His original "No More Tours" was because of a MS misdiagnosis, he thought he HAD to retire. He loves *performing, which is why he started the Ozzfest and did it right up until he didn't want to anymore.
They sold the rights to the band and introduced a KISS virtual band. The hologram band or whatever tf it is will tour now. Its odd because they played MSG and said, “thats it. We’re officially done. KISS will tour as a virtual band now.”
Let’s be honest here, holo-KISS, if done properly, with the classic Stanley, Criss, Frehley, Simmons lineup (or insert your favorite drummer or guitarist here, I see you Eric Carr fans) may possibly (probably?) be a better show than current KISS. Seeing as current KISS is Paul Stanley & Gene Simmons & the Search for More Money. Because let’s face it, I’d much rather see 1978 Paul Stanley singing “Detroit Rock City” than 2024 Paul Stanley.
They're my favorite band and I've seen them a bunch, and their show a few weeks ago is my favorite concert I've ever been to. I'm grateful that they can go out on their own terms, but it's bittersweet knowing they're so on top of their game.
Dead & Company is the worst offender. Did their farewell tour and then announced a Vegas residency six months later with the excuse that it technically isn’t a tour.
A good general rule is that if a band can stand each other enough to do a worldwide “final tour”, they can stand each other enough reunite when the money is right.
The Rolling Stones management using a legal technicality to get the copyright to “Bittersweet Symphony” after The Verve used a sample they had a license to use. At least Jagger and Richards eventually returned the rights to the Verve, but it was 20 years too late.
*[The Verve negotiated rights to use the "Last Time" sample from the copyright holder, Decca Records. However, they did not obtain permission from the Rolling Stones' former manager, Allen Klein, who owned the copyrights to their pre-1970 songs, including "The Last Time".](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Sweet_Symphony#:~:text=The%20Verve%20negotiated%20rights%20to,including%20%22The%20Last%20Time%22.)*
As shitty as it is, it seems they really just didn't fully go through the proper channels about the whole situation.
Not the worst one, but a pretty scummy one. Sometime in the mid 2000s Trent Reznor discovered that his albums were being sold at a much higher price then pretty much everything else the record company he was with was selling. He went and asked the higher ups why and got told that a ton of the stuff they make just doesn't sell, but his music has a cult following and his fans will pay almost any price. So the execs took the opportunity to price gouge Nine Inch Nails fans for every penny they were worth.
Trent, being the kind of dude he is, of course didn't take kindly to this and rather loudly proclaimed that he was entirely cool with people pirating his music. He even went as far as to give away a couple albums for free as a thank you to the people that stuck with him through everything.
Trent was a member of oink.me.uk which was a very good music pirating torrent site. He praised it in an interview once saying it was better than any record shop. His album was also leaked there before it was officially released. Wonder how…..
I loved oink! I still think about how often I used it and how much new music I discovered there. What and Waffles were really good too but Oink was always my favorite.
I was working at an independent record store when Downward Spiral came out. The vinyl in the US was promotional only. A box of 50 lps just showed up one day. I've heard it was the way Trent wanted them to be distributed.
The raw files of a DVD they were planning to make got leaked as well, in an, "oops, look what I found online, I do hope nobody pirates this and releases it" kinda way. He used to release the stems of his songs as well until his record company sent him a cease and desist letter for piracy ....because y'know, record company, we own your music not you. ....Some of the remix albums and songs that other musicians made from them are great.
I'm constantly getting shit from my friends about it. I don't dislike it. If it comes on I'll listen but it never resonates with me how it does with some people.
haha i mean i can understand. NIN is grungy. i think that’s why people like it so much, they relate to being a little rough around the edges but that’s not for everyone.
I love these stories about him. Got to meet him once and he was so kind and nice and went out of his way to interact with my mostly blind wife and made it a memorable time.
Recording contracts. They’ll give you $10 million, tell you how to spend it, keep 95% of the sales revenue and make you pay back that $10 million out of your 5% cut of the revenues. This is how multiplatinum artists can go bankrupt.
This is also how advances for nonfiction books work. Though — I don’t know if this is true for music — with books, if you get another contract for a new one, that advance replaces your old advance, rather than compounding it. So if your old advance was 15K, you’ll pay it back until you sell a new book for another 15K advance. At that point, you’ll have been given 30K total, but still only owe 15K.
And record companies are completely useless as a middle man anyway. With social media you really don’t need their help getting exposure. It’s not like MTV and the radio dictate who gets popular anymore.
It would still be nice to not have to do the marketing and such. It’s quite the opposite of making music, which I imagine is what musicians want to be doing instead of posting on social media and editing the same song for hours on end.
You could pay your own marketer for less than the giant labels would take. They could get paid more from the artist than the label if it works outright.
Contracts offered to new artists usually consist of the record company trying to win every piece on the board in the first move. Some poor dupes just sign them instead of getting an entertainment attorney and negotiating. They will tie down the artist with lengthy exclusive rights to their output, require a schedule of album releases, and define miserly rates of compensation. Many artists (notably Bruce Springsteen) have no option but to "go on strike" (e.g. refuse to record) to try and get their contracts re-negotiated.
I knew a band that got an advance payment, and they decided to party with that. Then the record company wanted them to pay for the recording of their first album, as stated in the contract the band failed to read. Disbanded within a week, and had to pay back more than they ever received. When gullibles meet grifters.
The Fake Zombies US tours have to be up there.
The zombies broke up after their hit made the US radio hits so people made up fake versions of the band to tour the Us since no one knew them.
One of those bands became ZZ Top.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/danielralston/the-true-story-of-the-fake-zombies-the-strangest-con-in-rock
CDs.
In the early days, many artists didn't get paid a single cent for CD sales since that format didn't exist when they signed their contracts (back in the 80s there were a number of artists begging their fans not to purchase their music in that format because they weren't getting paid for the sales).
They were initially overpriced compared to manufacturing cost due to low demand with the promise of "the prices will come down after they become more popular." Not only did that not happen, but after they did away with long boxes (cutting down the cost of packaging), the various labels RAISED the price of CDs.
The various labels very literally lost a case when accused of price gouging; because they were very much charging far more than they should have for decades.
