What option would be the best?

Please consider these factors : Money made, quality of life, artistic liberty, ...

Option 1 :

Your an independant artist, you do it all yourself. You sell 10 000 albums.

Option 2 :

You are signed to a big indie label, which pay your studio time and for promo (of course they want the money back). You sell 30 000 copies of your album.

Option 3 :

Your signed to a major label. You sell 300 000 copies of your album.

Well,

It depends on what your goals are as an artist and what the contracts details are. They're positives and negatives to every agreement. Obviously, you'll have more "artistic freedom" by going the indie route. That being said though what kind of freedom will you have in terms of time freedom?

Give more details about CD costs etc. for each situation Poker.....It's not as cut and dry of an answer as it may seem.

Whatever makes you the most money in a span of three years. Steve's right - without seeing the contracts and such, it's hard to say. My guess would be you'd make the most money yourself, but it depends on how low you can keep your costs down.

I subscribe to the philosophy that Brian Austin Whitney (of JPF) quotes... If you can gain 5,000 real fans, ie they'll buy your CD and they'll come see you when you play, then you can make a living at it, if you are smart and play your cards right.

And come out with new, great music each year, that those 5,000 people will love, and tour so they can pay to see you.

I added the last part.

Option 1 : You keep all the money of your sales, 5$ a CD.

50 000$

Option 2 : You keep 4$ for each sale, but after recouping costs of 50 000$

4*30 000 = 120 000$ - 50 000$ = 70 000$

Option 3 : You keep 1$ for each sale, after recouping costs of 300 000$

300 000$ - 300 000$ = 0 $

I would go for the major, would help my music reach more people eventually. I make music to reach people. Not to make money.

I see your point, but it won't be 'your' music anymore if you are on a major label. They will change it to fit their criterias.

and not every band on a major label gets released. labels will hold onto bands because they think a trend may be coming that your band may or may not fit.... and if it doesn't they may drop you and you've sat on your ass doing nothing for 2 years and getting nothing for it because a label wanted to wait and see.

although i think the math of the above calculations was a little off, as of the research i've been doing i would be aiming to stay more independent although an indy label is also an option. if i could record an independent release (of radio quality of course) and get a distro contract, then i think i would have hit what would be the best of both worlds: no major overhead to payback to the label and the main chunk of sales comes back to the band.

at least, that's what my reading has lead me to believe is a good idea.

how do you get a distro contract without major label support? Seems pretty damn hard!

as far as i've READ, you basically have to be really well established....like to the point they would consider signing you. the main thing is that if you go with the distro deal, it's pretty much no risk for the label. you do the recording, producing, etc etc, and printing of the cd's and you use them to distribute your cd through their massive, well established machine, and they help to promote you a little to make sure the product gets pushed. it basically works as they become a sales rep of a product instead of having to 'invent' the product to sell.

the only thing i would ASSUME is that you would be best off going this route AFTER being with indie label. the reason being is they can help you get the establishment you need and the recognition by the major label for them to consider it.

it's considerably more work as you are the one who will be taking the risk and having to do the hiring, taking out the loans, etc. but the payout should be more as you can usually pull it off on a smaller budget and not have the overhead so that you pull in a LOT MORE of the cd's value.

this is one of the more recent books i've been reading and i definitely reccomend it:

http://www.amazon.com/How-Make-New-Music-Business/dp/0823079546/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236295699&sr=1-2

there is a large section of the book though that covers stuff like 'finding your sound' (which i found to be kind of pointless), 'recording yourself' (which is good for beginners), and an 'songwriting inspiration' (i had no idea why that was there, it was just kind of profiling a huge songwriter) that i wasn't so interested in but asides from that it had a lot of good concepts that seem to make sense. the big thing he covers is how you can maximize your profit and still get the same coverage as a label by not giving them the money you could be earning by doing the work yourself (where it makes sense). of course you also have to take some of it with a grain of salt, but i still think it's a good read.

You make $1 per CD and end up still owing the label for leftover production and advertising costs, they drop you cause 300k sales to them is a waste of time, and then send you the bill for the difference. You end up touring every little bar and cafe you can find, dirt poor, trying to pay them back. Eventually you pay them back and are dirt poor for it, or you end up going bankrupt, and if you are lucky enough to be a one-hit-wonder, VH1 might show the world how pathetic your life is 20 years later.

This is not a bust on you, but a fair interpretation of the major labels.

