What They'll Never Tell You About the Music Business

by Peter M Thall

  And the record company’s dilemma? How to obtain necessary promotional assistance with the least risk, both from a financial and from a liability standpoint. Promotion is essential if records are to gain the attention of those programmers who determine which records are to be played on their airwaves. Salespeople in all fields—from watches to books, from fashion lines to airplanes—are the front-line soldiers of their respective industries. How to ensure their effectiveness is a challenge that has to be faced constantly. Things are no different in the record industry. However, the potential rewards in the music industry are so enormous, and payola charges so visible, that promotion people in the record industry stand out from the crowd.

  It is not an exaggeration to say that without promotion and promotion people, there would be few, if any, superstar recording artists. Many promotion people are stars in their own field and deserve the kudos they so infrequently receive. What makes music industry promotional people different from those in other fields with similar functions is that in the record industry the people engaging their services—directly or through the artist’s manager—are so successful in detaching themselves from the process that sometimes all control is lost and anything goes.

  Under these circumstances, the fact that the artist is expected to pay for all or a portion of promotional services is bizarre to say the least. The artist has no expertise in such matters, and probably does not even know one promotion person from another, and yet the artist’s entire career can depend on the success of the promotion person’s efforts.

  THE BEGINNING OF THE END?

  A bit of an earthquake hit the record industry in 2005. Then New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, known for his crusades against various industries allegedly serving the public interest, had gone after what he believed to be widespread payola practices permeating the record industry. The result, in the summer of 2005, was a settlement with SonyBMG Music Entertainment in which Sony BMG acknowledged that they participated in bribing broadcasting stations to “spin” their music, thereby impacting the charts, other radio stations that were in the process of selecting records to play, and the perception of the public as to which records had merit, and which were becoming popular. Investigations continue, and indictments are sure to follow. Civil lawsuits have already begun.

  According to Spitzer’s press release, the inducements for airplay took several forms, including

  • outright bribes to radio programmers, including expensive vacation packages, electronics (duh!), and other valuable items;

  • contest giveaways for stations’ listening audiences;

  • payments to radio stations to cover operational expenses;

  • retention of middlemen, known as independent promoters, as conduits for illegal payments to radio stations (remember them?);

  • payments for “spin programs,” airplay under the guise of advertising.

  Reportedly, an unintentional result of Spitzer’s investigation of broadcasters’ criteria for adding new records to their playlists was that, for some time after the investigation began, the number of radio stations that in any given week added no new records to their playlists increased by 40%.

  So, perhaps stations have stopped committing the above-listed sins for now. But what will happen down the line when an ambitious promotion executive gets a call from his CEO who says, “What do I have to do to get [name of act] on KXXX this week?” or he is told by his superior, “Johnny [name changed to protect the guilty] really wants you to do it, so cut the deal”? (Quotes are directly from the New York Attorney General’s press release.) It’s a pretty sure bet that the industry reform movement will have to take another ride on the roller coaster of life in the promotion lane.

  —

  Artists are ultimately responsible for achieving their own career goals. By the time they have found out that their undying faith that their record company, manager, lawyer, business manager, and agent know what they are doing is a chimera, it may be too late to achieve those goals, which, even if not specifically articulated, reside somewhere in their subconscious.

  There are no simple solutions to this dilemma, but as with any problem one faces in life, there are several possible approaches. Although the following suggestions have all been covered, either explicitly or implicitly, in previous chapters, they bear repeating here:

  • Stay in reality.

  • Ask questions, then evaluate the answers with a degree of skepticism.

  • Learn from your mistakes.

  • Observe others. Learn from their mistakes and from their successes.

  • Keep around you a variety of professionals with information and experience different from yours and absorb as much as possible.

  • Make sure your team is functioning as a real team. All team members as well as key personnel at the record company must meet regularly (once a week before and during the high-activity release period of an album cycle). Set long-term and short-term goals, assign responsibilities with time tables, and establish mechanisms for communication when the parties cannot meet in person.

  A BRIEF LOOK AT THE PROMOTIONAL PICTURE—FROM THE ARTIST’S POINT OF VIEW

  At a standard, mainstream record label, promotion staff is broken down according to radio station/formats (top 40, easy listening, R&B, etc.). Each format has numerous releases each week, and the promotion people responsible for those formats make appointments with radio programmers to present the records they are pushing that week. A promotion person representing a major label may get a half-hour session, during which he or she will be able to play no more than five or six records out of the fifteen or twenty “singles” the company wants to promote. (People not from a major label will be lucky if the pitch session lasts ten minutes.) There is a good chance that yours will not be one of the five or six played. (Even if it is, it faces stiff competition. After all, the programmer’s station may only add one or two new artist records a week—from all labels.)