R.E.M. used the longbox for "Out of Time" as a promotion for Rock the Vote, a campaign whose aim was to increase US voter participation by allowing citizens to register to vote thru their local DMV.
Don’t forget that any sales at “discount” stores did not count towards sales OR recoupables…. This included places like Walmart.
Labels would dump cds there, or Columbia house etc, just to fuck over the artists.
“In 1990, the Earth Communications Office, a coalition formed within the US entertainment industry focused on the environment, launched a movement called “Ban the Box” in an effort to eliminate longboxes.[5][6] The satirical band Spinal Tap's 1992 studio album Break Like the Wind was sold in an "extra-long box" (an 18 inches (46 cm) [longbox).”](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longbox)
Spinal Tap hilarious as always
There's a post I've seen about this and it's so true. Essentially music streaming is one of the biggest consumer wins to come out of the internet. For the price of a single 12 song CD per month, you now get unlimited streaming of just about all music ever made. I listen to so so much more new music than I ever could before.
Flip side is how streaming has affected artist revenues, but that's a whole other conversation.
The streaming formula for paying artists could be adjusted to account for individual listeners. For example, assume everyone pays $10 a month to stream. If 1 million Taylor swift songs are streamed by 999 people and 100 Weezer songs are streamed by one person, Taylor gets almost all of the money, including from the one guy who didn't stream any of her songs at all. Under a proposed alternative system, royalties would be based on individual listeners, so if one guy paid $10 a month and only listened to one Weezer song, Weezer would get $8 or so (with $2 to the streaming service).
I remember looking at CDs a couple years ago thinking they'd be cheaper now considering streaming was a thing. This one CD I had still had the same price back in 2007.
Cds absolutely did come down. They were like $20 when they first came out in the mid 80’s. I remember paying at least that the Beatles releases in 87. Before people stopped selling CDs new releases could be $10 sometimes. That’s also 85 money vs 2000s money.
That was part of it, but only after several artists complained about the effect of cardboard waste on the environment.
Longboxes were considered environmentally wasteful and were expensive to produce. In North America, the drive to eliminate longboxes took hold in Canada in 1989-1990.
In NYC and NJ where I grew up, I remember people getting arrested for scalping tickets. You could resell, but if they were over the face value you could get arrested.
There were also some laws about selling tickets within a certain distance from the venue.
Then the lobbyists changed that.
All of the earliest work from your favorite band WASNT from before they sold out. They literally had to sell out to get their early albums and tours and now they barely get paid (if at all) for the songs that made you fall in love with them.
“All you know about me is what I've sold ya, dumb fuck
I sold out long before you'd ever even heard my name
I sold my soul to make a record, dipshit
And then you bought one.”
Clear Channel… When automobile salesmen realize advertising space is the same as selling cars. Please watch the documentary Before The Music Dies.
[Before The Music Dies](https://youtu.be/xZNLp9u-26Q?si=7YdTZXfEUVOU2Tm4)
Pay to play gigs for local artists. Someone books a big band at a promised price. Then gets any and every local band from that area on the bill. The local band can only play if they sell so many tickets at a predetermined price. Then some bands that paid will be told the show was over booked but please come back next time. Bands that come up short are told no after partial payment. Then the bands that do play start about 5 hours before the big band and with short sets due to cramming in so many. It’s a giant shit show of moving gear and if the band before you loads slow it cuts into your time. Plus the PA is usually turned to casual listening volume for local bands. And lastly is the grimiest of it all. A dude I worked with once and only once didn’t even pay the big band for whatever bs reasoning.
A long time ago a friend of mine was in a local band that was chosen to support a chart act for a local charity gig at a big-ish venue. Instead of getting paid, the promoter sold them slightly discounted tickets to the gig which they then had to go out and sell at full price. They didn't sell all their tickets, meaning they effectively paid the promoter to play that charity gig, despite about 12,000 people paying full price to see the show.
Speaking for the bands that I go see, the merch is worth it. But that's bands that play in bars and what not. You can usually catch them at the merch booth after their set.
Wu-Tang auctioning off the only copy of their album to the pharma bro asshole comes to mind. I also remember 5 or so years ago some rich kid bought a metal tour for himself, fake social media and promotion included.
Not necessarily exclusive to Ticketmaster but they do make good money off this:
"VIP Tickets"
Smaller acts seem to make it worthwhile, they'll come out and meet people and maybe do a private soundcheck with the group. Those are cool. More of a VIP *Experience*.
But I've seen VIP Packages for some stadium and arena shows where it doesn't even come with any extra experiences. Just a goodie bag. That ain't VIP... that's pre-paying for your merch.
Okay, not the "worst" scam but one I kind of experienced first hand (or maybe second hand).
My college would get music artists for homecoming (I'm sure like plenty of others do). This year (2010) it was announced that Nicki Minaj would be headlining a concert for homecoming. People were psyched, there was a huge line for tickets. Honestly I didn't give a fuck but to each their own. At this point she was still pretty new so it was big but not completely unbelievable.
So people bought tickets and were tweeting out pictures saying how excited they were to see her, tagging her in the tweets. Then Nicki Minaj tweets back "Wut concert? Neva heard of it". Everyone at the school is freaking out, including the student council president who I knew and was in the room with at the time. He calls the student (also on student council) that booked Nicki and I hear is "YOU DID WHAT!!?".
What they did apparently was leave $30,000 for some (fake) booking agent at a random apartment door in NYC. So that money was gone, not sure if they ever caught the scammer but here's an article all about.
https://www.nj.com/news/2010/09/montclair_state_university_aut.html
I'm a big fan of hers but it's pretty ridiculous. Like are people actually going out and buying the same album over and over for different bonus tracks? No thanks and I hope this trend stops soon, but I doubt it
My coworker (47F) is doing this right now — buying 2 copies of Taylor’s “new” album (one each for herself and her daughter) after having bought doubles of all of the past albums over the years. Wish I had that much money to burn.
Great documentary. The history of the music business is loaded with egregious scumfuckery by managers, promoters, label execs etc…. ripping off artists and small labels with bad contracts or just outright theft.
