Excuse the long post (I’m nosy and I like to write) but Jay and Bey’s ongoing saga with lawsuits and grueling tours have caused me to really think about how artists make money in the music industry. Is the cash real?
I use to think that Bey and Jay’s constant behind the scenes shady deals, nauseating PR headlines (total disregard for truth), ego, narcissism, and bullying sprinkled with some talent were necessary characteristics that artists needed to display in order to earn big money in the music industry but I don’t think those bad manners help to increase funds anymore. It takes hard work, owning your masters, not getting bogged down in lawsuits, watching those who you paid to watch your money, not alienating your fans because without them there will be no celebrities, good old common sense, and fighting for those in the industry that aren’t being respected financially. The following paragraphs are just some entertainment industry statements that might help us understand Jay/Bey and other celebrities’ financial situations.
Every Artist is Struggling - Paula Cole, one of my favorite singers from the late 90s said in a great Huffington Post article, “Everyone in the industry is suffering ― from the indies to the Eagles. Digital distribution, of course, has completely changed the music business. So, artists now have to tour and own our publishing and if you can own the master tapes of your songs, that’s where you see income but it’s increasingly difficult for artists, no matter their stature, to make a living”
www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/paula-cole-dawsons-creek-i-dont-want-to-wait_us_5ace1b38e4b06a6aac8df856Owning Masters - Paula goes on and states, “As far as master tapes go, if a song is played on the radio, you get a percentage of a cent for a performance royalty. But in order for a company to use it for a TV show or a commercial or anything else, they have to pay to use the master. Warner Bros. still owns the original master of “I Don’t Want To Wait.” So, I re-recorded the song so that I own the new master (the “20th Anniversary Artist’s Edition”) and I don’t approve of the use of the song for anything unless it’s my master — not the original one owned by Warner Bros. For instance, in a commercial from 2015 that featured the song, I was paid because they used the master that I own the rights to. That’s what Prince did. That’s what Aerosmith did. A lot of artists have re-recorded their catalog to ensure they ― and not some record company holding artists to an unfair contract ― are getting paid for their work. Society should value artists, and all artists should be paid for their work so they can continue to create beautiful art!”
Repaying Record Companies - Paula Cole also stated that she is still paying back her record company. She said, "I have been trying to pay back those costs but you can’t pay them back dollar for dollar — instead it’s something like a penny on the dollar. Back in the ’90s, when it was a different time in the industry, the record company would charge you for everything — like every single town car that brought you to every single interview and you could only pay it back by the penny on the dollar. Then we moved into the digital age with streaming and you only make 0.0005 cents on every stream and if you need to repay those large budgets from the ’90s, you owe your soul to the company store”
Streaming Music - Streaming just became worst or better? Billboard just changed how artists will get paid for streams and CD chart placement due to streams (Paid streaming subscriptions will weigh more than streaming services' free tiers)
www.rollingstone.com/music/news/musics-new-chart-rules-care-a-lot-about-whether-youre-paying-to-listen-w519772Touring - Tours are risky. Not always profitable. Rihanna lost a significant amount of money for her tour that was touted during her lawsuit with her former accountant. Concert tickets are expensive but all the money earned from a tour definitely doesn’t go directly to the artist. Please read this article on the costs associated with touring (I listed some highlight below)
www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jan/30/where-does-concert-ticket-money-goThe more the elaborate the show the more costly it will be to the artist. Fees for rehearsals and stage designs are added. Taxes have to be paid on each ticket sold (5% in US but up to 35% in Europe), 10% is taken up by ticket processing fees and booking fees, and live performance royalties. Depending on the contract the artist strikes with the touring venue, the following has to be compensated“ venue hire, stage hands, venue staff, electricians, power, spotlight hire, scaffolding, barriers, catering, public liability insurance (in case anyone is injured at the show), backstage furniture (yes, really), forklifts, rigging, medical staff, transport and even towels”.
Some artist can negotiate a set fee (payment regardless if the show sells out or not; promoter shoulders all losses), other artist have to split the monies between themselves and the promotor. This is where it gets interesting, the artist’s cut of the tour money has to be shared not only with the manager but also with their manager, “The artist’s share then has to cover its own mini economy. The act will have their own crew (roadies, sound engineers, lighting crew, catering, tour manager, backing singers, extra musicians, dancers and so on) as well as transport trucks, with 30 articulated trucks on the road not being uncommon for the biggest shows. One huge act’s manager reportedly said it cost them $750,000 a day to be on the road, whether they were playing a show or not. Talking of which, don’t forget that the manager also needs their cut of the band’s share – normally 15%-20%”.
“The more money acts are going to make, it appears, the more ways they can find to spend it on expensive hotels, helicopters and ostentatious stage sets that – in less hubristic moments – they perhaps don’t need. Never underestimate ego and its ability to blow budgets out of the water.If you give an act loads of money, they’ll find a good way of spending it on the show,” says a source who has seen this happen time and again. “So it’s never going to be as profitable as people think and it’s never a case of all the money going straight into the band’s pockets.”
