Who is Making Money In Rock 'n' Roll
Do you want to know Who is Making Money in Rock 'n' Roll? I just loved this article by Peter Kafka, it tells who is making money in the music business. Very good, if you want more go to forbes.com...
By Peter Kafka
NEW YORK - Complaining about the musical guests at Super Bowl halftime shows may be a time-honored tradition, but you've got to hand it to the NFL and ABC this year: When they handed over their precious 12-minute time slot to the Rolling Stones, they were giving the people what they wanted.
That's because the Stones, wrinkles and all, were the most popular act in the United States in 2005, at least when it comes to the cash they generate. The band tops Forbes' list of last year's biggest money makers in music, generating some $168 million in record and concert sales. U2, which generated close to $150 million at cash registers and on the road, came in second; Elton John, who didn't even release a new album last year, rounds out the top ten list with $66 million.
Go to Forbes.com to see music's top ten earners
Music's Top Money Makers
To compile the list--which looks at the cash that musicians generated, not what actually ends up in their bank account--we used data from concert trade magazine Pollstar's list of top-grossing U.S. tours and U.S. sales information from tracking service Nielsen SoundScan. We're not counting international revenue, but everyone on this list also did well outside the U.S. -- if you can sell out Giants Stadium in New Jersey, you can sell out Wembley, too.
In the Stones' case, as with many of the acts that made this year's top ten, the fact that the group doesn't sell much music is irrelevant--their big money came almost entirely from touring. That's because even one of the year's top albums--say, the Black Eyed Peas' Monkey Business, which sold 3 million copies in the U.S.--generates an average of $13 per CD sold. But the average ticket price for a top act can easily dwarf $100 a pop--an evening with the Eagles cost an average of $108 a ticket last year--and this lets the biggest touring acts gross millions per night.
That's also why there's not much crossover between the 2005 top earners and the nominees for the 48th annual Grammy Awards. Though Mariah Carey, who was nominated for Song of the Year and Album of the Year, sold some 5 million CDs last year, she didn't hit the road, limiting her potential revenue. But Green Day, which was up for a Record of the Year nomination, sold both CDs and concert tickets, earning the group a fourth-place slot on the top earner list.
Think of the list as a quick snapshot of a music act's relative earning power, but take it with some caveats: Musicians' take of tour revenue, for instance, varies widely, and those gross numbers don't include other potential revenue from things like merchandise sales and corporate tour sponsorships and international revenue. All of the biggest touring acts also usually receive advances that can dwarf the day's gross ticket sales.
Likewise, most musicians rarely see a royalty check from individual album sales, but count instead on oversized advances that are in effect back payment from previous successes. And the list doesn't include other sources of income like movie deals, ad campaigns or, in 50 Cent's case, vitamin water sales.
The fact that most of the music businesses' most successful performers make most of their money on the road hasn't gone unnoticed by the record companies, such as Warner Music Group and Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group, which are still dealing with an industrywide slump in CD sales. In recent years, they've tried exploring the idea of "sharing" touring revenues with their star acts. But aside from EMI Music Group, which now gets a piece of tour revenue from both British pop singer Robbie Williams and Korn, the once-hot rock group, the notion hasn't received much traction.
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Free songs!
with the amount of money they make they should never complain about kids downloading free songs.
Just wondering...
It used to be said that touring was second only to copyright in music moneymaking. Maybe that's changing. See my blog about commercials and selling out.
Of course, the tour is a one time thing and the copyright owners of Satisfaction are still getting paid. I guessed (if I had a choice) I'd take the copyright since it is passive income.
A few things about fat-wallet rockstars
VANCOUVER - I think the reason people "wanted" to hear the Stones at halftime was simply because they keep getting fed the same crap over and over again. That performance was singularly awful! The backing musicians could not be heard at all on the television feed, and neither could Keith Richards! I couldn't help thinking that the reason Keith was out of the mix was because he was simply too inebriated to play! My band and I were on tour during the Superbowl, and we just made it to a roadside motel in rural Quebec for the kickoff. I have to say we were singularly unimpressed by the show. You could see by watching his hands that Keith was actually just going through the motions and if we had've heard his guitar in the mix, we would have likely been disgusted. When is the last time you saw Ron Wood take all the solos? I've never even seen him take one, yet at the superbowl he took all but one. The only thing worse than his weak technique and lack of melodic vision was the single solo Richards was allowed to take. I felt that it was a musical train wreck and the Stones should be ashamed to play before an audience if that is the calibre at which they do so.
The Black Eyed Peas, also mentioned in the post, have disappointed me more than any other band in my recent memory. How could a band with so much potential and even with so many excellent early works, release a song like "My Hump." Seldom have I heard a more trite and pointless song, and in fact it is musically devoid of any new ideas. In addition, it takes a formerly politically and socially conscious group and puts them firmly in the category of bands that objectify women. They don't even do a good job of it. "My lovely lady lumps?" Come on.