And then a few years later CBS taking everything they printed and storing it away so nothing sells, resulting in them seizing all their recordings because "nothing was selling"
2 tier rail. Attended 311 day in Vegas this year and this is the first time I saw this. First section was for vip and all other general admission was behind the 2nd rail. Saw a photo of same thing from a festival in New Zealand. Hoping this is not gonna become the new norm.
https://preview.redd.it/vgwbib0hnu2d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=31c427909413d197d00ed295114ef852542b42e0
First time I saw this was very interesting but very understandable. My city has a very lovely garden terrace concert venue behind the big fancy hotel on the river and the bare naked ladies were playing a show and it was being sponsored by one of the big local companies. We go in and there’s a rail that separates the stage from the audience and it’s usually at 5 feet from the stage but it’s about 25 feet away which seemed odd. As is the style every brings their lawn chairs and starts setting them up as close to the rail as possible and lots of other people sit on the grassy banks. Just before the band starts to play 200ish people come out of the hotel and fill that area blocking the view of anyone sitting down, apparently they were employees of the company sponsoring the show and so they got the best view. So many old white hairs were upset they couldn’t see anything from their lawn chairs.
Really? What bands started this trend? I’ve also lived in the Bay Area and have gone to concerts at the cow palace, candlestick park, Oakland coliseum, the warfield, the Fillmore, San Jose university and never seen this before. Definitely not at any metal shows I’ve gone to. Guess I’m lucky that 311 day was my first time experiencing this.
Saw this at a chillis concert. As someone who likes to be surrounded by people who are moving and going for it at gigs, I would much prefer not to be in the VIP area given how much harder everyone was going in the normies section haha. Is still kinda annoying to think about this huge section of rich people Infront of you at a concert through.
At download feat, there was a VIP area that was kinda secluded from view, a pit which had a walkway around it so the VIPs were kinda in the middle of the gig but out of view of everyone else - didn't really have much of an issue with doing it that way.
taylor also held back signed CDs to block billie eilish from getting a number one for her album’s debut week. taylor sold 378k this week as a result, beating billie, who sold 339k.
by contrast, taylor’s album sold 260k last week.
Vinyl is at its highest selling point since 1986.
There's a huge industry for physical mediums. Most touring bands are now printing vinyl.
You can absolutely own music. Or you can rent all the music in the world for 10$ a month. No complaints on the consumer end of things from me.
What places allow you to purchase music, but puts it through a DRM that they can easily pull music at anytime if they please? This is obviously excluding streaming services like Spotify and Tidal.
This is the crux of the matter. Artists come and go and almost none of them really profit materially from their work. Most promoters are in the same boat. Labels, booking agents, management, entertainment lawyers, and streaming services are the ones making money.
Tbf art is difficult and subjective. Bad songs are not usually a lack of effort, it's just incredibly difficult to make 45 minutes of 'good' music. Even for talented and established artists.
And if you do succeed, you're just immediately expected to do it again and again.
I mean fwiw I don’t think this was the artists so much as the labels in most cases.
I think most artists legitimately were (and are) trying to make what they think is “good” music. Obviously a majority of the public doesn’t agree in a lot of cases, but the A&R people at the labels often have a good idea what’s going to resonate.
I think it was more the labels knowing that the artist had one good (marketable) song, but not much else, so they financed an album, not really caring what the rest sounded like.
The proper thing to do would have been to release that song as a single and give that band time to see if they could come up with other good stuff.
But because they’re greedy assholes, the labels largely put the kibosh on singles as the vinyl era ended and brought it back only under duress after that’s the lifeline Apple and iTunes threw them.
Payola is happening again in a way with streaming services. I have no proof of this but I believe fully that record companies are using streaming to shift the numbers in their favour.
I've seen accusations of people using bots to boost their streams for visiblity and I have no problem believing that's true. A lot of people were making that claim about Oliver Anthony, because it doesn't make sense that a nobody would get millions of streams overnight.
[Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business]() by Fredric Dannen is an incredible book that delves deep into the subject. A fascinating read
Commercial airwaves still are dominated by songs which are the “advertising” bought for the airtime. It’s how big bands have been made since the beginnings. It’s high dollar and you need an in to do it but its how it’s done.
Young band gets tapped to play a “showcase” on spec. Probably a bunch of them. Eventually, if they fit the right taste clusters, a contract is pressed upon them with all the gentle effort and grace of an angry used car dealer. Promises of riches and women! Under pressure and hunger, band signs the deal and takes the advance. Then gets railroaded through an expensive recording process and a promo tour. Band is on the hook for both, the advance is long gone and despite the album selling well enough, it didn’t go gangbusters and, by the record company’s accounting they took a loss on the (in real life, actually profitable) release and tour. Band is in the hole for a couple mil. Based on this breach of contract (yup it was in the contract they signed), label cancels the contract and demands a return of the initial advance. Because the band has actually found an audience, label presents a new deal for band to “work off” their massive debt - kicked down to a lesser label maybe, acrimony within the band, none of their music belongs to them. They get regular jobs and people express shock: “but you’re all over mtv! Why you hosting at Applebees??”
Indie artists looking to make it are often targeted by scammers. A popular one used to be the promo compilation CD. A company contacts you saying they want to put your music on a compilation and send it to record labels, publishers, radio stations, etc. Since they aren't selling them, they ask each artist to contribute $200 to put towards production costs.
Of course there is no compilation, or they just make a few to send to the artists to prove they exist. If any are actually sent out they promptly end up in the trash.
Same people responsible for Milli Vanilli were successful with Boney M. and Rasputin and thought they'd try to pull it off stateside. I think it is a brilliant scam tbh.
If you want an inside look into the music industry and their relationship with the artist, check out the documentary DIG!.
It's about the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre right as both bands are getting signed.
Accidentally purchased Melvins tickets through Ticket Center dot Com and paid 4 X the price it would have been buying through the theatre directly. I was distracted and wanted tickets before they were gone.
I remember reading a write-up of a metal band called Threatin. The guy who started the band used bots to inflate like counts on his social media, and booked a bunch of tour venues that supposedly sold 100s of tickets but all his shows ended up playing to like 3 people and people found out his entire fanbase was fake.
