The SHYT These Record Labels Do

HellRell804

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Because there are a lot of people looking to exploit others themselves among them.
Look at someone like birdman who is a notoriously shady businessman

I used to be down on Birdman, but if you actually think about it, what has any of the artists who left him actually accomplished?

Juvenile was a certified superstar with cash money. Without them he was a nobody.

When was the last time you heard a mannie fresh beat?

Turk is washed

I can't comment on BG because who knows what would have happened if he didn't go to prison.

Rich Homie Quan is slowly trying to crawl his way back to relevance.

Young Thug will probably never be hotter than he was during the Rich Gang Era.

shyt even Jaquees is a household name despite being a 4'11 manlet in a genre full of Trey Songz and Chris Browns.

I think Birdman gives an aura to his artists. Kind of like his personality runs off on them. That rich gang lifestyle gold turleys and chandeliers lol.

The only one who even had a chance to maintain his position in the game was Wayne, but instead of letting him go to roc a fella to be an employee Bird gave him young money and he gave the world Tyga, Nicki Minaj, and Drake.

Yea he did Wayne dirty on the money, but on the flip side, how much of that money would even be generated without him?

You gotta pay the piper pleyboigh :birdman:
 

Dave24

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honestly , if people educate themselves on the music biz and love music and willing to put the work in, you could be eating very good
even if you dont even fuk with the music game like that and you just love money, you can eat good

the amount of people that got #1's and stopped making music just cause they were only in it for the money, they flipped that money and went on to do other things, its one of the reasons i dnt fully get into the "he/she fell off" nah some peple just leave the game cause they set out to do something and got it, why i need to go to these award shows? im good , obvlsy you get the ones that love music so they stay for ever, all those one hit wonders, not all of them are dead end broke

you can even get 100k upfront just off the strength of a single deal, no ep no album just straight up single if its good:ehh:


What you posted sounds good/inspirational!

Man I want to be eating very good! I work a minimum wage job :mjgrin:
 

HellRell804

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Will be back to rep all the Coli Associate Music Professors.
It’s just such a conglomerate of shyt to unpack even down to the cost to make an album.

Why does it cost so much to create an album? Seems like costs are bloated for no good reason.

The costs have definitely gone down due to technology. You can record an album in a closet on a mid grade laptop these days.

But unless you're the next J. Cole or Russ who can self produce entire albums of listenable music you're going to have to bring in producers

If you're not able or willing to put the hours in to learn sound theory and other things like that you're going to have to bring in an engineer to mix it so your album doesn't sound like trash.

At some point you're probably going to want to bring in some features even if it's just your homegirl singing a few hooks. You either pay them up front or promise them a percentage on the backend which can be super expensive.

Once the album or song is done you have to market it. I think I remember reading it costs about 4000 bucks just to get a placement on the front page of world star hiphop and like 7500 for one of those big placements. There are artists on soundcloud with better music than anything from the major labels with only 3 or 4 hundred views. If nobody knows about you they can't listen. Word of mouth will only carry you so far.
 

FRIED MASON

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Ya’ll gotta help a sister out on this Saturday. I’m sipping some tea, taking a break from some writing and saw an article talking about Normani. Then I saw this link.

There’s a lot of very VERY uber smart dudes on this shyt who know so much about music, so I just be lurking and learning.

They probably been knew about this shyt but it’s new to my slow ass.

This some new new shyt to me. It makes me look at all these artists and their struggles differently. How I’m gon make only $20 from the shyt that has my entire essence in it. My look, my sound, my voice, my tone...and u gon pay em pennies for THEIR shyt.

How you gon offer an artist a record deal just to get them out of the way and have fans clowning them calling them a flop not even realizing the game?

:mjcry:That’s why a lot of these artists be snapping and looking crazy as hell.
 

Ghostface Trillah

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As a negro who worked for a record label I tell cats I meet doing music not to sign record deals because there's no need for it in 2020 but they all ignore my advice because at the end of the day they all want the fame more than the money. Some of them don't even bother to hire a lawyer to look the contract over. They just trust the labels lawyer or are too cheap to get there own and that's why they're still paying for breakage and getting hustled out of new format revenues.

A record deal in 2020 is like getting a bank loan and trusting the bank to get you work to pay it back
 

Dave24

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As a negro who worked for a record label I tell cats I meet doing music not to sign record deals because there's no need for it in 2020 but they all ignore my advice because at the end of the day they all want the fame more than the money. Some of them don't even bother to hire a lawyer to look the contract over. They just trust the labels lawyer or are too cheap to get there own and that's why they're still paying for breakage and getting hustled out of new format revenues.

A record deal in 2020 is like getting a bank loan and trusting the bank to get you work to pay it back

Nowadays, can you still get the money and fame without being fukked over?

If not, I would just settle for the money.
 

Ghostface Trillah

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Nowadays, can you still get the money and fame without being fukked over?

If not, I would just settle for the money.

You can do both but one usually comes way before the other when you do it on your own. Labels give you instant gratification because of the advance money but you spend the rest of your career paying back that money in one way or another
 

TNOT

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The Currency( Spitta) business model seems to work. Especially in this business climate.

He’s no dummy tho, he’s also been in the game almost as long as Wayne and them.
 

Wild self

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At the end of the day, record labels take the lion's share of the profits because they take the lion's share of the risks.

For every J. Cole or Kendrick Lamar that sells millions of records there are 1000 Desiigners and Vic Mensas who flop aggressively despite 100s of thousands of dollars in marketing and prime placements on albums and commercials.

The truth of the matter is, most people don't have the expendable income to spend 6 to 8 hours a day in the studio for months at a time to craft an album. Producers don't make beats for free, studios dont stay in business by letting artists record for free, Bills have to be paid, children have to be fed, families have to be taken care of.

That's why the game took a turn towards the hustler/rapper archetype of the 90s. These men came into the game with the money to finance their own projects and marketing. They just teamed up with the labels for distribution. They got better deals because the label had less risk involved in promoting these artists.

The bright side is that truly talented artists that stand the test of time can power through their first deal and come back to the negotiating table with much greater leverage and gain a larger slice of the profits because marketing is less of an issue when you're already a superstar.

People have unrealistic expectations of financial success in the music industry. They rush out a formulaic product quick to get paid a fast 10-30k. They dont want the standard middle class lifestyles.....they want that Rolls Royce money. Not just the rappers. I'm talking about the producers, the promoters, everybody. To them, living a quiet middle/upper middle class lifestyle is :scust: on their minds, so they push out all these trap dudes who can record an entire mixtape (or album) in 5 days on some Tyler Perry shyt with decent returns. They want to be multi millionaires their first calendar year and live up that lifestyle for eternity.

That Jay-Z and Master P business model expectations ruined black music.
 
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