The further I’ve engrossed myself into Hip-Hop, the less money I seem to be able to find in it. On the surface, the rap life seems great. The chains, the hoes, the cars and all the assumed perks of being a rapper look to be overflowing, but the Great Depression of the music industry has really changed all of that, probably permanently. Read the rest of this entry »

The folks over at NPR have a question/answer column pertaining to the music industry and 360 deals was topic du jour. What was once shrouded in a shield of mystique is slowly but surely coming to light.  Danny Goldberg, president of Gold Village Entertainment, adds his two cents & peeling a couple more layers off the onion. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a well known fact that 360 Deals are pretty much the norm these days for any artist wanting to align with a major label. Mainly out of curiosity I’ve always wanted to see how one broke down, because outside of ponying up for recording costs, what else can you say a major label does for an artist? They don’t develop them anymore; instead stepping in after the artist has some semblance of a following and selling them a dream. Read the rest of this entry »

Ask any respectable artist (read: one with a likely career in the industry) about a 360 record deal and they’ll tell you that it’s nothing short of a pact with the devil. For decades, labels have charged copious amounts of dollars for recording, manufacturing and distributing albums, but the show money was always their bread and butter. But according to Edgar Bronfman, CEO of Warner Music Group, the option to have the label in your pocket every turn of the way is no longer an option — it’s become mandatory.

Bronfman argued to a hostile crowd that it doesn’t make sense for labels to pour money into artist development when CD sales, their primary source of revenue, continue to decline (although he did say that digital sales now make up 20% of their revenue). Without other ways to make money from an artist, he said, they wouldn’t continue to promote artists.

What all this boils down to is record labels becoming increasingly disconsolate that they’re living in a world where artists are growing less dependent on them. Does a Drake or U-N-I need a record label to give away free music at one of their shows or online? Read the rest of this entry »