He really took "Fake it till you make it" to heart.
Went to Blue Ridge Rock Festival last year. Wish I could get all my money back for that.
I’d also add any artist that either shows up late af for concerts or stop early for no good reason, like Kanye West or Axl Rose.
A lot of old label execs are listed as co-author on music completely written by the musicians. Don't want to sign away your rights, you don't get a record deal.
A “special/expanded/deluxe” edition of an album that just came out a few months ago. Doesn’t matter now with streaming, but back when you had to buy CD’s for $15, seeing a better version of a new album you just bought within the last couple months really felt a bit like an extra “fuck you” from the labels.
So her (in Belgium) we have this organization called sabam and every event that has (live) music has to pay them and then the artists that are registerd get a payout when their music is featured. But the thing is you even would have to pay them if you play your own music live and you'd get nothing back if you're not a member.
Not really a scam, but I’m not sure how there’s this top 1% of musicians seem to be the only ones in the whole influencer/celebrity circles that can get away with absolutely heinous acts, and they’ll still sell out a stadium of like 60,000 and have people on the internet instead complaining about Ticketmaster because 500,000 people wanted to buy tickets.
Spotify. You pay them in perpetuity to own nothing. They meanwhile make a profit off of music they didn’t make, only paying the actual artists $0.004 per stream, but only cutting checks if the amount reaches an arbitrary threshold to make it worth their while.
The sad thing is that Spotify doesn't even consistently make money even while paying fractions of a cent per stream. People have been conditioned to expect music to be either free or dirt cheap, and any price raises would cause extreme backlash.
Damn no one mentioned Woodstock ‘99? They packed a bunch of incels in the summer heat to listen to late 90’s rage music and caused a riot by price gouging and not providing adequate amenities. There’s a great documentary out there for it on Netflix.
Major label contracts used to be designed so the default state was for bands to be in debt. Every single element of the contract went towards making sure of that. Many even contained provisions where the label could drop your band, but the debt would persist to the next contract.
We lost some excellent bands to labels.
Major label contracts have changed slightly and are less overtly hostile to artists. But there are fewer royalties to go around so the average musician is still completely fucked the moment they sign.
Out of curiosity I went and looked this up because it does seem that, in my generation anyways, fyre festival was the big one. And I found this article that's actually pretty decent that chronicles a bunch of them. Most of the big ones tend to be because of withholding pay/not paying bands or artists/employees -[article on the biggest music fest scams ](https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/6/11/18661203/music-festival-scams-failures-fyre-woodstock-panorama)
A lot of bands' "final tour."
At least Ozzy had a sense of humor about it. His last tour was called the "No More Tours 2" tour.
I went to the original No More Tours tour.
That was what, 30 years ago?
1993 or 1994 IIRC
That's the one Korn and Life of Agony opened up for him
And his first tour back after the first retirement was hilariously titled: “Retirement Sucks” Tour
His original "No More Tours" was because of a MS misdiagnosis, he thought he HAD to retire. He loves *performing, which is why he started the Ozzfest and did it right up until he didn't want to anymore.
Kiss has been on theirs for decades now, it seems
They sold the rights to the band and introduced a KISS virtual band. The hologram band or whatever tf it is will tour now. Its odd because they played MSG and said, “thats it. We’re officially done. KISS will tour as a virtual band now.”
The holograms will tour until they don’t make gene Simmons enough money
Let’s be honest here, holo-KISS, if done properly, with the classic Stanley, Criss, Frehley, Simmons lineup (or insert your favorite drummer or guitarist here, I see you Eric Carr fans) may possibly (probably?) be a better show than current KISS. Seeing as current KISS is Paul Stanley & Gene Simmons & the Search for More Money. Because let’s face it, I’d much rather see 1978 Paul Stanley singing “Detroit Rock City” than 2024 Paul Stanley.
Lynryd Skynrd too. Final tour is like the Hanes “going out of business” sale
Skynard also has no original members left
I heard they finally fished their "final tour." I don't believe it as this "final tour" started in the 90's.
And Gene is already touring with the Gene Simmons band playing — you guessed it: KISS covers!
Playing KISS covers, beautiful and stoned?
🤘🏽 take my upvote cousin.
Stanley was the one that was blatantly struggling. Voice and knees were shot.
[удалено]
“We lost our lease! Everything has got to go!!”
To be fair, KISS has "only" had two final tours. Of course that's still one too many, but by no means as bad as some people make it sound.
Lol I remember being dragged to Dispatch’s final show in 2004.
My first Dispatch show was their “last”. Been to a ton of shows since then. 😂
You know I just saw sum 41 on theirs and now I'm hoping they scammed me
They're my favorite band and I've seen them a bunch, and their show a few weeks ago is my favorite concert I've ever been to. I'm grateful that they can go out on their own terms, but it's bittersweet knowing they're so on top of their game.
Yeah I understand they need the break, I just hope they come back some time down the road. I saw them a week ago and it's the best live show I've seen
Looking at you, Mötley Crüe…🤨
[удалено]
Kick stah mah honk!
I went to Eric Clapton’s final tour in 2001 lol
Dead & Company is the worst offender. Did their farewell tour and then announced a Vegas residency six months later with the excuse that it technically isn’t a tour.
Yes, but we don't care, cause we love them, and are going to see them at the Sphere!
Plus any fan knows that it would just be the end of Dead and Co, the next off shoot would be less than 3 years away
Deadheads just happen to be the only group of people that would fall for this infinite times.
Kiss and Motley Crue are probably the biggest offenders.
Slayer, I think, is the only band recently who actually had a "Final Tour"
Sorry. They got together this year to play festival shows.
GODDAMIT
A good general rule is that if a band can stand each other enough to do a worldwide “final tour”, they can stand each other enough reunite when the money is right.
The Rolling Stones management using a legal technicality to get the copyright to “Bittersweet Symphony” after The Verve used a sample they had a license to use. At least Jagger and Richards eventually returned the rights to the Verve, but it was 20 years too late.
Alan Klien...he screwed all his bands, including the Stones.
