The music industry is literally a scam

As a

music

ian, nothing says you've made it like a record deal, so what do you say guys that you want to make a record? Record label deals were the holy grail for

music

ians, it was the key to their fame and fortune, but over the decades, record deals have become something sinister on the surface all the public sees is the money, fame, cars, jewelry, but on the inside, the

industry

is something completely different. Sophisticated contracts are designed to suck all the money out of an artist while they are enslaved like dead slaves. to the label and for good reason, if you want to screw people over you're going to want to pick the most naive and unsophisticated victims who can't fight back and let's face it, most artists dedicate their lives to the pursuit of music, which which means You're probably poor, you're 6-4, I don't have a car and I'm probably not very educated and on top of that they have this idealistic drive to spread the impact of their art, their fans become rich and famous to prove that all their enemies are wrong, which means that while you're ruining them, they will work harder than ever for you and the best part thanks to celebrity culture in America there is an endless supply of them, but no more if you let me in your world, so let's learn The art of enslaving artists, damn those who work for absolutely, so the status quo here is that artists have been getting screwed since the beginning of time.

Where does the value go? Into the pockets of the rights holders and they write these contracts that are so complicated that Basically, it eliminates every last value and everyone gets paid except the artist, the artist gets paid last and they get paid the least. The music

industry

is a joke. They reached equity ownership deals with the streaming services in a deal for them to have. a capital position, they agreed to very low rates for the artists' music, a band we are in is going to make us all this money and will be our only source. I think that's over, every band really needs to pay attention to what their record deal is.

We still don't get paid for anything we do and we travel from city to city waiting for scraps of food. The music business plays this Jedi mind trick on you where everything is set up to be predatory and take advantage of your weakness. It's the 1980s and you're a record label looking for artists to sign. The 80s are seen as the glory days of music for many reasons. There are all these new genres taking off. People listened to everything from folk music to pop to hard rock and because an artist's life was good back then, a record deal was a pretty big accomplishment.

You would approach an up-and-coming artist and offer them a record deal and once they signed, 85 of the profits from their music releases and albums would go to you and 15. Go with them, sure it may seem a little unfair at first but This was before the internet, you couldn't reach a wide audience on your own, it was difficult to tour globally on your own without signing to a label and maintaining a hundred percent of nothing is still nothing, on top of that, 15 artists would get to keep all the money they made from concerts and merchandise, so it was a pretty good deal.

Musicians generally don't have good business acumen, they are craftsmen, not business people, so they sign. with a record label it left them free to focus on the creative side while you, the label, did all the commercial work to make them explode, so back then labels and artists had a bit of a symbiotic relationship, there was still a lot going on Bad things, but record labels served as a legitimate engine to bring music to the masses, but then the Internet came along and changed everything. Napster says it's willing to pay to play it, but consumers will remain loyal.

The latest software makes it too easy for students to access their favorite legal songs. copyright infringement problems aren't slowing down napster, the song-sharing company is now in the list of the 50 most visited sites on the web according to mediametric popular internet sites for downloading music a federal court ruled monday that napster needs to stop allowing music fans to trade copyrighted material it's time for napster to fold and build their business the old fashioned way first they need to ask permission at first it seemed like the internet was going to make life hell for record labels, not for artists, suddenly people could download pirated versions of songs Internet or watch music videos online, CDs, vinyl, radio stations and television channels like MTV became obsolete, no one was going to wait hours to have a TV show play your favorite song if they could stream it online and no one was going to buy a CD.

For 10 to 15 years, if they could pirate the songs for free, everyone was losing money, but at least the artists could still make money from things like touring and merch. The record labels were in serious danger and it was not going to get better after the nightmare. That is, the Internet, YouTube, and online streaming apps like SoundCloud and Spotify made it a million times easier for people to access music for free or for as little as five to ten dollars a month, versus the 10 to 15 from a single album. It's hard to describe. how much damage the internet cost to record labels, they have been losing money, but at least now people didn't pirate music as much in the 80s. 95% of the income in the music industry came from CD sales, for which CD sales were underpinning. the whole industry now 75 came from streaming, so the question was how do we, the record labels, get a part of that revenue from streaming so that it doesn't just go to the streaming platforms and the artists, and you finally came up with an idea , a way to go back to In the old days, when you made millions, but this time it was at the expense of the artists, as a record label you had a lot going against you in the early 2000s, your solution was to create a new type of record deal that would make up for the loss in CD sales, so he found a way to legally take as much control of their lives as he wanted.