Bankruptcy - May artists have fallen into bankruptcy. Rihanna was close to it and 50 Cent went thru it. Some of ya’ll may have already known this but I didn’t know the extent of how Rihanna almost went bankrupt. Some people said the story was fake but the lawsuits that came after the possible bankruptcy were very real. Read the following articles about it
www.xonecole.com/how-rihanna-almost-went-bankrupt/ www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/rihanna-court-lost-9m-thanks-accountant-article-1.1612527www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2561519/Rihanna-settles-10-million-accountant-gave-bad-advice.html www.businessinsider.com/rihanna-was-nearly-bankrupt-in-2009-2014-2www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2015/07/05/reasons-we-think-bbhmm-is-about-rihannas-former-accountant-peter-gounis/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.60b7b26f946bIt seems like Rihanna basically funded her own career while she was signed to Def Jam with zero help from Jay Z or Jay Brown (she wasn’t their priority…I wonder why? But this sounds very similar to Rita Ora’s complaints about RocNation). Marc Jordan of Rebel One Management was the manager that really hustled to get Rihanna to where she is today. However, Rihanna fired Marc to sign with Roc Nation
www.lipstickalley.com/threads/this-man-saved-rihannas-career.259100/ Jay Z only helped to sign Rihanna to Def Jam but he did nothing to try to keep her there while he was president. Def Jam, especially LA Reid, refused to fund videos for several of her albums, and the small amounts of money that she did make, Marc had to use those funds to create her next projects (LA Reid loves to tout the story of Beyonce encouraging him to keep Rihanna on Def Jam. I seriously side-eye it and why was Beyonce at Rihanna’s showcase
www.billboard.com/articles/news/magazine-feature/6836012/la-reid-on-meeting-rihanna-for-first-time-jay-z-beyonce). According to Rihanna’s bankruptcy article, “After the release of Rihanna and Teairra Mari, Def Jam had intention to drop both acts because their album sales were not successful. Her manager fought to get [S.O.S (Rescue Me)] and quickly tried to negotiate with as many companies as possible”.
Endorsements from Nike, Samsung, and CoverGirl funded Rihanna’s videos not Def Jam. According to the article, For the Good Girl Gone Bad Album (all of this before and
after the Chris Brown incident), “Def Jam told Jordan they were no longer funding the album, so Jordan needed money again to pay for music videos ‘Shut Up & Drive’ and ‘Dont Stop The Music’. Almost 250,000 was spent to have those videos created. Plus, an additional 120,000 to shoot ‘Hate That I Love You’. Then came for the repackaging of her album ‘Good Girl Gone Bad’, which is called ‘Good Girl Gone Bad: Reloaded’, that entire project was funded through Rihanna’s money. ‘Take A Bow’ was bought through her money”.
By the way, the house Rihanna brought for $7 million back in the day with strong encouragement from her accountants (eventually sued the accountant and won $10 million but later dropped an additional $35 million dollar lawsuit against the accountant) but had to sell for a significantly lower cost was rumored to have originally belonged to a family member of RocNation’s management team but Rihanna instead sued the home builders
jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20110903/ent/ent5.html www.upi.com/blog/2014/01/28/Rihanna-wins-important-battle-in-lawsuit-over-leaky-LA-mansion/5861390918764/Rihanna’s finances seem to be doing much better (establishing businesses outside of music and doing lot of charity work) but she is still facing financial hurdles. She stated about fame, "Sometimes a person looks at me and sees dollars," she tells GQ. "They see numbers and they see a product. I look at me and see art. If I didn’t like what I was doing, then I would say I was committing slavery"
www.complex.com/music/2012/11/rihanna-says-she-sees-herself-as-a-a-piece-of-art Rihanna also said, “‘You know, when I started to experience the difference — or even have my race be highlighted — it was mostly when I would do business deals.’’ Business deals. Meaning that everyone’s cool with a young black woman singing, dancing, partying and looking hot, but that when it comes time to negotiate, to broker a deal, she is suddenly made aware of her blackness. ‘‘And, you know, that never ends, by the way. It’s still a thing”
defpen.com/rihanna-t-magazine/ Last but not least, don’t forget the song B*** Better Have My Money and her distancing herself from RocNation’s events and music.
50 really lifted the lid on hip hop money by filing for bankruptcy. In 50's bankruptcy filings he revealed that his lawsuits were ruining his assets. He said that he only made 10 cents per record, only netted $100,000 combined for starring in two movies, only had 24 million in assets (lawyers later found $64 million) but debts were $32 million, only brought in $185,000 a month which wasn't enough to cover his monthly expenses of $108,000. 50's home alone cost $72,000 a month to maintain. He declared that the cars, clothes and jewelry were rented; it was all an illusion. But wasn’t 50 listed on Forbes as being worth hundreds of millions of dollars?
