This is where things start to get a little sketchy. Where current musicians see a new horizon for the music industry, record label execs see an easy way to make a quick buck while simultaneously screwing over their clients. The labels are able to do this through use of poorly delineated contracts. Many new artists that want to sign on with a record label can only do so by signing a contract that states the artists' obligations to the label, what will be expected of them and so on and so forth. Here is the catch though; for new artists, the sections pertaining to digital download royalties are usually very poorly worked out and end up with the label taking a major portion of the profit, even though selling music online costs the record label less than making and distributing plastic CDs.
For artists that were signed with a record label before the dawn of digital downloads it can be even worse. Because they signed a contract back in the day that did not outline provisions for digital sales, the record label is able to lay claim to all the royalties while leaving these long time artists without what is rightfully theirs. Naturally, one would get pretty ticked off about this pretty quickly, their own label robbing them blind while the label execs fill their pockets. It is simply not right and many bands are willing to do things differently in order to turn a better profit.
As talked about previously, the alternative rock band Cake distanced themselves form their record label and struck out on their own by building their very own solar powered recording studio and independently releasing their music. Now I am sure most if not all of you know the band Radiohead. They have been around since the 80s and are extremely popular. If there are those of you still not in the loop check out the band's website or Wikipedia page. Now they too were fed up with their record label for constantly jerking them around especially when it came to download royalties. So in 2004 they left their record label and went on hiatus. After three years of being on hiatus, they released their seventh album In Rainbows as a digital download on their website. The real draw was that consumers could name their own price for the album download, they could even get it for free.
In Radiohead's interview with Stephen Colbert, when asked about their decision to release their new album directly to fans, the band's guitarist Ed O'Brien was quoted as saying, "We sell less records, but we make more money." So breaking away from their record label's obsession over CD sales and shortchanging was obviously a positive move. They have also released their eighth album, The King of Limbs in the same fashion and plan to continue doing so in the future. This method of distribution is not as clever as a solar powered studio, but it is another example of bands becoming independent and changing along with the climate of the industry, leaving the record labels behind, which is how it should be. Record labels can be so underhanded in the ways they rob artists of their royalties. This state of affairs is a travesty really and is a sign of not only greed and absent-mindedness, but also of strife and desperation on the part of the record labels. It is no wonder many people believe that the industry is dying.
Source(s):
Anderson, N. (2008, January 2). Radiohead: artists often screwed by digital downloads. Retrieved
from http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/01/radiohead-artists-often-screwed-by-digital-
downloads.ars
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