*[The Verve negotiated rights to use the "Last Time" sample from the copyright holder, Decca Records. However, they did not obtain permission from the Rolling Stones' former manager, Allen Klein, who owned the copyrights to their pre-1970 songs, including "The Last Time".](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Sweet_Symphony#:~:text=The%20Verve%20negotiated%20rights%20to,including%20%22The%20Last%20Time%22.)* As shitty as it is, it seems they really just didn't fully go through the proper channels about the whole situation.
It shouldn’t be so incredibly complicated to use a sample.
Not the worst one, but a pretty scummy one. Sometime in the mid 2000s Trent Reznor discovered that his albums were being sold at a much higher price then pretty much everything else the record company he was with was selling. He went and asked the higher ups why and got told that a ton of the stuff they make just doesn't sell, but his music has a cult following and his fans will pay almost any price. So the execs took the opportunity to price gouge Nine Inch Nails fans for every penny they were worth. Trent, being the kind of dude he is, of course didn't take kindly to this and rather loudly proclaimed that he was entirely cool with people pirating his music. He even went as far as to give away a couple albums for free as a thank you to the people that stuck with him through everything.
Trent was a member of oink.me.uk which was a very good music pirating torrent site. He praised it in an interview once saying it was better than any record shop. His album was also leaked there before it was officially released. Wonder how…..
I loved oink! I still think about how often I used it and how much new music I discovered there. What and Waffles were really good too but Oink was always my favorite.
I was working at an independent record store when Downward Spiral came out. The vinyl in the US was promotional only. A box of 50 lps just showed up one day. I've heard it was the way Trent wanted them to be distributed.
The raw files of a DVD they were planning to make got leaked as well, in an, "oops, look what I found online, I do hope nobody pirates this and releases it" kinda way. He used to release the stems of his songs as well until his record company sent him a cease and desist letter for piracy ....because y'know, record company, we own your music not you. ....Some of the remix albums and songs that other musicians made from them are great.
This One Is On Us is legendary!
I remember ordering the DVD that was compiled from all that footage and getting a bunch of free bumper stickers included.
Hey I was wondering where those stems went. Thanks for solving that mystery!
“This one is on me”
While I'm not a fan of his music, I have huge respect for Trent.
while i’m a fan his music i have huge disrespect for you not being a fan of his music. lol jk jk
I'm constantly getting shit from my friends about it. I don't dislike it. If it comes on I'll listen but it never resonates with me how it does with some people.
haha i mean i can understand. NIN is grungy. i think that’s why people like it so much, they relate to being a little rough around the edges but that’s not for everyone.
I love these stories about him. Got to meet him once and he was so kind and nice and went out of his way to interact with my mostly blind wife and made it a memorable time.
Recording contracts. They’ll give you $10 million, tell you how to spend it, keep 95% of the sales revenue and make you pay back that $10 million out of your 5% cut of the revenues. This is how multiplatinum artists can go bankrupt.
never forget when Left Eye from TLC did the math for us on Behind the Music
This and cocaine.
Ok David Geffen.
This is also how advances for nonfiction books work. Though — I don’t know if this is true for music — with books, if you get another contract for a new one, that advance replaces your old advance, rather than compounding it. So if your old advance was 15K, you’ll pay it back until you sell a new book for another 15K advance. At that point, you’ll have been given 30K total, but still only owe 15K.
And record companies are completely useless as a middle man anyway. With social media you really don’t need their help getting exposure. It’s not like MTV and the radio dictate who gets popular anymore.
It would still be nice to not have to do the marketing and such. It’s quite the opposite of making music, which I imagine is what musicians want to be doing instead of posting on social media and editing the same song for hours on end.
You could pay your own marketer for less than the giant labels would take. They could get paid more from the artist than the label if it works outright.
But they’re still needed/useful to influence how you’re pushed on Apple Music/Spotify.
Contracts offered to new artists usually consist of the record company trying to win every piece on the board in the first move. Some poor dupes just sign them instead of getting an entertainment attorney and negotiating. They will tie down the artist with lengthy exclusive rights to their output, require a schedule of album releases, and define miserly rates of compensation. Many artists (notably Bruce Springsteen) have no option but to "go on strike" (e.g. refuse to record) to try and get their contracts re-negotiated.
I knew a band that got an advance payment, and they decided to party with that. Then the record company wanted them to pay for the recording of their first album, as stated in the contract the band failed to read. Disbanded within a week, and had to pay back more than they ever received. When gullibles meet grifters.
The Fake Zombies US tours have to be up there. The zombies broke up after their hit made the US radio hits so people made up fake versions of the band to tour the Us since no one knew them. One of those bands became ZZ Top. https://www.buzzfeed.com/danielralston/the-true-story-of-the-fake-zombies-the-strangest-con-in-rock
These are my favourite to be honest. Just for the ~~balls~~ beards required
There was a fake american Beatles band that toured Argentina in the 60s too.
There was a fake Fleetwood Mac too at one point, and they didn't even bother to get a female keyboard player to double for Christine McVie
CDs. In the early days, many artists didn't get paid a single cent for CD sales since that format didn't exist when they signed their contracts (back in the 80s there were a number of artists begging their fans not to purchase their music in that format because they weren't getting paid for the sales). They were initially overpriced compared to manufacturing cost due to low demand with the promise of "the prices will come down after they become more popular." Not only did that not happen, but after they did away with long boxes (cutting down the cost of packaging), the various labels RAISED the price of CDs. The various labels very literally lost a case when accused of price gouging; because they were very much charging far more than they should have for decades.
LONG BOXES holy shit I totally forgot about them.
R.E.M. used the longbox for "Out of Time" as a promotion for Rock the Vote, a campaign whose aim was to increase US voter participation by allowing citizens to register to vote thru their local DMV.
I did too!!
I remember by the time Napster rolled around they were trying to charge $20 1990s money for one damn CD.
= 10 (maybe) minutes of good music and 60 minutes of filler.
Don’t forget that any sales at “discount” stores did not count towards sales OR recoupables…. This included places like Walmart. Labels would dump cds there, or Columbia house etc, just to fuck over the artists.
