Income split, royalties, etc.

[Bammer]

Can anyone spell this out for me clearly? I am particularly interested in PJ but this would be interesting to know across the music industry.

If an album sells a million copies, how much $$$ does the band see of that? 10%?

Of that 10% who gets what? If the band has 5 members do they split the $ evenly or does it have to do with the music/lyric songwriting credits?

What about singles? Singles sales... Singles licensed for use in a TV commercial, etc. When I am watching a football game on TV and they use Alive as fade in music - do only Ed and Stone get a piece of that? Or the whole band? If the whole band, which drummer?

Similar questions for touring: If a tour sells $50M in tickets, how many dollars are split between the band members? Is Ed's cut more than everyone else's? How about merch?


Then similar questions for other bands with one standout popular figure or one member who does (nearly) all the songwriting. Like Dave Grohl with Foo Fighters for example.

[Heathen]

depends

[Mine]

This is from Billboard about the Target deal

As Gossard puts it, “If somebody would have said 15 years
ago that they were going to give us a great chunk of money and
let it be a one-off and not hold us to any strings, we would have
said, ‘Come on! This is the best deal ever!’ We fought our way
through eight records at Sony and J to get ourselves in a position
where we could cut a deal to get paid $5 a record, rather
than $1.50 or $2.

[LoathedVermin72]

The "splitting" is totally up to the individual band. There's a really interesting negotiation scene in Metallica: Some Kind of Monster when they're hiring a new bassist that sheds some light on this.

[Mine]

Of that 10% who gets what? If the band has 5 members do they split the $ evenly or does it have to do with the music/lyric songwriting credits?

there are 2 kinds of royalties, songwriting and publishing, to further complicate things.

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[LetMeSleep]

This doesn't really relate to PJ at the moment but it's an interesting read. Steve Albini nuts out a typical deal for an up and coming band.

http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17

Also, in the 90's when Prince left Warners (or it could have been around 2007 when he did those 20 odd London O2 shows) I remember a comment about he made saying he used to sell 10 million records and maybe see $1/copy whereas now he sells 1 million copies and probably sees $10/copy.

As for the split of songwriting credits, it's a song by song basis. The band may have agreed to a 20% five-way split. Most artists split it into 50% lyrics, 50% music so if it was a track like Release that came out of a jam it'd be Vedder 60%, the others 10% each.

[McParadigm]

Yeah, Steve's analysis is pretty useful for talking about small to mid-sized acts. Record company "we're loaning you the money to make and promote the record" logic tends to chop a huge percentage of a bands royalty income for the first half million copies or so. However, those dues don't extend beyond a point...they end well before you're at multiplatinum levels...and this band hasn't had to worry about that since album #1.

Other than Boom, everybody in the band has multiple songwriting credits. Some may get a bigger pie than others, but nobody is on the Charlie Watts/Richard Wright "hired hand wages" deal.

Just figure that Billy Corgan is a massive weirdo who bought and maintained a wrestling organization because he could, and his band has sold less than half of what Pearl Jam has sold (not to mention the extreme disparity in touring income)

[dimejinky99]

What bearing it has on each member having 2.5 songs on each album, the last few times..We know it was all Ed&Stone mainly up to that.

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[Sgt. Crackpot]

The general consensus of what I've heard and read, is that for most musicians on a record contract there's fuck all money for the artist in record sales. The big money comes from touring.

[dimejinky99]

Did they/their management see the lights change in the industry? they were kind of ahead of the curve in a lot of things, was getting away from a major, one of them?

[dimejinky99]

The general consensus of what I've heard and read, is that for most musicians on a record contract there's fuck all money for the artist in record sales. The big money comes from touring.

Touring profit is to scale..the bigger the room/tour, the bigger the outlay, usually.

Touring would be more profitable for PJ than most bands in those same arenas i would have thought.

[LetMeSleep]

The general consensus of what I've heard and read, is that for most musicians on a record contract there's fuck all money for the artist in record sales. The big money comes from touring.

And merch. The official bootlegs are a fantastic revenue idea. Play a show and get paid $1mil (minimum), get 5,000 fools to buy it for a tenner or more and bingo.

I believe they got out of their contract as soon as they could. but remember the stories of them signing the first contract. They played and worked that baby HARD.

[Birds in Hell]

The general consensus of what I've heard and read, is that for most musicians on a record contract there's fuck all money for the artist in record sales. The big money comes from touring.

And merch. The official bootlegs are a fantastic revenue idea. Play a show and get paid $1mil (minimum), get 5,000 fools to buy it for a tenner or more and bingo.

I'd be astonished if any of their bootlegs sell a tenth of that much, I'd expect a few hundred sales for shows of particular interest but barely any for random mid-tour shows. I think it's more of a vanity/goodwill project, I presume the digital/burn-to-order distribution method helps keep costs down enough to keep it going (though I may be wildly incorrect, of course).

[LetMeSleep]

it'd be interesting to know the numbers.

[Jorge]

Let's audit Pearl Jam.

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[surfndestroy]

The general consensus of what I've heard and read, is that for most musicians on a record contract there's fuck all money for the artist in record sales. The big money comes from touring.

And merch. The official bootlegs are a fantastic revenue idea. Play a show and get paid $1mil (minimum), get 5,000 fools to buy it for a tenner or more and bingo.

I'd be astonished if any of their bootlegs sell a tenth of that much, I'd expect a few hundred sales for shows of particular interest but barely any for random mid-tour shows. I think it's more of a vanity/goodwill project, I presume the digital/burn-to-order distribution method helps keep costs down enough to keep it going (though I may be wildly incorrect, of course).

I think the big advantage of the bootlegs is that if they can make any profit on them it can go towards overhead and not having to tour as much and keeping Brett more readily available to them (over him hopping on other projects and tours) by giving him work.
Their overhead expenses are going to be quite a bit more than a band's on a label but they also get more from everything they sell.

[William Bloke]

.