The financial structure of the record industry has for years been centered around the idea of “upfront money” that is often an advance. Whereas upon signing with a major label, an artist often receives a substantial amount of upfront money, an “advance” and from that point on is then in debt to their record label until the artists record sell enough copies to pay back the advance, recording costs, studio and musician expenses are added to the total of recoupable amount owed the record label making it seemingly impossible to ever pay back what is owed, and it’s compounded by the fact that the record label keeps the books. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are an untold number of recording artist who have for decades, not seen a dime in recording royalties because their advance has never been recouped to major labels where the deck is stacked against them with little accountability and even less transparency. Most artists, especially black legacy artists actually make their living playing live performances and track dates. Those truths have always been one of the often whispered catch-22’s of the music business. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Change to the way major record labels operate is slowly coming, but make no mistake, the record industry is still driven by the majors but now that the medium and mechanism of success is achieved and measured in streams and downloads instead of the physical sale of vinyl and CD’s <\/p>\n\n\n\n
BMG Music has heralded their new way of doing business that emphasizes fairness and transparency to their signees’ for at least two years or more and they advertise it on their main website for all to see, and this past June, Sony Music Entertainment launched a program called Artist Forward<\/em> where their legacy artists and their heirs might actually start receiving money their recordings have been earning all along. The new Sony initiative, much like BMG;s promises to prioritize transparency for creators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rolling Stone features an article about the difficulties encountered by the heirs of Johnnie Taylor who’s 1975 debut album ‘Eargasm’ <\/em>on Sony\/CBS featured his only crossover hit “Disco Lady” which sold so many records the RIAA created a new designation “Platinum” (2 million sold) to celebrate his colossal sales, Johnnie Taylor went down in the history books as the first artist to be certified Platinum, the singer made several other hits during his stint at the Sony owned label, though none as huge as his first, and since his death in 2000, his heirs are wondering where is the money as Taylor’s catalog at Sony gas continued to earn money since his departure from the label in 1982. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The financial structure of the record industry has for years been centered around the idea of “upfront money” that is often an advance. Whereas upon signing with a major label, an artist often receives a substantial amount of upfront money, an “advance” and from that point on is then in debt to their record label […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[196],"tags":[298,299],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhythmnation.online\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhythmnation.online\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhythmnation.online\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhythmnation.online\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhythmnation.online\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/rhythmnation.online\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":833,"href":"https:\/\/rhythmnation.online\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826\/revisions\/833"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhythmnation.online\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhythmnation.online\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhythmnation.online\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhythmnation.online\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}