Sometimes you eat the bear...

The events of last week have got me thinking in a something-less-than-sanguine manner about the nature of the music industry again. (If you’ve not been in school lately, I discovered my manager of 14 years was robbing me blind, and had to take Xtreme Measures to sort things out in a hurry.) It seems to me that, in this business, there’s two distinct classes.

The first class (what we’ll call the Untouchables) is mostly made up of musicians, and to a lesser extent those that immediately surround them and answer only to them. These sorts include FOH and monitor engineers, recording engineers, stage techs, band LDs and the like. Essentially, people that make their living directly from the actual act of actually creating music, either live or in the studio.

The other class, the ones we’ll call Brahmans for the purposes of this essay, includes virtually everyone else. These are the people that make money off of musicians and the creation of music, either live or in the studio, but have no creative output to speak of. Now, I’m no doubt going to generate a bit of guff here, but I’m going to lump producers in to this category as well. I mean, if George Martin hadn’t found himself the Beatles, would he be remembered as The Man Who Brought The World Spike Milligan? Seriously? I won’t deny the input that a producer has in to the creative process, as I am one myself, but the process needs to exist in the first place. Also in this category we put lawyers, managers, accountants, everyone that works at record labels, publishers, t-shirt companies, record stores, TuneCore, CD Baby, et al.

Now, there are those various people, like me, who straddle the worlds of the Untouchables and the Brahmans. I’m a musician, but I also make money off musicians, as a producer, software developer, and publisher. It’s worth noting that for people like me, it’s fairly obvious what side of the business to be in if you’re interested in, say, paying for groceries. I make more money in a year with Audio Damage than I did in ten years of fronting a moderately successful band. And I’ll note that in that band I never signed away my publishing (which is the number one way you don’t get paid as a signed musician, it must be said) and retained all rights except master use of my first four records, and all rights of the next three.

Let’s talk about Brahmans for a bit. These people are the sort of people that want to work in the music industry because it’s cool but can’t make music, for whatever reason. The guy at Guitar Center that works at the accessories counter is probably the best example of the most direct way to earn a living via the good offices of musicians, but if you broaden your field of vision, you’ll see that guy is no different than the guy that owns a PA company, or the chick that proofreads the liner notes at the label, or the paralegal that does research for the entertainment attorney, or the dude that does the format conversions at TuneCore. All of these people make a living off a musician’s creative output, usually at the direct expense of the musician, but sometimes in an indirect manner. (For an indirect example, you need look no further than the bartenders at your favorite venue.)

Now, many of these people are necessary, and I certainly won’t be first in line to begrudge the format conversion dude at TuneCore, because he lets me spend my time playing video games (for, uhhhh… inspiration!) instead of figuring out how to submit songs to all these different services. I’m more than happy to give him his share of the twenty bucks or whatever it is I pay to TuneCore per year per album.

Nor would I say that it is easy to get by without a manager if you have even moderate success, unless you work in particular genres that don’t require one. (I doubt Robert Rich has one, for instance, and he does fine, and plays theaters to nice crowds.) And a booking agent? God forbid you have to book a 3-month run for a genre band. I’ve done it, and let me say that I’d gladly give a large percentage of the income to someone else to make those phone calls. Routing sucks so hard, and if someone is good at it and likes to do it, then by all means, here’s 15%.

And signing any contract without proper legal advice is essentially the same as saying “well, this music thing is okay, but what I really want to do is be a bartender.” That’s exactly what’s gonna happen to you if you sign a recording contract or publishing agreement without a lawyer.

That paragraph brings me to my point, albeit in a roundabout way. When iTunes says “WOW! 65% GOES DIRECTLY TO THE ARTIST!” people tend to believe that. You and I know that’s bullshit, and Harry Fox can suck my hairy (yet admittedly somewhat foxy) balls, quite frankly. More like .03%, when all is said and done. But what the public perceives as the music industry, which is all musicians, plus George Martin, plus those shady folks that go around suing everybody for downloading, fails to take in to account the 95% of the iceberg that is underwater. Even the figures released by the RIAA alternately trumpeting their yearly success or bemoaning their yearly failures don’t even begin to scratch the surface of this behemoth, which includes everything from companies that rent PAs and semis (Clair Bros.) to companies that silkscreen t-shirts (Contagious Graphics) to the folks that bring the Roach Coach to shed shows, to Miller Genuine Draft, to Monster Cable, to the guys that rent CNC time to make the metal parts of Monomes.

In short, this business is fucking ginormous, and it’s easy to say “well, I’m a musician, and thus this entire industry is underneath me.” Bad news, dude. You’re at the bottom of this particular food chain. If you make music, let it be for the love of making music, and not because you want to make a living. Sometimes you eat the bear, but usually the bear eats you.