www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/50-cent-trial-testimony-bankruptcy-2015 www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/music/2015/aug/04/50-cent-expenses-gardening-bankruptcySongwriting - Even Ne-Yo is fighting for songwriters to receive their fair share of royalties (Bey is gonna have to do a better job of bullying/changing one word in order to get writing credit if songwriters get their way). He’s been to congress twice to ask for legislation. Ne-Yo said, “The crazy thing is there is more music being consumed now than ever – which is really cool. But it is not financially stable anymore. Songwriters are barely getting by now because of the fact there are no laws in regard to streaming. It sucks…When I first got into the industry, it was a lot harder to get your music heard and it was a lot harder to get people to pay attention than it is now. It was a lot easier to get paid, I’ll say that! It was definitely a different industry when I got in,” he said….If I am a songwriter and if I can’t feed my family writing songs, then I am going to do something else. That means that whatever great song that I was going to write is not going to get written now,” he said…He added: “The quality of artistry suffers. With that happening, everybody else suffers. You don’t get your favourite songs. You don’t get that song to help you through that breakup. That doesn’t happen anymore because the songwriter couldn’t feed his daughter with what he was going to get paid from it.”
musically.com/2016/11/13/tinie-tempah-and-ne-yo-talk-streaming-beyonce-and-songwriter-royalties/Here’s a great article of what songwriters have to put up with when they are in a session with singers (very insightful if you haven’t seen it already)
www.rollingstone.com/music/features/sias-reject-opus-songwriter-on-reclaiming-adele-rihannas-unwanted-hits-20151203?page=5Taxes - Thankfully Cardi B is contributing to what past entertainers revealed about the music/entertainment industry's finances. Cardi ranted about how Uncle Sam was going to take 40% of her earnings this tax season
www.newsweek.com/cardi-b-taxes-money-government-858948 No matter how famous you think you are, Uncle Sam will always collect what he thinks you owe him. Nothing has changed, especially for black people when it comes to the IRS (Red Fox, Ron Isley, Sammy Davis Jr., Wesley Snipes, Mary J. Blige, and Lauryn Hill all faced terrible financial headlines and some served time in prison). It seems like black entertainers funds are more scrutinized than any other race of entertainers. I can only recall a few white entertainers like Ed McMahon, Nicolas Cage and Burt Reynolds that had severe IRS issues that were plastered all over the news and I but you guessed already, they didn’t go to jail. Jay better be praying to the good Lord above that the SEC or the IRS don’t start snooping around his finances and Bey’s finances. One little missed payment can ruin everything for a black person.
Paying for Your Own Performances - Cardi also declared that she only got paid $70,000 ($140,000 after two days) to perform at Cochella but she had to pay out of her own pocket $300,000 for her performance (I don’t know what she spent the money on because not much was on the stages for both performances. Celebrities sure aren’t getting bulk discounts)
www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/04/11/cardi-b-coachella-losses/ It makes me wonder how much Beyonce had to pay and the terms of her contract for Coachella (Bey’s first Coachella performance, especially the hair and outfits, weren’t as refined as the second performance. For the second show, strict media control, moisturized hair and refined sparkly stage ready outfits still didn’t stop her from having falls and malfunctioning fans. Did the difference in performances reveal Bey’s Coachella costs out of pocket vs sponsorships?)
Hollyweird Money - Since Jay and Bey like discounts, they picked a great time to get into the TV/Film industry because salaries in entertainment are falling. I came across some great researched master lists of actual Hollywood salaries.. It’s more money than us regular folks will probably make in our lifetimes but it’s still not the Hollywood glamorous dream that is sold and told to us every day. Most actors, even big named actors, aren’t making big bags of money. They have to try to get crazy residuals (back-end) deals and acquire endorsements for movies that they are staring in in-order to make big bucks. Don’t even think that directors, assistants, and other behind the scenes entertainment industry folks are cashing serious checks. According to the 2016 report, “The average director salary for a studio film is in the $750,000 to $1.5 million range, depending on the number of past credits. As a second-time feature filmmaker, Angelina Jolie got $1 million for Universal’s Unbroken. But Sam Taylor-Johnson, who had directed several films before Fifty Shades of Grey, received more than double Jolie’s fee for the S&M picture. Lately, the studios are pushing for smaller upfront fees in exchange for more generous backend (after the film hits cash break-even, of course)….The Devil Wears Prada director David Frankel’s lawsuit against The Weinstein Co. illustrates, those deals are filled with pitfalls. Frankel claims he cut his directing fee of $6 million to $1.2 million to direct the 2013 opera comedy One Chance in exchange for a larger slice of the gross. But TWC barely released the film — it made a total of $90,000 in the U.S. — leaving Frankel short $4.8 million”
www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/hollywood-salaries-2016-who-got-933037/item/hollywood-salaries-revealed-who-got-933042According to the 2017 report, “the days when a screenwriter could get $4 million from a pitch written on a cocktail napkin are long gone. But Max Landis got $3 million for the upcoming Bright then sold a spec script called Deeper to MGM for $2 million. Marquee writers such as Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian still earn decent wages — between $3 million and $5 million — but big paydays for even the most reliable scribes are fewer and farther between”
www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/2017-hollywood-salaries-revealed-movie-stars-makeup-artists-1043252/item/movie-star-what-hollywood-earns-2017-1043232
