants them to succeed, so they have his blessing. He will need to be compensated, of course, for the remaining albums left on their contract, but he'll work it out with the label himself.

Sub Pop made millions from selling off Nirvana, and Twin Tone hasn't done bad either: 50 grand for the Babes and 60 grand for the Poster Children-- without having to sell a single additional record. It'll be something modest. The new label doesn't mind, so long as it's recoupable out of royalties. Well, they get the final contract, and it's not quite what they expected. They figure it's better to be safe than sorry and they turn it over to a lawyer--one who says he's experienced in entertainment law and he hammers out a few bugs. They're still not sure about it, but the lawyer says he's seen a lot of contracts, and theirs is pretty good. They'll be great royalty: 13% [less a 1O% packaging deduction]. Wasn't it Buffalo Tom that were only getting 12% less 10? Whatever. The old label only wants 50 grand, an no points. Hell, Sub Pop got 3 points when they let Nirvana go. They're signed for four years, with options on each year, for a total of over a million dollars! That's a lot of money in any man's English. The first year's advance alone is $250,000. Just think about it, a quarter million, just for being in a rock band! Their manager thinks it's a great deal, especially the large advance. Besides, he knows a publishing company that will take the band on if they get signed, and even give them an advance of 20 grand, so they'll be making that money too. The manager says publishing is pretty mysterious, and nobody really knows where all the money comes from, but the lawyer can look that contract over too. Hell, it's free money. Their booking agent is excited about the band signing to a major. He says they can maybe average $1,000 or $2,000 a night from now on. That's enough to justify a five week tour, and with tour support, they can use a proper crew, buy some good equipment and even get a tour bus! Buses are pretty expensive, but if you figure in the price of a hotel room for everybody In the band and crew, they're actually about the same cost. Some bands like Therapy? and Sloan and Stereolab use buses on their tours even when they're getting paid only a couple hundred bucks a night, and this tour should earn at least a grand or two every night. It'll be worth it. The band will be more comfortable and will play better.

The agent says a band on a major label can get a merchandising company to pay them an advance on T-shirt sales! ridiculous! There's a gold mine here! The lawyer Should look over the merchandising contract, just to be safe. They get drunk at the signing party. Polaroids are taken and everybody looks thrilled. The label picked them up in a limo. They decided to go with the producer who used to be in Letterman's band. He had these technicians come in and tune the drums for them and tweak their amps and guitars. He had a guy bring in a slew of expensive old "vintage" microphones. Boy, were they "warm." He even had a guy come in and check the phase of all the equipment in the control room! Boy, was he professional. He used a bunch of equipment on them and by the end of it, they all agreed that it sounded very "punchy," yet "warm." All that hard work paid off. With the help of a video, the album went like hotcakes! They sold a quarter million copies! Here is the math that will explain just how fucked they are: These figures are representative of amounts that appear in record contracts daily. There's no need to skew the figures to make the scenario look bad, since real-life examples more than abound. income is bold and underlined, expenses are not.

Advance: $ 250,000

Manager's cut: $ 37,500

Legal fees: $ 10,000

Recording Budget: $ 150,000

Producer's advance: $ 50,000

Studio fee: $ 52,500

Drum Amp, Mic and Phase "Doctors": $ 3,000

Recording tape: $ 8,000

Equipment rental: $ 5,000

Cartage and Transportation: $ 5,000

Lodgings while in studio: $ 10,000

Catering: $ 3,000

Mastering: $ 10,000

Tape copies, reference CDs, shipping tapes, misc. expenses: $ 2,000

Video budget: $ 30,000

Cameras: $ 8,000

Crew: $ 5,000

Processing and transfers: $ 3,000

Off-line: $ 2,000

On-line editing: $ 3,000

Catering: $ 1,000

Stage and construction: $ 3,000

Copies, couriers, transportation: $ 2,000

Director's fee: $ 3,000

Album Artwork: $ 5,000

Promotional photo shoot and duplication: $ 2,000

Band fund: $ 15,000

New fancy professional drum kit: $ 5,000

New fancy professional guitars [2]: $ 3,000

New fancy professional guitar amp rigs [2]: $ 4,000

New fancy potato-shaped bass guitar: $ 1,000

New fancy rack of lights bass amp: $ 1,000

Rehearsal space rental: $ 500

Big blowout party for their friends: $ 500

Tour expense [5 weeks]: $ 50,875

Bus: $ 25,000

Crew [3]: $ 7,500

Food and per diems: $ 7,875

Fuel: $ 3,000

Consumable supplies: $ 3,500

Wardrobe: $ 1,000

Promotion: $ 3,000

Tour gross income: $ 50,000

Agent's cut: $ 7,500

Manager's cut: $ 7,500

Merchandising advance: $ 20,000

Manager's cut: $ 3,000

Lawyer's fee: $ 1,000

Publishing advance: $ 20,000

Manager's cut: $ 3,000

Lawyer's fee: $ 1,000

Record sales: 250,000 @ $12 =

$3,000,000

Gross retail revenue Royalty: [13% of 90% of retail]:

$ 351,000

Less advance: $ 250,000

Producer's points: [3% less $50,000 advance]:

$ 40,000

Promotional budget: $ 25,000

Recoupable buyout from previous label: $ 50,000

Net royalty: $ -14,000

Record company income:

Record wholesale price: $6.50 x 250,000 =

$1,625,000 gross income

Artist Royalties: $ 351,000

Deficit from royalties: $ 14,000

Manufacturing, packaging and distribution: @ $2.20 per record: $ 550,000

Gross profit: $ 7l0,000

The Balance Sheet: This is how much each player got paid at the end of the game.