Entering the modern record deal was no longer a symbiotic relationship according to these new record deals, once an artist signed to record labels they gained ownership of both. The masters and publishing rights, this means that you own the rights to the actual music they created plus the rights for them to perform this music in online concerts virtually everywhere. This would be kind of the equivalent if I sign with some YouTube agency and they own it. this real video instead of me now not only were you making money off album sales that were now non-existent, you were making money off every aspect of their music whether they sang at a concert that you charged for, you performed at a private party that you charged for. when their song came on the radio, you charged for the artists, you no longer had creative freedom with so much money at stake, you involved everyone to make sure every song they released was a global hit, that's why today it seems to be the majority of the biggest songs sound very similar, it was a race to make money, not art, and the best part of all is that money is made from internationally successful songs and albums, millions of online streams and dozens of concert appearances every year, well, most of that money was no longer flowing into the artist's pockets, but into yours, yeah, so if you sign a deal with a label, they basically own your rights, so it's really up to them what they give you.

They pay and in most cases they keep 90% of the money so everyone takes their share and then at the end of the day the artists are left with less than a tenth of less than half a cent per work. This is Andrew Antar, a lifelong musician and co-founder of a music streaming startup called tune fm looking to change all this when online streaming platforms like Spotify came along, things got even worse, so you can't Simply register and start uploading your masters to Spotify. They don't really have that Spotify for artist thing. just for social engagement and they like to post photos and texts not the actual music so the rights holder still has control there and once they do it you keep almost all of their money so what They do is use distributors, so they drive out digital distributors. the song to all the platforms like Spotify Apple Music dieser yadda yadda and that's why they make these blanket licensing deals where 70 percent of the revenue from the streaming service goes directly to the rights holder, the labels and the publishers and then they decide pay the artists. and other producers and songwriters according to the terms of the agreement they sign, and these are generally the most sketchy agreement terms you can find.

In many cases, a lot of these songs are written by one guy, produced by another, and then performed and delivered by another. person, so everyone has to get their share at the end of the day. To you, this whole setup seems cool and all, but what will make an artist fall into the trap, what will make them eager to give up all their money, well, part of that is that the record labels are still the gatekeepers, like we just talked about, but another reason is something called an album trailer. I believe in this because you have a unique talent, Eric, very special.

Don't get in first, you promise them the world you play in. to their ego you tell them that they will be the next beyonce the next justin bieber the next drake you make them think that you are the only label in the world that can take them there so what is the tone that you give to the artists they like how they sell the dream, yes, as the vc says, we will make you a millionaire, billionaire or ten times more, the labels say the same, we will make you huge, you will be in the top 10 spinning on the radio you will be in all the headlines of all the festivals and this and that we are going to make you rich, we are going to make you famous and it is something very difficult to turn down and Then you will see, oh, wow, this is a big company, their public company, you know they have all these other artists, you kind of trust in all the social proof behind it, but at the end of the day, there are a lot of people who are not making music.

Taking all the money, remember that most artists are broke, so you just have to offer them something they crave as much as fame. Immediate money. Most of these artists have heard rumors of signing bonuses in the millions, so when you offer them five hundred thousand dollars what's it called. An album advance makes them feel like they've finally made it, but unbeknownst to them, the album advance is actually just a loan, a loan they have to pay back the money their music makes, but a broke artist doesn't. knows nothing about business or finance. the album advance that half a million dollars could be as good as cash that's how it works a new artist comes along and you offer them five hundred thousand dollars to sign with your record label most of these artists will sign immediately without reading anything because again they are broke and desperate with half a million dollars staring them in the face, you promise them that they will be millionaires, that they will be a top celebrity while you conveniently skip the clauses and contracts on how they give you the rights to their music and performances, they alone they'll get 20 of all the money their music makes and you justify it by telling them that all these other famous artists got the same deal.

You showed them the calculations that once They are famous even because 20 will be worth millions and millions, so they sign a deal, get the 500,000, and finally realize the truth. You see that the 500,000 you offer them is not a bonus or a reward, it is

literally

like a check that you would receive if you raise money for your startup, they have to use that money to make music videos, hire and pay their managers, lawyers, producers , create merch, promote their music, and on top of all that, they need a budget to live their daily lives. 500,000 seems like a lot. until you realize that a good music video can cost you almost three hundred thousand dollars and even if you manage not to buy a new car, designer jewelry or designer clothes, that five hundred thousand dollars could take years to pay back, that's because of all The money they generate only their 20th part goes to pay the loan, which means that their music has to earn 2.5 million dollars just to pay a loan of 500,000 and until that loan is paid they will see no other sense for the artist and entertainer at least six months to a year or more before they see basically a pittance of what the money they generated on these streaming platforms could be making millions of streams generating millions of dollars for all these platforms and headlines of rights and They will pay you, you know, less than 100,000, less than 50,000 less than theminimum wage, for the value you are generating and those 2.5 million.