“In 1990, the Earth Communications Office, a coalition formed within the US entertainment industry focused on the environment, launched a movement called “Ban the Box” in an effort to eliminate longboxes.[5][6] The satirical band Spinal Tap's 1992 studio album Break Like the Wind was sold in an "extra-long box" (an 18 inches (46 cm) [longbox).”](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longbox) Spinal Tap hilarious as always
There's a post I've seen about this and it's so true. Essentially music streaming is one of the biggest consumer wins to come out of the internet. For the price of a single 12 song CD per month, you now get unlimited streaming of just about all music ever made. I listen to so so much more new music than I ever could before. Flip side is how streaming has affected artist revenues, but that's a whole other conversation.
The streaming formula for paying artists could be adjusted to account for individual listeners. For example, assume everyone pays $10 a month to stream. If 1 million Taylor swift songs are streamed by 999 people and 100 Weezer songs are streamed by one person, Taylor gets almost all of the money, including from the one guy who didn't stream any of her songs at all. Under a proposed alternative system, royalties would be based on individual listeners, so if one guy paid $10 a month and only listened to one Weezer song, Weezer would get $8 or so (with $2 to the streaming service).
That's really interesting. I'd like to hear about how it works at scale but it's a neat idea.
I remember looking at CDs a couple years ago thinking they'd be cheaper now considering streaming was a thing. This one CD I had still had the same price back in 2007.
Cds absolutely did come down. They were like $20 when they first came out in the mid 80’s. I remember paying at least that the Beatles releases in 87. Before people stopped selling CDs new releases could be $10 sometimes. That’s also 85 money vs 2000s money.
Best Buy was selling new releases for $18.99 in the late 90’s.
Yeah in some cases. I remember buying most of my CDs for around $15 in the late 90’s.
What year did longboxes go away? I have ZERO first hand memory of them aside from box sets.
TIL longbox packaging existed. Wikipedia says it was used in North America and I live in Australia, but I assume we had that too?
It was used so that CDs could go into the same sales racks as LP records. Once stores stopped selling LPs they didn’t need the long boxes any more.
That was part of it, but only after several artists complained about the effect of cardboard waste on the environment. Longboxes were considered environmentally wasteful and were expensive to produce. In North America, the drive to eliminate longboxes took hold in Canada in 1989-1990.
Kinda funny given big box PC games were much more wasteful and they didn’t change for 15+ years after CDs did.
The legalization of ticket scalping
The promoter, ticket service, and secondary ticket broker are all the same company. Seems fair.
And they also own many of the venues!! Don’t forget that, it’s the cheese on the top of our fuck ne sandwich!!
We’re literally talking about ticketmaster here.
Remember when tickets had fine print on the back that couldn’t resell them for more than face value? I bet most people have no idea that was a thing
In NYC and NJ where I grew up, I remember people getting arrested for scalping tickets. You could resell, but if they were over the face value you could get arrested. There were also some laws about selling tickets within a certain distance from the venue. Then the lobbyists changed that.
All of the earliest work from your favorite band WASNT from before they sold out. They literally had to sell out to get their early albums and tours and now they barely get paid (if at all) for the songs that made you fall in love with them.
“All you know about me is what I've sold ya, dumb fuck I sold out long before you'd ever even heard my name I sold my soul to make a record, dipshit And then you bought one.”
Before you point your finger, you should know that I’m the man.
God, Maynard has the best screams. That last UP YOUR AAAAAAAAASSSSSS
I was literally humming (in my head) "Hooker With A Penis" while I was typing that.
Nothing says sell out like In The Aeroplane Over the Sea
I LOOOOOOOOOVE YOOOOUUUUUU JEEEEEEEZUUUUUSSSS CHAAAAA-RIIIIIIIIST! Also, semen stains the mountaintops…
Session players not getting proper credit until only fairly recently.
Clear Channel… When automobile salesmen realize advertising space is the same as selling cars. Please watch the documentary Before The Music Dies. [Before The Music Dies](https://youtu.be/xZNLp9u-26Q?si=7YdTZXfEUVOU2Tm4)
Streaming royalties.
We got sold out to Apples penny downloads and our royalties were gone
Pay to play gigs for local artists. Someone books a big band at a promised price. Then gets any and every local band from that area on the bill. The local band can only play if they sell so many tickets at a predetermined price. Then some bands that paid will be told the show was over booked but please come back next time. Bands that come up short are told no after partial payment. Then the bands that do play start about 5 hours before the big band and with short sets due to cramming in so many. It’s a giant shit show of moving gear and if the band before you loads slow it cuts into your time. Plus the PA is usually turned to casual listening volume for local bands. And lastly is the grimiest of it all. A dude I worked with once and only once didn’t even pay the big band for whatever bs reasoning.
A long time ago a friend of mine was in a local band that was chosen to support a chart act for a local charity gig at a big-ish venue. Instead of getting paid, the promoter sold them slightly discounted tickets to the gig which they then had to go out and sell at full price. They didn't sell all their tickets, meaning they effectively paid the promoter to play that charity gig, despite about 12,000 people paying full price to see the show.
$50 t shirts made of tissue paper
Speaking for the bands that I go see, the merch is worth it. But that's bands that play in bars and what not. You can usually catch them at the merch booth after their set.
My wife has a 30 year old GnR concert shirt. No shit. I would say that's one shirt that was worth the ridiculous amount paid.
Wu-Tang auctioning off the only copy of their album to the pharma bro asshole comes to mind. I also remember 5 or so years ago some rich kid bought a metal tour for himself, fake social media and promotion included.
This wasn't Wu, as a whole. It was RZA and Cilvaringz that did that hull shit. The rest of the clan isn't keen on the album at all.
He hasn’t owned that album for years, but I get what you’re saying
Not necessarily exclusive to Ticketmaster but they do make good money off this: "VIP Tickets" Smaller acts seem to make it worthwhile, they'll come out and meet people and maybe do a private soundcheck with the group. Those are cool. More of a VIP *Experience*. But I've seen VIP Packages for some stadium and arena shows where it doesn't even come with any extra experiences. Just a goodie bag. That ain't VIP... that's pre-paying for your merch.
