SnapcaseZA wrote
Come on guys...unions would just kill the amateur muso and his weekend band. And there's definitely not enough muso's who play live to warrant one in the first place.
Donovan has it right, we really need good band managers, or local labels which hold the artists interests at heart, not their own pockets.
Labels have to think of their pockets. They have to make enough money for it to be worth their while to continue.
There's always a trade off between "music" and "business". Back in the 60s producer Joe Boyd took on a lot of acts that other managers and labels wouldn't have touched with a barge pole. Basically his philosophy was to put the aesthetic before the pragmatic and bet that if the music was interesting then success would follow - or at least enough success that it would be worth everybody's while to continue.
Now we should be grateful to Boyd because he produced some great records that might not otherwise have been cut (either the artist wouldn't have been signed in the first place, or would have been put under less sympathetic production), but most of the acts he signed did not make anything that could reasonably be described as a "fortune". His label first got into serious debt with Polygram, got bailed out by Island and then started running into problems again because income was less than expenditure as he continued to make records that had very little chance of commercial success.
As Mr Micawber said (more or less): "Annual income ten pounds, annual expenditure nine pounds, 19 shillings and sixpence. Result: Happiness. Annual income ten pounds, annual expenditure 10 pounds and sixpence. Result: Misery."
Some labels are more concerned with aesthetics and artistic freedom than others, but any act has to sell enough to make it worthwhile to put them in a studio, produce the CDs (or MP3s or whatever distribution medium), do the promo work and so on. OR the artist has to take on many of those costs themselves and rely on the label just to do distribution.
I also think that people aren't looking in the right places. Shannon Hope is playing at TJ's this Thursday. I should have asked her if she'd do a workshop session first! She's written her own music, recorded a CD (she co-produced), put it out on her own indy label and is getting loads of gigs. All of that, and she's been able to give up her day job, with no support from (and hence debts incurred to) a major label (or even a smaller label). Laurie Levine has her 2nd disc out on Rhythm Records, a local indy label. She's making the records she wants to make with a good producer (Dan Roberts) and good musicians in the studio (Sez Adamason, Liz Wiid et al).
Also at TJ's on Thursday is Gil Hockman. Yes... you guessed it. Gil has his own disc out, and a disc with his band Buckwheat Underground. And, as you will see on his web site, he's getting gigs.
Take heart! There are ways to do this, and the local managers, producers and labels are not by definition unconcerned with the artists and the art.
However, at some point, and with any artist on any label in any country, the books have to balance.
