Jazz Musicians Free Report

MUSICIANS FREE REPORT

THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY

For years now, unless you were a big star, jazz artists have been forced to live a "hand to mouth" kind of existence. Many have had to give up promising careers because they had families with mouths to feed and couldn't sustain a career in jazz and do this too. Others have forgone having families as a sacrifice to their music only to end up alone in their old age with nothing to show for their endeavors and mastery of their instruments. Many don't have health insurance and can't afford to get sick. The list goes on and on.
Since I have been around jazz now for over 40 years as a fan and friend to many jazz artists, some quite well known, I have witnessed these conditions first hand. I have also witnessed the fact that there is another side to this story as well.

I have witnessed many individuals who have lived very comfortable lives as well as some who have become extremely wealthy from their involvement with jazz. I have also witnessed that most all of the people who fit this category are NOT MUSICIANS or are failed musicians who decided to go the exploitation route when they discovered that they lacked the certain ingredient it takes to succeed as a performer.

How did this happen you might ask? Was there something the musicians could have done to prevent it? Is there something they can do now? Has a new day dawned?
In this report we will attempt to answer these questions and many more as a means of enlightening jazz artists to a new concept which they can find out about that can change these conditions drastically.

First let us begin by saying that the reason musicians have been in this rut for so many years is because they are so involved in their art that they never developed any kind of entrepreneurial skills. You might say, "Well that's the way it's supposed to be. There are other people who can take care of that end of it so I can just concentrate on the art."
This would be true and well and good if the "other people" were playing by the rules. And some of them have and still do. But this is the exception and not the rule!
The rule or the past was one of exploitation and manipulation of musicians for personal gain.

How was this carried out? Well let's examine some of the ways.

Up until the early 70s, jazz musicians as well as others, were having their music stolen by record producers and managers for the simple reason that the basic education of how to copyright their music was being withheld from them. Musicians would sign away their publishing rights and often a large percentage of their writers rights simply because they didn't know how to write to the library of congress and get a form to protect their music with a U. S copyright. Consequently, funds that were supposed to be going to an artist were being channeled elsewhere to people who were not only making the money they were entitled to but usurping the money that was intended to go to the musician as well.
It was quite common for a record producer to say, "OK kid, I'll give you a recording contract but I want the publishing rights to all of your music and I want you to sign over 50% of the writer's royalties to me as well. Do you want to make a record or don't you?"
Often, a musician would jump at the chance to get their music and their name out there and make a deal like this. They would think, "Well, I still have 25% of my writers royalties and 25% of something is better than 100% of nothing."

When they would never receive a royalty statement for their 25% they would realize that they were being taken advantage of and start to get indignant. "I'll get a lawyer and sue the bastard" they might think. Then they call a lawyer and discover that the record company owes them around $900.00 in writers royalties and the lawyers fee for getting them this money was $1500.00. The record producer knew this in front and that's why that kind of deal with the musician was made.

Now, you might think, "What's $900.00 to a record company?" Well, granted, $900.00 might mean something to a struggling musician but why should it mean something to a record company? The answer is very simple. Suppose they are doing this with 100 different musicians? Do the math and you will see why? When you couple this with the fact that they are also making the money from the publishing 50% and the 25% of your writers royalties, not to mention the other 25% they agreed to give you but are ignoring because they know you can't sue them the picture begins to get very clear. The musician was lucky if he even got paid scale for the record date. If he did, it was probably the only money he ever saw.

"Well, what about royalty deals?" you might ask. Well, let me run down how that game goes.

To this day there are musicians who think that if they get on paper that they are to receive a 5% royalty on their CD that they are really into something. Let's do the math. Let us assume that a record company sells your CD to a distributor for $7.00. 5% of $7.00 is 35 cents. Very inexperienced musicians will thing, "Hey, I'm going to get 35 cents every time a record is sold." But this is not the case. Your not going to get these royalties until the cost of putting your record out is recouped by the record company.

Now let's do some more math. Let us assume that these costs are not padded, which is usually not the case. But let's assume it anyway. Let's assume you are a jazz pianist with a trio and you were recorded by a record company and you made them a CD that took eight hours in the studio to make. If they paid all three musicians scale, by today's standards, the two side men made around $600.00 apiece and the leader made $1200.00. That amounts to $2400.00. Now let us assume that the studio charged $200.00 per hour to record. That is another $1600.00 added to the $2400.00. We are now up to $4000.00. Let's say you are now going to mix the recording, with the assumption that the producer has some real ears, usually not the case, but we will assume he has and is able to mix in the same amount of time that it took to record.

That amounts to another eight hours at $200.00 or $1600.00 more.
We are now up to $5600.00.

After the recording is mixed, the master must be made. This, usually, takes double the mixing time or close to it so lets use a conservative number like $2500.00. Now we are done with the production of the CD and we are at $8100.00.

Now we are at the manufacturing stage. This involves the art work and the pressing of the CDs. For a conservative estimate of the art work with the mechanicals, etc., let's say $2500.00. We are now at $10,600.00. Let's assume that the company is going to start out with a 1000 CD pressing. That will be in the $2200.00 range. We now have CDs that are ready to distribute and we have spent $12,800.00.

Let us now assume that the record company really believes that your record can sell and make them some money and decide to promote it. They might hire a radio promotion man to work the CD on radio at a conservative price of $350.00 per week for 8 weeks. That's another $2800.00 so now we're at $15,600.00. They may decide to use a mid level publicity agency to work the press for 3 months for approximately $7000.00. Now we are at $22,600.00. We are going to assume, now, something very unlikely in that we are going to assume that they do not pad this figure at all. So they are going to sell the CDs to the distributor for $7.00 apiece and they have to recoup $22, 600.00 before you start to get your 35 cent royalty.

