Saturday, April 24, 2010

Major label holds out the begging bowl

One of those moments where the majors behave so terribly, you could almost admire them: Warners' Atlantic imprint is trying to get fans to fund Natty's new album. Hypebot reports:

To encourage fans to invest, Natty's offerings offerings include £8 for the EP, introducing Natty from stage for £70, a private acoustic concert in your own home for £600 - £5,000 (not sure why there's such a wide price range), all the way up to Natty remixing your track for for £1,200. Atlantic hasn't announced if they'll be taking their normal full royalty from Natty on the EP.

Isn't the only point of a record label that they put their money up in advance for the record to be made? What, exactly, will Atlantic be doing to justify their involvement in the project? Providing the sort of marketing and promotion expertise that has proven to not work so well in the modern world?

A major label wanting the audience to put the cash up front is akin to a buffet restaurant wanting you to bus your own table, fetch your own drinks and tip the staff.


1 comment:

H. said...

They have probably given the artist a huge advance that is deductible against tax, but have no faith in the finished product. Majors have always done this - they have an A&R budget that must be spent, but that's tax deductible so they sign artists that they know will never have hits or even see the light of day, throw money at them one way or another and then cheat the taxman at the end of the fiscal year.

I guess in this day and age A&R budgets are a little smaller than they used to be. The never-to.be-recouped advance is gone and there's nothing left in the kitty to install him in some ridiculously over-priced recording studio.

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