skip Heller <velaires@earthlink.net> wrote:
In an ideal world, there would be be no subsidy to speak of. A musician would have to go up in front of an audience, collect his fee from the promotor, and sell his own records at the end of the night, and, whatever he makes, that's the money.
(Before Ellery Eskelin objects to this, I've seen him sell enough to CDs at one gig to cover a bandmember's plane ticket and motel room, so shut up and prove my point, Ellery.)
Hey Skip, No disagreement from me...in an "ideal world" that is. But we ain't got one 'a them. But hell, lot's of shit gets subsidized, all the way up to big business and their tax breaks...oh, and don't forget that those CDs we sell cost something up front, so it's not all gravy. Even if I made and pressed them myself it would still take awhile to recoup the investment, particularly if I want to pay my musicans what I think they're worth. Tour CD sales help but it may not be as much as it looks. But it's more and more becoming the norm to sell on the gigs since the shops are not at all consistent in stocking these things. And besides, Gerry Hemingway is the king of on stage sales, one night in Ann Arbor I witnessed 75 CDs fly off the stage during a 15 minute break. Now that's a decent chunk of change...
I remember seeing Ellery's trio in '95 in one of the little rooms at the Knit playing for less people than I have fingers
I remember that gig!
And I'm reasonably sure this wasn't the only night that trio faced that unhappiness.
No, but thankfully things are a little better these days... Oh and Herb, I get the digest version of the Z-list which is pretty mush straight text. And in your responses to my messages there is no visual distinction between your text and mine, so it's a little hard to read...but thanks for your comments. EE ================================= ELLeRY ESKELiN/MiCHELLE VAn NaTTA RaMiChElLeRy/PrImE SoUrCe PrOdUcTiOnS http://home.earthlink.net/~eskelin/ =================================
on 4/23/03 11:40 AM, Ellery Eskelin at eskelin@earthlink.net wrote:
Hey Skip, No disagreement from me...in an "ideal world" that is. But we ain't got one 'a them. But hell, lot's of shit gets subsidized, all the way up to big business and their tax breaks...oh, and don't forget that those CDs we sell cost something up front, so it's not all gravy. Even if I made and pressed them myself it would still take awhile to recoup the investment, particularly if I want to pay my musicans what I think they're worth. Tour CD sales help but it may not be as much as it looks. But it's more and more becoming the norm to sell on the gigs since the shops are not at all consistent in stocking these things. And besides, Gerry Hemingway is the king of on stage sales, one night in Ann Arbor I witnessed 75 CDs fly off the stage during a 15 minute break. Now that's a decent chunk of change...
Trust me on this -- you'll recoup your money a lot faster if you self-press. In fact, you WILL ACTUALLY HOLD -- IN YOUR HANDS -- THE MONEY THE DISC GENERATES. Even if getting the things in stores was easier, Tower has a year to pay. Between the bandstand, the net, and those little distributors that service Downtown Music Gallery and that one store in every city that stocks you or me or our nefarious little buddies, you'll reach your audience more expediently. Frank I don't think an Ellery customer or a Skip customer is shopping at Tower these days anyway. As for tax breaks subsidizing big business: at least in California, they've subsidized my business (right along with the BMI from the Flintstones and shit like that). I put almost all my income back into my business. As for paying people what they're worth, I pay my regulars well above what the union says they're worth for film/cartoon stuff, so if I have to pay 'em less on one of my sessions, they don't mind too much, as long as they're the first call for everything. CD sales do vary, but I've found that they really do pay for a serious chunk on a day-to-day basis. The road is a "$20 here- $50 there" operation (food per diems, gas, van rental etc). If I can defray $100 a night of that, that's a pretty good clip off the stuff the gig itself pays for (plane tickets, band salaries, and motels being the main stuff). Also, I'm the kind who'll book a gig in a town like Oshkosh or a high school clinic just so we're playing every night, and I've never had a bad experience with those sorts of things, even if only five people show up. Plus, it keeps money coming in for the van and the fuel, not to mention defraying some of the bigger costs. Call me crazy, but I'm a great believer in cutting out as many middlemen as possible. sh np: the lottie lenya album
skip Heller wrote:
Trust me on this -- you'll recoup your money a lot faster if you self-press. In fact, you WILL ACTUALLY HOLD -- IN YOUR HANDS -- THE MONEY THE DISC GENERATES.
