Ok readers I am looking for volunteers to submit a track or two of their music. It will appear on the site in my blog. I will then dissect the track and criticise ( or praise) songwriting, performing, recording etc. If you decide to do this you should be thick-skinned and brave since I will most [...]
Retired Rock Manager/Producer
Twenty five years of music biz madness... advice and stories for free...actual help with your music career not available..........Best of Luck.....
Classified Madman!, the greatest goddamn f##king band of all time!
This ranch house, nick named the Ruby Ranch, was a standard rock crash pad party house. The refrigerator in the Ruby Ranch was covered by a mix of tour memorabilia and in the midst of this chaos was THE classified ad. What follows is a word for word transcription of the ad. I’ve included a scan of the ad at the end of the blog but it’s difficult to read, hence the transcription. Now as you read this keep in mind that the writer was PAYING BY THE WORD. A typical ad like this in the eighties might have cost $20.00 for the first twenty words and then .25 per word thereafter. Since the Ad has 888 words this puts the printing charge around $235! This man had a dream and he was going to back it up with his wallet. I recently wrote to one of the band members asking for him to dig up this gem of rock madness. It stands as definitive proof what ten thousand spins of “Houses of the Holy” will do to a young, impressionable mind……………..
Lesson #12 Let’s talk about Royalties (pt 2)……..
In the last post I mentioned that people pay royalties for the USE OF THE SONG. The song itself is the property. This is not to be confused with the recording of the song. The recording is a different piece of property. Think of it this way. You buy a dvd of Termintor 2. Does that mean you control the use of the movie Terminator 2. Of course not. You just have a copy of it. The company that paid for the movie owns the rights. Well behind those Hollywood dudes is a writer, the guy that wrote the script. He may still own the script. That writer is like the songwriter
Lesson #12 Let’s talk about Royalties (pt 1)……..
I’m going to change course a little with this post and talk about some general concepts that affect the way a musician makes money. If you are going to SUCCEED AT ROCK you need to gain an understanding of the different ways that you make money as a musician. Of course even the dumbest of [...]