Record company: $ 710,000

Producer: $ 90,000

Manager: $ 51,000

Studio: $ 52,500

Previous label: $ 50,000

Agent: $ 7,500

Lawyer: $ 12,000

Band member net income each: $ 4,031.25

The band is now 1/4 of the way through its contract, has made the music industry more than 3 million dollars richer, but is in the hole $14,000 on royalties. The band members have each earned about 1/3 as much as they would working at a 7-11, but they got to ride in a tour bus for a month. The next album will be about the same, except that the record company will insist they spend more time and money on it. Since the previous one never "recouped," the band will have no leverage, and will oblige. The next tour will be about the same, except the merchandising advance will have already been paid, and the band, strangely enough, won't have earned any royalties from their T-shirts yet. Maybe the T-shirt guys have figured out how to count money like record company guys. Some of your friends are probably already this fucked.

Steve Albini is an independent and corporate rock record producer most widely known for having produced Nirvana's "In Utero".

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January 30, 2004

According to a Cornell University study, "the practices of Clear Channel, the nation’s largest radio station owner, illustrate what is wrong with federal media ownership policies that make it easier for companies to establish media monopolies."

"In six years, Clear Channel has grown from owning 44 stations to 1,239 stations today, and the corporation now generates 20 percent of all radio industry revenues. Clear Channel also owns 44 amphitheaters, 51 theaters and various clubs and arenas. According to the report, The Clear Picture on Clear Channel, Clear Channel uses several cost-cutting measures that lead to homogenized news and entertainment—and in some cases, even endanger public safety.

Clear Channel’s dominance in the radio market also makes it harder for local musicians and artists to get their music played on local stations. The conglomerate controls radio stations and owns concert promotion companies (as well as concert venues) and serves as a virtual gatekeeper controlling the two gates artists must pass through "to have a career in this industry," says Ray Hair, president of the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada local in Dallas.

Solution? Boycott Clear Channel radio, TV and concerts at these venues.

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December 01, 2003

Broadcasting and Cable shows how hard it is these days for independent cable channels to get carriage in digital service, let alone basic cable carriage. Same is true in broadcast TV, and in film, and in publishing. Whats an independent to do? Visit www.bethemedia.com for some ideas...

Jokevision President Stephen Cunningham heard a good one the other day. "What's the difference between launching a cable network and touching the moon?" a cable executive asked wryly. The answer: "Nothing."

"Nets need at least $100 million to break even....The Golf Channel and Outdoor Life Network each spent $100 million, and that was almost 10 years ago."

A $100 million barrier to entry in any market is utterly ridiculous. In exchange for digging up our streets and being granted a near-monopoly in our communities, these faceless cable conglomerates then turn around and charge independents a fortune to get decent carriage. This system is broken and demands change!

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February 14, 2004

Regarding the proposed Disney/Comcast merger, NY Times article that sums up current state of affairs for independent production:

"Media consolidation will narrow the creative outlets for independent producers and upstart cable channels and ultimately reduce choice for the viewing public. In television, independent producers have virtually disappeared in the last decade, with a handful of exceptions. In film, independent producers struggle for financing and a logistical toehold."

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May 22, 2004

It will be interesting to see how many theaters and screens this movie opens in. Traditionally, documentaries do not open on lots of screens. But traditionally, documentaries don't win Cannes' highest prize, the Palme d'Or. Nor do their Directors get 20-minute standing ovations, as Mr. Moore received in Cannes.

This is the first major film to explore the bizarre reality of 9/11, yet Americans are flocking to see cartoons. Today, Shrek2 set the record for opening in the most theaters (4,163), surpassing Spiderman's 2002 record (3,876). By contrast, the documentary "Super Size Me," in which filmmaker Morgan Spurlock risks his life to eat exclusively at McDonald's restaurants for 30 days, is in just 148 theaters. Do Americans prefer escapist fantasy over reality? Or is it that we have no choice at the cinema?

In the Matrix, the hero must choose between the red pill - willful ignorance and a life in fantasyland - or the blue pill, symbolizing awareness and the struggle for human freedom. At least Neo had a choice! Do Americans prefer the red pill, or is it shoved down our throats because of the one-two punch of ownership consolidation in content creation (the ten largest movie studios account for 99% of industry revenues) and theatrical distribution (the 12 largest theater chains control 70% of screens)?

"Fahrenheit 9/11," a scathing indictment of White House actions after the Sept. 11 attacks created by the American filmmaker Michael Moore, won the top prize on Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival. It was the first documentary to win Cannes' highest prize, the Palme d'Or, since "The Silent World" by Jacques Cousteau in 1956."

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