I personally applaud the rise in downloading music. The ONLY people hurt by music piracy, in the end, are the fat record companies that serve only to promote sub-par acts because the believe that the tried and true sound is the only one that is commercially viable. The rest of us, the independent musical acts, can only be helped by the massive distribution potential of downloading music. My band, Slammin Jack, has performed 200 shows in the past two years. We've allowed taping of all live shows and because of that, we have become a part of the active trading of shows online, through such great sites as the Live Music Archive, at archive.org.
It's not just us though..... How do you think Phish, who have never had radio support, could have held the largest single band concert in the history of music (I believe there was about 170 000 people in attendance, but you should google Phish if you really want to find out for yourself)? It's because they actively promoted the free recording and distribution of their live shows!
In our last six weeks of touring, we brought in $16,900 as a band (and spent $17,500)..... and we did this without any label support at all. We've toured for four years, steadily building a following, and seeing increases in attendance and album sales steadily since 2003. Our first album was even #6 on the Canadian College Radio charts in terms of total airtime, and all without even being on the radar of any label. They don't even know we exist. It's time to stop paying out to record companies who not only do nothing to promote new sounds and talent, but in fact actually serve to harm the state of modern music.
Being in a band....
is hard work. And you're right about modern music being threatened, but it's as vulnerable as everything else~ and unfortunately, it deals with CEO's and profits too~ it has nothing to do with the art, unless the art is from Rome and it's bought for their offices.
That's why....
we must DESTROY THEM!!!! Or at least, don't spend your money on major label releases. Go see live music.
Read:
http://bloggerparty.com/download_music_its_good_for_the_industry
to Sanseitch~
Touring can bring in the big bucks, no doubt, but that's also if you're well known, well prepared, you've been around long enough to write your contract out by hand, then have the record company wipe with it~ and you're not the opener. (Meaning, it's still crap, but profitable crap, so no problem.) The Rolling Stones are actually doing something on a large scale that no other band has done yet.
Metallica has been known to tour 300 days out of a year if they can, and look at it this way~
The Stones are at the moment, the oldest touring rock band of large, popular proportion. They're sort of the experimental band, setting the presidence for future known bands to follow, ya know what I mean?
Rock and roll started in the 50's, full fledged. Most of the acts that were white, do small supper clubs now, in their late 60's to 70's. The black acts rarely played their own instruments in comparison to the white boys, as far as bands go, and most of them are doing the same.
Now, The Stones came out when the Beatles did, era wise. We all know what happened to The Beatles. Paul and Ringo are still touring, and since they were one of the 'first', big touring bucks for them. Paul is a knight~ I need not say more.
Now, the Stones are still all playing their instruments, Mick Jagger still struts around like he did on Sullivan~ (oh, and as a sidenote to the above about their sound being so crappy at the Superbowl Show? Not to take up for them, but ABC was also cutting their sound out, and some of the routers weren't taking up the power slack. They were censoring Mick's singing on lyrics because they didn't want to offend anyone and have a Janet/Nipple Groundhog Day of complaints. On top of that, they're old, it's more nostalgia, and die hard fans than anything now, mixed in with watching Keith Richards laughing and totally bombed out of his gourd, so we all wait with baited breath to see if he's gonna fall over~ he's like a Weeble.)
So here they are, in their 60's, and they're still touring, doing concerts, and last year alone? They grossed.........are ya ready?
170 million bucks for it....and that's just touring....I knew they were raking in cash, but I had no idea it was that much. Even with pay out, taxes, bla bla bla, they had to have pulled in enough spending cash to make it worth while.
You betchur sweet Aspercreme~
Peter Noone tried it, but he's still upset with his Hermits, so he does clubs alone. And not as Herman.....heh~
And the only other white band that tries really really hard, but just never gets there? The Beach Boys. But who wants to see them compared to the rebel Stones of that era? Cruise ships.
I personally don't know how much pain Brian Wilson is in when he sings and plays his keyboards, but it sure looks like it's a lot.
It used to be that when you hit 40ish, you were washed up, and they're still kicking~ a bit convulse-like now, but no other band that age has done that yet~ the only other man on that scale from that era, that parallels is, yes~ Neil Diamond. He brought in huge coin last year too. So this will now set a new trend in bands from the 70's on up, touring well into their AARP years.
I know the most useless information, I swear~
Please do not tell this to Billy Ray Cyrus.
Check out Phish, they did it without radio play
And they have the largest single band concert in history.... Three Days, 170,000 tickets..... one band.
Phish~
and the ironic thing about them? In the whole scheme of the public, people don't 'really' know who they are. That's what's killer.