Comment Re:Effect (Score 1) 194
you still don't get it. The lavish parties, the free CD's to the record stations (CD's aren't sold to radio stations, BTW, they're given away as "promotional copies"), that's all written off the corporate taxes. The money that's paid to the new, undiscovered bands that get the "big label contracts" isn't a gift, it's a loan to the band based on future profits, from albums that have yet to be recorded. If the band makes it, the record company gets their money back, with interest...if they don't, it's another write-off. Not that they spend that much on them to begin with, see Sheryl Crow's speech at the Grammy's, a few years ago.
Meanwhile, the engineers and staffers (who BTW I *have* met, and within whose ranks I used to number myself) get paid chump change, while the corporate execs and the shareholders rake in big profits. Have you ever seen a *studio engineer* riding in a limo? Get real! Spare me the rhetoric about engineers going homeless, and instead ask why Edgar Bronfman, Jr., the grandson of a bootlegger, is a multimedia tycoon.
Learn a little bit about how the media industry works. A big hit movie, like "Coming To America", for example, TO DATE still has not shown a profit on the corporate ledger, despite hundreds of millions of dollars flowing to the studio from theater showings, video rentals, promotional items, and the like. It never will. That's how the business is set up, in movies and music.
I'll support the artist. I'll buy the new Public Enemy direct from Chuck D for $8.00, knowing that he'll get approx. $7.50 of that--I'd rather give him $8, knowing he'll get most of it, than give $15.99 to Best Buy or Tower Records, knowing that at most he'll get $.85 from them.
I didn't initially suggest that you get a clue, but from your response, I think you'd better first figure out the name of the game.
Meanwhile, the engineers and staffers (who BTW I *have* met, and within whose ranks I used to number myself) get paid chump change, while the corporate execs and the shareholders rake in big profits. Have you ever seen a *studio engineer* riding in a limo? Get real! Spare me the rhetoric about engineers going homeless, and instead ask why Edgar Bronfman, Jr., the grandson of a bootlegger, is a multimedia tycoon.
Learn a little bit about how the media industry works. A big hit movie, like "Coming To America", for example, TO DATE still has not shown a profit on the corporate ledger, despite hundreds of millions of dollars flowing to the studio from theater showings, video rentals, promotional items, and the like. It never will. That's how the business is set up, in movies and music.
I'll support the artist. I'll buy the new Public Enemy direct from Chuck D for $8.00, knowing that he'll get approx. $7.50 of that--I'd rather give him $8, knowing he'll get most of it, than give $15.99 to Best Buy or Tower Records, knowing that at most he'll get $.85 from them.
I didn't initially suggest that you get a clue, but from your response, I think you'd better first figure out the name of the game.