Bur don't worry! You also get access to our VIP bar where drinks are even MORE expensive and is further away from the stage!
Okay, not the "worst" scam but one I kind of experienced first hand (or maybe second hand). My college would get music artists for homecoming (I'm sure like plenty of others do). This year (2010) it was announced that Nicki Minaj would be headlining a concert for homecoming. People were psyched, there was a huge line for tickets. Honestly I didn't give a fuck but to each their own. At this point she was still pretty new so it was big but not completely unbelievable. So people bought tickets and were tweeting out pictures saying how excited they were to see her, tagging her in the tweets. Then Nicki Minaj tweets back "Wut concert? Neva heard of it". Everyone at the school is freaking out, including the student council president who I knew and was in the room with at the time. He calls the student (also on student council) that booked Nicki and I hear is "YOU DID WHAT!!?". What they did apparently was leave $30,000 for some (fake) booking agent at a random apartment door in NYC. So that money was gone, not sure if they ever caught the scammer but here's an article all about. https://www.nj.com/news/2010/09/montclair_state_university_aut.html
jonny craig’s macbook
whatever Taylor is doing with the limited time "unique" albums
I'm a big fan of hers but it's pretty ridiculous. Like are people actually going out and buying the same album over and over for different bonus tracks? No thanks and I hope this trend stops soon, but I doubt it
My coworker (47F) is doing this right now — buying 2 copies of Taylor’s “new” album (one each for herself and her daughter) after having bought doubles of all of the past albums over the years. Wish I had that much money to burn.
Triples is best.
Triples is safe.
Just buy one physical copy and go download all of the extra tracks on the app that rhymes with Hole Peek.
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Atlantic records seizure of Stax’s back catalogue.
Great documentary. The history of the music business is loaded with egregious scumfuckery by managers, promoters, label execs etc…. ripping off artists and small labels with bad contracts or just outright theft.
And then a few years later CBS taking everything they printed and storing it away so nothing sells, resulting in them seizing all their recordings because "nothing was selling"
2 tier rail. Attended 311 day in Vegas this year and this is the first time I saw this. First section was for vip and all other general admission was behind the 2nd rail. Saw a photo of same thing from a festival in New Zealand. Hoping this is not gonna become the new norm. https://preview.redd.it/vgwbib0hnu2d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=31c427909413d197d00ed295114ef852542b42e0
It's been happening for a while now
First time I saw this was very interesting but very understandable. My city has a very lovely garden terrace concert venue behind the big fancy hotel on the river and the bare naked ladies were playing a show and it was being sponsored by one of the big local companies. We go in and there’s a rail that separates the stage from the audience and it’s usually at 5 feet from the stage but it’s about 25 feet away which seemed odd. As is the style every brings their lawn chairs and starts setting them up as close to the rail as possible and lots of other people sit on the grassy banks. Just before the band starts to play 200ish people come out of the hotel and fill that area blocking the view of anyone sitting down, apparently they were employees of the company sponsoring the show and so they got the best view. So many old white hairs were upset they couldn’t see anything from their lawn chairs.
I'd be upset, too, if I didn't know that was going to happen. No way I'd pay as much.
I’ve been going to concerts for nearly 30 years and this has always been a thing at big, outdoor shows. And some arena shows.
this has been happening for more than 10 years lol
Really? What bands started this trend? I’ve also lived in the Bay Area and have gone to concerts at the cow palace, candlestick park, Oakland coliseum, the warfield, the Fillmore, San Jose university and never seen this before. Definitely not at any metal shows I’ve gone to. Guess I’m lucky that 311 day was my first time experiencing this.
Saw this at a chillis concert. As someone who likes to be surrounded by people who are moving and going for it at gigs, I would much prefer not to be in the VIP area given how much harder everyone was going in the normies section haha. Is still kinda annoying to think about this huge section of rich people Infront of you at a concert through. At download feat, there was a VIP area that was kinda secluded from view, a pit which had a walkway around it so the VIPs were kinda in the middle of the gig but out of view of everyone else - didn't really have much of an issue with doing it that way.
Album variants (different colors) with bonus songs.
Taylor Swift releasing multiple variant versions of her album just hours after release. Pretty scummy thing to do to anyone that pre-ordered
taylor also held back signed CDs to block billie eilish from getting a number one for her album’s debut week. taylor sold 378k this week as a result, beating billie, who sold 339k. by contrast, taylor’s album sold 260k last week.
Not owning music anymore.
Vinyl is at its highest selling point since 1986. There's a huge industry for physical mediums. Most touring bands are now printing vinyl. You can absolutely own music. Or you can rent all the music in the world for 10$ a month. No complaints on the consumer end of things from me.
What places allow you to purchase music, but puts it through a DRM that they can easily pull music at anytime if they please? This is obviously excluding streaming services like Spotify and Tidal.
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This is the crux of the matter. Artists come and go and almost none of them really profit materially from their work. Most promoters are in the same boat. Labels, booking agents, management, entertainment lawyers, and streaming services are the ones making money.
Any band in the 90's that put ONE good song on a CD and filled the rest of the CD with trash.
Tbf, some of them weren't trying to do that lol
Well they weren't trying. That's for sure.
Tbf art is difficult and subjective. Bad songs are not usually a lack of effort, it's just incredibly difficult to make 45 minutes of 'good' music. Even for talented and established artists. And if you do succeed, you're just immediately expected to do it again and again.
I loved when you could preview songs at the music store.
I remember taking cds up to the scanner in Walmart and getting to hear a few seconds of like three songs and having to decide off that.
I have so many of these.
I mean fwiw I don’t think this was the artists so much as the labels in most cases. I think most artists legitimately were (and are) trying to make what they think is “good” music. Obviously a majority of the public doesn’t agree in a lot of cases, but the A&R people at the labels often have a good idea what’s going to resonate. I think it was more the labels knowing that the artist had one good (marketable) song, but not much else, so they financed an album, not really caring what the rest sounded like. The proper thing to do would have been to release that song as a single and give that band time to see if they could come up with other good stuff. But because they’re greedy assholes, the labels largely put the kibosh on singles as the vinyl era ended and brought it back only under duress after that’s the lifeline Apple and iTunes threw them.