  So, you’ve gone through all of this effort—from putting your band together, working the clubs, finding your representatives, securing a deal, recording your record, and beginning your promotional tour—in short, climbing the rungs on the ladder that is the development stage of your career—only to find that your record does not even get played for the radio programmers. Maybe the promotion person really likes your band or your record. So what? He or she can do only so much. Maybe if you’re lucky, the promotion person will hand over your record to the programmer and say, “Listen to this; if you can find a spot on the overnight, I’d appreciate it. I’m not going to play this for you because you don’t have the time, but I’m sure when you get a chance, you’ll love it.” One thing the programmer may be thinking as the record is flipped into the circular file is why, if this is such a good record, was it not one of the five or six the promotion person chose to play for the station. That your record was an afterthought solves a problem for the radio programmer. It need not be considered at all.

  Finally, it is not inappropriate to suggest that all team members recommend to each other self-help and/or management books that are sold by the carload at any major bookstore.* There is, after all, something to be learned from many of the writers of these books, and there is no reason why these lessons should be the private reserve of corporate America. I should also point out that many record companies are deeply invested in management training in the form of lectures, retreats, annual meetings, and even continuing education coursework. Since corporations and even our vaunted record companies care enough to provide education on management and self-fulfillment to their executives, why shouldn’t the rest of us—lawyers, managers, business managers—take some courses also? After all, it is in our hands that the ultimate business responsibilities of the artist’s career rests. (And it wouldn’t hurt for the artist to pursue some of this knowledge as well.)

  I speak as much for the professionals around the artist as for the artist because, after all, their common goal is success—artistic suc
cess, financial success, or some combination of these. For managers, lawyers, and others who have invested months and eventually years of their lives in the belief that a particular artist has what it takes to reach the level of success that will match the artist’s promise, a mismanaged album release or a failed promotional effort has an effect on them only slightly less painful than the effect on the artist who has to start all over again.

  I know of no law firm or accounting firm specializing in representing artists that has not had dozens of these experiences over the years. How much can one take before a decision has to be made to shift out of the “baby band” business representing talent and into real estate law representing institutions? Well, not to worry. Those professionals will always retain their love for music, their affinity for musicians and songwriters, and their willingness to negotiate the ups and downs of the music business.

  * * *

  * Popular self-help books reduce to a small number (usually ten or under) the methods by which people can identify their goals and best achieve them—Ten Ways to a Happier Life, Five Steps to Fame and Fortune, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, and others—and the messages of these books are, at least in part, transferable to the needs and aspirations of the emerging musical artist. Some other possibly useful titles I recently observed at a local bookstore are Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff—It’s All Small Stuff, The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity, Profiting from Experience, A Quick and Simple Guide to Taking Charge of Your Life, 365 Daily Lessons in Self Mastery, Dare to Be Yourself, and (I liked this title) An Idiot’s Guide to Managing Your Time. And let’s not forget the estimable The Power of Positive Thinking.

  10 • TOURING CONCERNS

  Trials and Tribulations

  Recordings are really for people who live in Timbuktu.

  —AARON COPLAND

  This chapter is not meant for the faint of heart. The subject is touring: moving large numbers of people and huge amounts of equipment from place to place so that from one to ten singers and musicians can entertain even larger numbers of people. The fans do not have to find the artists; the artists will come to them…for a price. And that price is not just the price of the ticket; it is often the price of a career, a marriage, a life.

  The secret of successful touring—club tours but especially what I call grand tours—is in the details. A competent tour manager will know whether all the equipment and transportation chosen for a tour fit together well and what it will take to make everything work. Although it should go without saying that one should choose a competent and experienced tour manager, many artists feel secure with certain people who have been associated with them since the days they were hauling their instruments around in a borrowed van, and they like to reward these people by advancing them to higher positions in their touring lives. While this is probably how most tour managers do get their starts, it still is important to be cautious when selecting people whose competence may mean the difference between success and failure of each performance and, ultimately, of the tour itself.

  Before reviewing the nature and characteristics of the club tour and the grand tour, I offer these thoughts. While certain artists can perform anywhere (the Rolling Stones, the ultimate bar band, loves to play in small clubs on the way to 75,000-seat arenas), most have to balance the available options with an understanding of who they are, who their audience is (or should be), and how to reach their audience. It can give an artist a false sense of value to be part of a subscription series (for example, sponsored by performing arts centers, or PACs). The venue is sold out. The people are behaved, polite, and fairly responsive. Yet if the artist tried to sell a ticket across the street at a regular rock or pop venue, he or she might be surprised at the lack of interest. Subscription series also boast older audiences and little press. This scenario is particularly apt in the jazz field, but it applies in every genre. Other artists may follow the radio play of their records and mix and match money dates with promotional dates.

