The band is now 1/4 of the way through its contract, has made the music industry more than 3 million dollars richer, but is in the hole $14,000 on royalties. The band members have each earned about 1/3 as much as they would working at a 7-11, but they got to ride in a tour bus for a month. The next album will be about the same, except that the record company will insist they spend more time and money on it. Since the previous one never “recouped,” the band will have no leverage, and will oblige. The next tour will be about the same, except the merchandising advance will have already been paid, and the band, strangely enough, won’t have earned any royalties from their T-shirts yet. Maybe the T-shirt guys have figured out how to count money like record company guys. Some of your friends are probably already this fucked.
Steve Albini is an independent and corporate rock record producer most widely known for having produced Nirvana’s “In Utero”.
That essay is old but timeless.
I’m sad to learn that Albini is mostly known as a producer (he prefers the term recording engineer), as he is best loved by me as founder of the seminal punk/~industrial band Big Black and subsequently Rapeman, whose only album is in my opinion perhaps the best rock album ever.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Albini
bodo — December 30, 2009 @ 8:52 amthanks, i will check the man out.
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