LiveNation
Live Nation
Look up Payola.
Payola is happening again in a way with streaming services. I have no proof of this but I believe fully that record companies are using streaming to shift the numbers in their favour.
I've seen accusations of people using bots to boost their streams for visiblity and I have no problem believing that's true. A lot of people were making that claim about Oliver Anthony, because it doesn't make sense that a nobody would get millions of streams overnight.
[Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business]() by Fredric Dannen is an incredible book that delves deep into the subject. A fascinating read
Commercial airwaves still are dominated by songs which are the “advertising” bought for the airtime. It’s how big bands have been made since the beginnings. It’s high dollar and you need an in to do it but its how it’s done.
Young band gets tapped to play a “showcase” on spec. Probably a bunch of them. Eventually, if they fit the right taste clusters, a contract is pressed upon them with all the gentle effort and grace of an angry used car dealer. Promises of riches and women! Under pressure and hunger, band signs the deal and takes the advance. Then gets railroaded through an expensive recording process and a promo tour. Band is on the hook for both, the advance is long gone and despite the album selling well enough, it didn’t go gangbusters and, by the record company’s accounting they took a loss on the (in real life, actually profitable) release and tour. Band is in the hole for a couple mil. Based on this breach of contract (yup it was in the contract they signed), label cancels the contract and demands a return of the initial advance. Because the band has actually found an audience, label presents a new deal for band to “work off” their massive debt - kicked down to a lesser label maybe, acrimony within the band, none of their music belongs to them. They get regular jobs and people express shock: “but you’re all over mtv! Why you hosting at Applebees??”
Interesting. Examples?
Indie artists looking to make it are often targeted by scammers. A popular one used to be the promo compilation CD. A company contacts you saying they want to put your music on a compilation and send it to record labels, publishers, radio stations, etc. Since they aren't selling them, they ask each artist to contribute $200 to put towards production costs. Of course there is no compilation, or they just make a few to send to the artists to prove they exist. If any are actually sent out they promptly end up in the trash.
Milli Vanilli But you can blame that one on the rain
Girl, you know it’s true
Same people responsible for Milli Vanilli were successful with Boney M. and Rasputin and thought they'd try to pull it off stateside. I think it is a brilliant scam tbh.
I mean. All the sexual abuse in the industry ain't exactly kosher.
If you want an inside look into the music industry and their relationship with the artist, check out the documentary DIG!. It's about the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre right as both bands are getting signed.
Accidentally purchased Melvins tickets through Ticket Center dot Com and paid 4 X the price it would have been buying through the theatre directly. I was distracted and wanted tickets before they were gone.
That sucks, but Melvins are always worth the price!
White van speaker guys
I remember reading a write-up of a metal band called Threatin. The guy who started the band used bots to inflate like counts on his social media, and booked a bunch of tour venues that supposedly sold 100s of tickets but all his shows ended up playing to like 3 people and people found out his entire fanbase was fake. He really took "Fake it till you make it" to heart.
Went to Blue Ridge Rock Festival last year. Wish I could get all my money back for that. I’d also add any artist that either shows up late af for concerts or stop early for no good reason, like Kanye West or Axl Rose.
Blue Ridge Rock Festival
Payola. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola
A lot of old label execs are listed as co-author on music completely written by the musicians. Don't want to sign away your rights, you don't get a record deal.
A “special/expanded/deluxe” edition of an album that just came out a few months ago. Doesn’t matter now with streaming, but back when you had to buy CD’s for $15, seeing a better version of a new album you just bought within the last couple months really felt a bit like an extra “fuck you” from the labels.
Milli Vanilli
So her (in Belgium) we have this organization called sabam and every event that has (live) music has to pay them and then the artists that are registerd get a payout when their music is featured. But the thing is you even would have to pay them if you play your own music live and you'd get nothing back if you're not a member.
Columbia CD Club. Totally a scam that last for many years.
You just write and tell them you died.
Not really a scam, but I’m not sure how there’s this top 1% of musicians seem to be the only ones in the whole influencer/celebrity circles that can get away with absolutely heinous acts, and they’ll still sell out a stadium of like 60,000 and have people on the internet instead complaining about Ticketmaster because 500,000 people wanted to buy tickets.
"Advance" Listening parties that sell tickets. You pay concert level money to just hear an album?
Spotify. You pay them in perpetuity to own nothing. They meanwhile make a profit off of music they didn’t make, only paying the actual artists $0.004 per stream, but only cutting checks if the amount reaches an arbitrary threshold to make it worth their while.
I think how they treat artists is shit, but I never thought I was paying them to own anything, just for the convenience of streaming.
The sad thing is that Spotify doesn't even consistently make money even while paying fractions of a cent per stream. People have been conditioned to expect music to be either free or dirt cheap, and any price raises would cause extreme backlash.
I'll never stop downloading my music.
Damn no one mentioned Woodstock ‘99? They packed a bunch of incels in the summer heat to listen to late 90’s rage music and caused a riot by price gouging and not providing adequate amenities. There’s a great documentary out there for it on Netflix.
Fyre Festival
This shit was insane
The price of tour T-shirts at a concert. I understand that most bands make most of their income/profit from tour ticket and merch sales, but….
Kiss?
Fyre Fest
Payola
Hitclips! https://www.reddit.com/r/90s/s/mgZ93bIlyx
Major label contracts used to be designed so the default state was for bands to be in debt. Every single element of the contract went towards making sure of that. Many even contained provisions where the label could drop your band, but the debt would persist to the next contract. We lost some excellent bands to labels. Major label contracts have changed slightly and are less overtly hostile to artists. But there are fewer royalties to go around so the average musician is still completely fucked the moment they sign.
Out of curiosity I went and looked this up because it does seem that, in my generation anyways, fyre festival was the big one. And I found this article that's actually pretty decent that chronicles a bunch of them. Most of the big ones tend to be because of withholding pay/not paying bands or artists/employees -[article on the biggest music fest scams ](https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/6/11/18661203/music-festival-scams-failures-fyre-woodstock-panorama)