  Artists take heed: making decisions regarding the right venues—at the right times—requires strategic planning. Artists, managers, and agents who chase the dollar in the short run may be overlooking initiatives that will build the artist’s career over the long run.

  The kinds of venues that have offered opportunities for young artists to be seen and heard, but just as importantly, to develop their identities and performing skills, are harder to come by than at any time in the last fifty-plus years. In a word, they are disappearing—and not just in the United States. Many reasons explain this phenomenon, including economics—those of the venue owners and those of the potential customers. Most countries, the United States included, have experienced a serious recession (or recessions) in recent years. Yet those recessions have been followed in many instances by incredible building booms throughout the country—gentrifying depressed neighborhoods which are often the locations of basement clubs appealing to the cutting edge newbys that enter the music industry every day. So they move—in New York City, for example, from midtown to the Village, to the Lower East Side, to Brooklyn’s Greenpoint, Williamsburg, and lately, Bushwick. Take the trip (virtually on a map or actually on public transportation) and you will essentially have experienced a travelogue featuring the former (and the next) exponents of cutting edge music comprising our culture.

  Many articles have appeared and punditry expressed which present the view that touring income is replacing the income of artists who, in a different, though recent, era, would earn the substantial part of their music business/career revenue from the sale of records and from mechanical royalties derived from the reproduction on their or others’ records of musical compositions they wrote. A recent study by SeatSmart (www.​seatsmart.​com), the online ticket broker, suggested that while touring is still generating real money for artists, in this era of lower record sales, it is no wonder that record labels want a piece of it. Remember, record labels are now demanding, and obtaining, a share of touring income via their “360” exclusive agreements with their artists. Still, while tour revenues have gone up, they have not come close to replacing the lost income resulting from the sinking sales of CD albums. Indeed, ticket sales numbers over the past several years have gone down, and we all know that the cost of a ticket has gone way up. My reference in chapter 9 to touring income replacing record income is due to the fact that overall data supports this conclusion. However, it should be noted that this data is skewed due to it coming from large grossing acts (with a great percentage of touring income). Touring for all but the 1% is no panacea for the losses of revenue resulting from the diminution of actual physical CD sales taken together with the puny royalties payable by streaming services, all in the face of rampant piracy which still continues throughout the world. Reduced performance venues, the high price of gasoline (or at least the irregularity of such prices), insurance costs where the act bothers to protect its van and its instruments and sound systems—all further impact the economics of the other 99%. It is not a pretty picture. Those articles and blogs that say otherwise (and “touring is replacing record sales” has become the conventional wisdom among the noncognoscenti) are simply wrong. No, they don’t know it all.

  Thank goodness for the festivals whose prominence has risen many-fold in the last few years. Not only do they offer a lot of bang for the buck, but the artists who perform at the festivals are a far broader cross-section of the evolving musical scene than are tour dates featuring one act only with perhaps an opening act. What the Rolling Stones would do by offering opening act opportunities to an array of new artists over the course of a world tour, festivals are now doing in spades. There is no problem with attendance at (most) festivals, and often the least-known participant reaches an audience that it could never reach via half-baked marketing and promotion that too often characterizes the efforts of those who “do it themselves.” (See chapter 16.)

  THE CLUB TOUR

  New artists are marketed in essentially two ways: via radio and via live performance
s. Other options do not have the same success rate. Whatever the Internet does to ease the distribution of their music, artists and their art must first come to the consumer’s attention. Distribution is everything. Social media sites and other indie-oriented sites can provide some exposure. But the major league, the mainstream? That is still usually only achieved via airplay and touring. We explored radio promotion in chapter 9. It is time to talk about live touring.

  It will come as no surprise that in order to fashion a successful endeavor, there must be an enormous amount of coordination among the artist, the record company, and the artist’s lawyers, managers, business managers, and booking agents. You may say that this is beginning to sound as if it is going to cost real money: You’re right. A young rock-and-roll band will need subsidies to travel from club to club and city to city. And the travel map is not haphazardly drawn; it very carefully traces the response to the record on radio and among fans.

  Of course, not only does the artist not make any money from this process, his or her unrecouped red position at the record company begins to rise astronomically.

  Another characteristic of the club tour is that just as little kids do not always understand the value of a dollar, artists at this stage of development generally do not understand what they are supposed to be doing; thus, the record company, which usually pays the deficits incurred by such tours, places the artists in a totally dependent mode. Like children, they are given allowances (although they are called per diems), told where they can stay, what they can afford, and what to do. They awake to different rooms and different cities on an almost daily basis. A tour during the promotion of an album can last a year or more and take the artist to fifty or more cities, often more than once, and a half-dozen countries. Their lives are no more similar to yours and mine than are the lives of minor league baseball players traveling from game to game by bus.