If you're signed, you have a BIG responsibility weighting on your back! - You have to render your work at due date. Personally, if you give me a calendar telling me you have to compose 30 songs in a month and deliver your stems at this date and hour exactly, I cannot do anything anymore > blocked inspiration. - You have to co-mmu-ni-cate! a LOT! You MUST be on the social networks EVERYDAY, answer to EVERYONE, everytime... Personally I HATE social networks in general, to a point you can't imagine. No, don't try. Even with a big brain and a big imagination, you can't possibly perceive the vastness of my hate. - If ever a journalist, or better a hundred of them ask you for an interview, the only possible answer is YES. Even if you haven't slept nor taken a shower till AGES. - You have to be HAPPY and take a pose all the time, in case a fan shoot you with his phone. Even if you're busy in the toilets. - Oh, I almost forgot: your teeth must be absolutely PERFECT. Shining like hell. Almost phosphorescent. Radioactive. ... (you can continue this list if you want) Last edited: Aug 5, 2021
Steve Albini laid it out almost 30 years ago with "The Problem With Music": https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music
funny, the thread topic made me think of the Pig Pile album cover too! : "It meant nothing to us if we were popular or not, or if we sold a million or no records, so we were invulnerable to ploys by music scene weasels to get us to make mistakes in the name of success. To us, every moment we remained unfettered and in control was a success. We never had a manager. We never had a booking agent. We never had a lawyer. We never took an advance from a record company. We booked our own tours, paid our own bills, made our own mistakes and never had anybody shield us from either the truth or the consequences. The results of that methodology speak for themselves: Nobody ever told us what to do and nobody took any of our money."
At the very least you need a music lawyer and accountant go over the fine details of the contract being offered before signing anything. And realise that you will be paying for everything, absolutely everything and the record company will be taking their 50% or higher from net gains. I think musicians should educate themselves about every little facet of the business side of being a professional musician - they will end up learning so much they'll realise they don't need to work for anybody else.
I look at labels like bank loans. You can go to a middle man to take out your bank loan. Or you can take out that loan yourself by going straight to the actual bank.
It would be more interesting to know how many people using this forum realistically think they are worth signing, and why lol Last edited: Aug 5, 2021
I'm absolutely sure I will never be signed, I'm absolutely not pretty, I'm still a noob in audio tech / art of mixing, and above all... ... ... ... ...I'm old... ...very old... I could be your grandpa! I'm so old, that Marie-Antoinette remembered very well my first name... ...It was far before she loses her nice head though...
if I understand correctly, by "signing" you mean to bond with a person or company who takes care of the commercial part of your artistic product. What happens is that every business is a team effort: it is very difficult to compose music that makes sense, to mix it in a proper way, then mastering it and in the meantime have strategic meetings, answer the phone calls from distributors, deal with copyright, call the lawyer ... It is obvious that all this work cannot weigh on one person (unless you want to work on a really small scale) Music business means setting up a team that works on various fronts to create and sell an artistic product, I believe it is impossible to do it everything alone.
It isn't just a money issue, they're also coerced to sign away certain rights (can't do this, can't do that) and long contracts are carefully sewn-up to prevent early termination, sometimes for decades (or whatever longevity the record company feels a particular artiste has) just in case they suddenly get a hit somewhere down the line. They want to capitalise on them for the rest of their working lives. When artistes are starting out record companies pursuade them to sign unfair deals with a 'take it or lump it' attitude and when some of these lucky artistes become very famous and wealthy it becomes evident to them just how rotten that deal was, especially in their new status, but they have to fight for years to get out of it. Hence their advice to new artistes to never sign any deals. It's really just reflective of all areas of life though, there is no fairness in anything when money is involved. It's all about the money.