Hi Skip, It really depends, I've done both and I prefer it when a company can pay up front to get the band into a decent studio and pay eveyone up front. Then I buy copies from the company and sell them on stage. I can recoup what I put out for the copies easily enough but I just wanted to point out that it's not pure profit.
Between the bandstand, the net, and those little distributors that service Downtown Music Gallery and that one store in every city that stocks you or me or our nefarious little buddies, you'll reach your audience more expediently.
Mmm...yes and no...I have a direct conduit to the folks who come to the show but the company has a wider overall reach. So we work together. ================================= ELLeRY ESKELiN/MiCHELLE VAn NaTTA RaMiChElLeRy/PrImE SoUrCe PrOdUcTiOnS http://home.earthlink.net/~eskelin/ =================================
on 4/23/03 2:09 PM, Ellery Eskelin at eskelin@earthlink.net wrote:
skip Heller wrote:
Trust me on this -- you'll recoup your money a lot faster if you self-press. In fact, you WILL ACTUALLY HOLD -- IN YOUR HANDS -- THE MONEY THE DISC GENERATES.
Hi Skip, It really depends, I've done both and I prefer it when a company can pay up front to get the band into a decent studio and pay eveyone up front. Then I buy copies from the company and sell them on stage. I can recoup what I put out for the copies easily enough but I just wanted to point out that it's not pure profit.
It you can get someone to pay you up front and then sell you the copies at a real reasonable price (half of wholesale is typical in the punk rock world), then you are in a good place of you're not concerned with owning your own masters.
Between the bandstand, the net, and those little distributors that service Downtown Music Gallery and that one store in every city that stocks you or me or our nefarious little buddies, you'll reach your audience more expediently.
Mmm...yes and no...I have a direct conduit to the folks who come to the show but the company has a wider overall reach. So we work together.
HatArt, perhaps. But a good distributor has that power, which gets their stuff into the stores (especially the stores that don't return Joe Morris new disc three weeks after it comes out to make more room for that new Metheny product) has more power. When I see SoundScans of which record stores/outlets my records are sold out of, it's rarely Tower or Virgin and always Amoeba-type stores (which is in many ways what Tower used to be). I'm sure Tim berne is sticking with Screwgun as his primary thing because he's noticed how much of himself and his own power he gets to keep. CAREER SUICIDE was the first record I ever made where I got an actual artist (not composer) royalty check, and that was because I paid for as much about it as I knew how to before I let a label (Dionysus) handle it. The pressing is now less than 20 copies from being sold out. And my artists royalties are based on sales, not publishing, not an advance, less than a year after the record came out. My initial cash outlay -- $1000 to press it up (the masters had long since been paid for). I kept 500 -- for which I did not have to pay -- up front. Within a month, I had gone into profit off the bandstand. After the WIRE review, I went past that about double (largely because European sales from Dionysus to a Euro distibutor are not very returnable) into gravy. Then, licensing three tracks for use on a Tony Hawk DVD brought the total up yet again. And this is before BMI, publishing, or artist royalties figure in. And all this on something where there was a pressing of 1200 copies, 200 of which went the promo route. 500 copies went from 8-10 dollars each -- about $4500. The copies that went the label route (about 480) brought me 3 dollars apiece. Again -- this is without figuring in publishing or use in other mediums of masters I own. Do the math and you can see why I'm much happier in this position than any other I ever found myself in with a record company. It doesn't hurt that Dionysus is run by the most honest person I know. Only drawback -- before I found CDBaby, I had to go to the post office once a week and deal with that end of things by myself when I was selling off my own website. I understand that some people don't want to work this hard at it, but this is what I do, so I'm fine with it. The lesson to me: Be painfully realistic about how many copies of something people will really be willing to buy and you too can do alright with something for which there's not a large audience. Forget "potential" and go right to "it is what it is". sh
participants (2)
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Ellery Eskelin -
skip Heller