"Weird Al Yankovic recently said he makes far less money when you buy from iTunes than when you buy an actual CD. This guy did the math and showed that Weird Al could be losing up to 85% of his record sales income due to the 'weird' ways the record companies compute digital sales. Are all artists getting the shaft like this?"


http://digitalmusic.weblogsinc.com/2006 ... e-artists/

Wait...people actually buy Weird Al's music?

Another way of illustrating that no matter how much illegal downloading may hurt artists, the record companies have fucked artists with more malice, forethought and consistency than any kid that ever used Napster.

Yeah, so once again it's the recording industry b.s and inability to adjust to new paradigms that's the problem. Not the actual downloading.

Those numbers are a little askew.

First he says Apple takes in $12 for a 12 song cd, when in reality most of their entire discs are sold for $10.

The Alman brothers math confuses me, because if 538,000 downloads got them $24,000 that doesn't sound too bad to me. At an average of 10 songs per disc, that is 53,800 discs, which is roughly $2 per cd. Isn't that what most artists make from selling a hard copy anyway?

More established artists out there should do what Collective Soul did, and make their own label and work out their own distribution. Yea they have sold a lot less discs without the big backing labels, but they own their music and they take a bigger cut. Plus it gives them incentive to put out better product.

Unless you're an act like Smashmouth, where the singer can't actually sing and has had his voice processed by top producers for 15 years. You put out your own release and people go "geezuz, that's bad, Steve."

He could have hired a producer.
But we all know Smashmouth should never have made any music in the first place.

I think you mean $.50, slick?

i made $3 off of digital distribution.
HOLLLLLAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

drink on me.

Bad math, timmy.

sounds like a bad deal to me. sh|t, 20 cents per lala trade goes to the artist. can't remember how much per emusic album/song goes to the artist, but it's in the 20% range too..

wow, my math was pretty bad.
sorry I was "preparing for a conference call" when I did that. woops.

Weird Al does parodies of other people's songs.


He should get the shaft. Literally.