Well, that will require a little over 500 million streams on Spotify for that to be the number of streams globally. Superstars don't get new artists, so the cycle just continues, you offer them an advance, they have no choice but to take it to survive, and they end up owing you even more money. The life of a contracted artist is a life of indentured servitude, except for the few who exploit at least before Kovan artists had gigs to pay the record label faster, the labels were confident that the artists could pay them back , but then all that went away with covid and the pandemic, now all the shows were canceled for years and now we're not really making any money, so the notion of the starving artist is a really real thing after the pandemic; however, it seems much bleaker, which gave way to the next innovation from record labels. 360 agreements, what do you do when concerts are not an option?

You already take charge of every other aspect of the artist's life, you enter into the 360 ​​deal, a record deal where you can take money from every income stream of an artist, you start a fashion line, you get a cut, you create a perfume, you get a cut, you start a cooking show. you get a cut for every scent the artist is making directly or indirectly from their music or influence becomes yours to exploit now artists are not only giving up the rights to their music, they are assigning their literal lives to the record label and for you the Life couldn't be better and at the end of the day the founder or the artist in this scenario becomes an employee of the financier, so they could give you 1500 thousand to invest in a new album and all of that goes to the recording studio and to the producers, you don't really get any of that in your pocket and the artists have to accept it because otherwise they don't have any other money, so they take advantage of the fact that they are in a position of weakness and surely if you are a celebrity of first tier you can make money even if the deal is vague, but even major artists like Kanye West and Taylor Swift have grown tired of owning a list of what we're talking about

literally

hundreds of millions of streams, so these guys they can make what could be seen as decent money, um, but then they even get angry and then they start breaking their contracts with their labels, so look at taylor swift and kanye and everyone and radiohead, everyone says, you know, we should be making tens of millions of dollars, if not hundreds of millions, not a few million here and there, but we're talking point zero zero zero one percent of all artists that are even licensed and then even less than all artists around the world and at this point you may be wondering if record labels are so disgusting and artists end up so deep when signing, why don't they do it themselves?

Because one, the current music industrial complex makes it very difficult, two, music still requires a lot of money to produce, but on top of that, the current financial system also makes it very difficult to pay artists directly. We would need micropayments, like paying a fraction of a cent per stream, and since fiat money charges huge transaction fees, it's not possible to make micropayments in fiat, that's where Caltoon FM comes into play. it is basically the web3 version of spotify that is actually live and working tune fm is essentially a decentralized streaming platform of spotifier web3 and very soon we will launch the number one nft music marketplace in the world aka openc for music and we are the only ones with technology that is necessary for lossless streaming masters to not have dmca violations for people who just upload a jc mp3 or something like that and we have where to buy the nft is where you can enjoy and play it, a platform of vertically integrated streaming, all the social networks and tools and everything you would need from the payment layer with the hedera tokens that are native, so we are trying to change that by directly eliminating all the middlemen, there is more than one, many of them They pay artists 10 to 20 times and sometimes up to 100 times more if they are independent, tune fm already has artists like beyonce on there and it runs on their native jam token which is based on something called hedera hashgraph, a Enterprise-grade distributed ledger owned by Google, IBM Boeing, and more.

The technology is already working for these giant companies and in fact allows for fast and cheap microtransactions, unlike Fiat, Bitcoin or Ethereum, meaning that every time you play a song on FM, the artist gets paid immediately. It even allows you to earn money by listening to songs. tune in fm so you can earn money as a curator and also as a listener, you basically get paid to play other songs that are being promoted by artists, as well as a curator if you are helping to discover new music or as a discoverer if you are helping. Listen to new promoted music, you can actually get paid and be a net creditor or hypothetically even break even, but of course you can always buy jam, but then you have to worry that it's not a sunk cost because then you can go on Go ahead and sell jam. for potentially even more money or whatever the market price will bear so you never lose, so if you want to get in on this music revolution, Tune FM is giving you 100 free jam coins to listen to right now when you go to tune.fm with the link below and sign up, everyone just sign up at tune.fm, go there, get your free jam tokens, your startup tokens, there's a kind of crypto jukebox, if you want, with which You can really make money, like a music game.

And uh, we're offering an experience that's even more stimulating and better than Spotify. Just follow us and you will see all the things that are coming and you will support the artists directly when it is, when the music is played. get paid, you have nothing to lose by trying so go to tune.fm with the link below to claim your 100 free jam coins right now thanks to tunefm for sponsoring this video.