Depends long term goals also. If you are starting out, it might be possible to find a descent indie label that can invest in you, build you up for the term of the contract and after a few years, get you to a point you would have never been able to get to on your own. At that point, if their work helped you get a few thousand real fans because of all their efforts and you feel a need to do everything on your own, don't renew ...

I'm sure the contract is a little more complicated than that but either way, knowing what your long term intentions are might be good to be convinced on before negotiating a contract so you can make sure to have some room later on to go indie.

I personally like the idea of a solid team being built around a project. If it's the right team, I'm sure it'll get your music in front of a lot more people than you may be able to on your own. Plus, managing, booking, and doing everything on your own is very time consuming. I don't know if it will be a full time job or not but there are only so many hours in a day and you wouldn't want to push the hell out of a first album only to over-work, put writing aside, and then it'll take you years to build up quality material for a second album if all your time is spent managing when these days, with so many bands, you have to keep feeding your audience (dpending on the style of music) so out-sourcing managment and concentrating much more on the actual music might be a good idea to retain fans in the long run ...

Nah its ok man I'm pretty aware of how things work. I started this thread just to get people going.

No, the only money you are personally responsible for paying back is the advance, which is a loan to you. The expenses that the record company took on by paying for your recording, radio promotion, record promotion, packaging, and distribution is an investment - a very high risk investment - and those costs are recouped through CD sales.

If they say "You have to pay everything back out of your own pocket now" then you respond by saying "then I get every penny of revenue from CD sales (i.e. approx $7 per CD instead of $1). Want to do that? Didn't think so."

I believe all those production costs are considered part of the advance. Check out how many bands got screwed by that.

$50,000 - $10,000 (CD duplication for 10,000 CDs with cool major label style packaging) - $10,000 (recording - approx $1000 per song for a major label sound) - $10000 (promotion - If promotion is a huge cost for the big indie and the major label, why isn't it a big cost for the unsigned band?).

Now you've got $20,000 left. Is each member of the band... a full member of the band? Then divide that by number of members - let's say four members. You each get $5000. Do you have a manager? He gets a cut too - sometimes at the level of a band mamber. Are you only two full members of the band and you have, say a bass player and drummer for hirer? Pay them $1,000 a week each while on tour. Believe me I'm sure they expect to be paid at the rate of $50k a year while on tour. I hope you're making more money than just the CD sales!

(I would set the hypothetical unsigned band CD price at $10 myself. $5 is an EP only which majors would probably not be releasing. $100,000 makes things a lot more feasible in selling 10000 on your own.)

No, the advance is cash in your pocket so you can live while pursuing music and before money starts pouring in. Royalty checks may only come quarterly or bi-annually. You need something to buy food with before royalties start rolling in. The band is not expected to take the food and living money and pay for recording with it. Recording is covered by the label initially and is recoupable through CD sales.

You can't get screwed by an advance. You can only piss the money away. People shouldn't take big advances, especially if you're not a proven artist.

I guess what it really comes down to for me is

How willing and able is the label to sweep my sexual indiscretions under the rug.

I'm not talking victimizing anybody or anything -- but if, at the end of a hot group grope, there is a miniature horse with a pulled groin...is there a marketing intern we can get to rub tiger palm on it?

(hmm, or at least an A&R guy to suggest that procedure becomes PART of the group thing)

That's why it's called "selling out".....

Yep.

The advance is for living expenses and gearing up to tour.

I clearly know little about advances. Never got one, don't want one, and my touring experience doesn't expand past 2 hour drives from the home base haha.

The only way I'd tour is if the project was gigantic enough to get one of those promoter guaranteed rates per show, and if it would clearly boost my income by at least 3 or 4 tax brackets. Anymore those types of opportunities are less common than an honest politician.

I meant to add that after the dumbass rock star pisses the money away, I think the label can go after that money at some point and demand that it get paid back out of the musician's pocket, since it was just a loan. I'm not sure, but there must be a time limit stated on a contract when the advance will be paid back by CD sales before they ask to just have you pay it back out of your pocket. That's where the horror stories come from, where a band is screwed for the rest of their lives trying to pay back a million dollar advance after having wasted it on crap, like, well, lots of drugs, for example, and their album only sells 50,000 copies.

Well yeah depends on the contract.

I prefer music is the best way to meet the people as well as it will be help ful to earn upto some extent..

STFU