Now here is where most musicians make the big mistake out of ignorance of how a royalty deal works. Most musicians will divide $7.00 into $22,600.00 and come up with the idea that they must sell around 3230 records and they will start to make 35 cents on everything after that. This ignores the fact that the company only pressed 1000 and would have to press a couple of thousand more, adding another $4000.00 or so to the recoup money. So now the new figure is 26,600.00 to recoup. Again let's make the same mistake and divide this by $7.00. We come up with the musicians logic of 3800 CDs to sell to start making 35 cents in royalties after that number. This all makes sense so far to most musicians who are not aware of what I am about to tell you.

This is not how a royalty deal works! It is your 35 cent royalty that has to pay off the recoup money. That means you must divide $26,600.00 by .35. This means you must sell 76,000 CDs before you are going to see a penny in royalties. If a jazz record sells 10,000 or more it is considered a hit for a jazz record. Do the math. Most jazz musicians never see a penny of royalties except in very rare cases. I'm sure that Miles must have made royalties with Kind Of Blue or Dave Brubeck with Jazz Goes To College. Stan Getz, Girl From Ipanema as well. These are rare exceptions and for the most part with jazz records, they will fall into the category described previously.

If you recall, earlier, I mentioned the phrase, "Let us assume that the company did not 'pad' the expenses." This is pipe dreaming in reality as it is quite common for record company's or producers to jack up the expenses on a recording, thus making it further impossible for a jazz artist to ever receive royalties. Here are some of the games.
Let us assume that the producer also owns the record company and in the production cost he adds something called "producer's fee $7000.00." Starting to get the picture?
Another common game is this one. Suppose the company buys a full page ad in a major magazine at a cost of $20,000.00. Let us assume that they had 10 different CDs in the ad from 10 different artists. Guess what? Each artist might find on their list of expenses that has to be recouped something that says, "Advertising cost, $20,000.00." This would amount to each of the 10 artists being charged with the full amount of the ad rather than dividing this amount by 10 which would amount to $2000.00 per artist. Getting the picture?

Now let us look at something I refer to as "The Production Company Game."
This is a practice that has been going on for a long time now in which a "production company" will produce a jazz festival or concert for a city, a country, an art organization or a jazz society. This occurs in many forms. They will tell an organization that they will get such an artist/group for them, let's say, for the cost of $40,000.00. The client will think, "Well, this artist has a big name so he or she must be worth that." Then book the artist at that amount. But here is the rub. When they pay for that artist, they make the check out to the "production company" that booked the act. The "production company" has, by this time, gone to the artist with an offer to play the gig for $10,000.00 to which the artist has agreed. The "production company" has collected $40,000.00 from the client in the form of a check made out to them and then pays the artist $10,000.00 on a "production company" check. Get the picture? The promoter has pocketed $30,000.00 of the money the client was led to believe was going to an artist and hasn't played a note. And this is "perfectly legal" we are told. When you couple this idea with the fact that this promoter has done this with several acts over a period of several years you begin to see an even bigger picture emerge.

If you were to confront the perpetrator of this game with these facts you will hear arguments like, "We have produced this festival! We have a staff to pay! We have sound equipment we have to provide and stages that have to be assembled and broken down!" All of which is true and all of which has already been charged to the client and paid for by them which is also true! And if it is "perfectly legal" then what is the reason for the deception? I'm referring to the deception of leading the client to believe that he is paying a certain amount for an artist while the artist is being paid much less than this amount.
How does this hurt an artist? In several ways, as you will see. First of all, if a client is willing to pay $40,000.00 for an artist, this means that this artist, in a free market scenario, is actually worth that amount. What is taking place then is this. A value, created by an artist for his services, is being usurped by an unscrupulous individual earning a bogus livelihood from values produced by someone who has spent a lifetime developing that value.

Another way it hurts the artist is this. When times get hard due to a bad economy, gigs dry up because clients think that artists cost much more than what they would charge if the "middle man" were out of the picture. Consequently, there is no gig. Do the math. If things had gone down honestly before the hard times in the form of a promoter charging $40,000.00 for an act and taking, let's say, a 20% commission. This would mean that he would have made $8000.00 and the Artist would have made $32,000.00.

Since the artist was paid only $10,000.00 while the client thinks he made $32,000.00 don't you think that this client would jump at a chance to book the same artist at 50% less during hard times? Lets do that math. At 50% less means the artist would cost the client $20,000.00 instead of $40,000.00. If the "middleman" was an honest one and took even a 20% commission, (the norm is more like 10-15%) the artist would have made $16,000.00 for the same gig he normally had done for $10,000.00. This is a $6000.00 increase over what he made in "good times." "There's trouble right here in River City ladies and gentleman and that trouble begins with P and that stands for Production Company!"

Another form of the same game exists with club date offices and catering halls that book musicians for functions such as weddings and parties. It is a quite common practice to charge a client a high amount for musicians and then hire the musicians for a very small percentage of this amount. The client is under the impression that the musicians cost this amount and that they were, in fact, paid this amount. This has been going on for years and when you mention it to musicians they will say something like, "Yeah, we know it but what can we do about it? We have to work!"

It never occurs to this type of musicians that there is something he or she can do about it and that they wouldn't have to lead substandard lives anymore if they only had possession of a certain kind of information.

It is a fact that we are living in different times now and what may have been a practice or attitude in the past is no longer relevant in the present time.

With new technological breakthroughs and the Internet the time is rapidly approaching when musicians and other artists are going to be able to eliminate the parasites of the past and deal directly with consumers themselves. Again, this is going to depend on musicians gaining a certain type of information about a skill which they can acquire almost over night.

If you would like information about this skill and how to acquire it for your self, click on the link at the end of this report.
Izzy Feldman

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