music, artists, labels, internet

MUSIC: "An unprecedented 13 Boston Music Awards..." Find out why Ellis Paul has such a connection with his fans...

Posted by: Meet:  Ellis Paul of www.ellispaul.com on October 03, [19103] at 02:48:53: ''The main thing is to somehow convey who I am, visually,'' says Paul, who grew up in a potato-farming family in Maine and recently moved back to his home state after 15 years in Boston. ''We're trying to put my personality onto the site. This music isn't in the mainstream, on TV and in magazines, so people visit the Web site because it's one of the only places to communicate with me and be part of that group." "PIHS class of 83"

In Reply to: Thoughts for today...RIAA-Free File Sharing, and how it effects Ellis Paul..

posted by Scott AJ Campbell on October 02, [19103] at 14:20:23:

oct 2nd, 2003
midnight
pittsburgh

good question scott--

The file swapping rampant wild downloading pirates are enjoying the high seas of a transitional period between the old music industry and the new music industry. And hell, I don't blame them-- yes... modern record contracts read like a legal form of slavery --- yet every starving musician still dreams of signing one. Major label Cd's are over priced, big stars are over paid, ticket prices too high.

There are obvious reasons why downloading free stuff from the net is good for consumers-- it's free, accessable, you don't have to leave your home to get the White album, you help to slay the evil dragon Record label execs... but it's still illegal-- songs are the creative works of artists, and the recordings are owned by the labels. These people rightly deserve and need compensation for their work-- which often requires tens of thousands of dollars in costs and hundreds of hours in labor in the studios. But this new technology is so pervasive in how we now consume music that almost EVERYTHING about labels, their perception of success, and their accounting practices need to change.

Does illegal downloading hurt the labels? ABSOLUTELY...
Does illegal downloading hurt the little guy? The artists? Yes, but to differing degrees.
Does downloading help the artists? Yes-- occasionally, and to differing degrees.

Does the hurt and help to the artist balance out in the long run? No, I believe overall, it hurts the artist more than helps. This is because the industry hasn't adjusted yet to the new paradigm... but the tide is turning...

Some bands have seen big exposure on the net from free downloads... it's a great place to market unknown bands and bands that have left the eye of MTV and the billboard charts can use it to get their songs out to people... it can be used as a great marketing tool-- bands should have the wits to release free sample downloads to promote new collections... (I can't, because I don't own most of my recordings)

Does it hurt Ellis Paul?

It's a mixed bag-- people in Europe where I am less in distribution can find me on the net for free, someone can discover one song online and then go buy my whole collection at stores, and Adrian can download 70 of my songs in Canada (as he has, because he can't find a store there that carries me) and he can become a fan without spending a cent... For Adrian, that's seven albums worth of music that is $15 per cd-- $105 total dollars if he found a Borders with me in the shelves... but the $105 is really Borders, the distributors, and Rounder Records money, not mine-- of that $105 lost to Adrian at Borders, about $42 dollars of it would have went to Rounder. Borders and the distributor who brought it to Borders, lose $63... Of that $42 of Rounder money, I am owed about $7 from the sales, and $.70 per cd in songwriter royalties...
I am supposed to receive about &1.70 per cd... but......

Under my contract, under an item I call the "slave" clause, which is a standard industry item in any label contract, my $7 is withheld by Rounder until my recording debt is paid off to the label... I have never seen a cent from store sales... "slave II clause is that %25 percent of store sales are deemed "returnable or damaged" and thus don't count as my royalty against my debt"...so truly, I don't lose out in the bargain until after I pay my debt to Rounder, which has never happened-- soooo Rounder keeps all the money--- but pays my songwriter royalties of $.07 per song.

Adrian's 70 ellis paul downloads worth $105 in stores, worth $42 to Rounder, are worth about $4.90 in publishing royalties to me...

Which is not that big of a deal to ME, as long as Adrian comes out to a bunch of shows and eventually buys some cd's-- but it is a big deal to the industry- stores, labels, distributors... imagine if it was 100,000 Adrians downloading those 7 cd's! That's 700,000 lost sales! That would be $490,000 that Ellis Paul would lose in publishing royalties! The label would lose
$4,200,000... the industry overall would lose $10,500,000!!

It's a big deal to THEM, and Rounder will decide to keep me or drop me according to their profit statement on my account. How much have we made at Borders on Ellis Paul? Has Ellis paid his debt to us? How much is he behind?
That $42 of Adrian's isn't important to me up close, but from my relationship with Rounder, and their perception of my "worthiness" -- it becomes very important to me.

Rounder is great as far as labels go. They use fairly standard industry contracts. The problem is that the standards for industry contracts are now completely out of whack with the times...

Labels judge an artist's success by record sales and financial returns, not by the downloads, and certainly not by the quality of their music-- they may be signed based on quality, saleability, or both, but in the end-- you only stick around based on your return for the label. They like numbers at labels.

They give awards based on numbers, 500,000 for gold, 1,000,000 sales for platinum.

The music industry has lost about %30 of their overall sales in just three years. A band that used to be gold in the year 2000, now is selling about 350,000. Illegal downloading is the main reason for this.

My friend Flynn just found out Cher is recording one of his songs! It's going to be in a Farrelly Brothers film-- no word on whether an album will carry the song... but the day the movie comes out-- the song will be on the net, thousands will illegally down load it, which will compromise the soundtrack if released at stores. It won't hurt Cher's financial life to have a bunch of illegal downloads-- but what about Flynn? He's a struggling songwriter trying to make his way-- and Cher's people may actually ask him for another song for her if the song does well-- FINANCIALLY.
A publisher may sign Flynn if the song makes money for Flynn... The movie album of multiple artists on a soundtrack won't sell if you can get the Cher song on the net why buy the rest of the songs, you could care less about.

"The Body Guard" sound track sold 11 million copies in the early nineties-- but if you could have downloaded Whitney Houston's "I will always love you" for free back then-- (Do you remember any other song from the movie?) I doubt the soundtrack would have been released at all. Certainly to far lesser sales if it had been released.

Anyway...

What can be done?

Well, I think the days of the traditional album are going bye-bye... This will be a song by song biz on the net-- people will release collections on the web, but you will download what you like from them. Song by song... that's fair... i think bands will release a free download or two with every collection as an advertisement for the rest of the new collection. Songs will have to drop in price below a buck a piece on the net.

Ipods will take over.

People will come to respect intellectual property of labels and artists when prices drop to a fair amount, when technology to track illegal downloads improves, and when the fear of lawsuits makes their mouses scurry away. The industry should establish a system to monitor down loads and include their numbers when assessing a bands success....

The record labels ought to work on their public image, by changing their business practices and by improving contractual relationships with their artists. So they don't look like Darth Vader.

anyway.. that's my $.07...

see you soon!
Ellis

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Ellis Paul was Featured Link on flashmacromedia.com in the summer of 2004.

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