Quote:
Originally Posted by His Infernal Majesty
They wouldn't ALWAYS make more than with a label. Perhaps some would, and perhaps labels can take too much. But in the end, guaranteed money is a lot different than money earned through risk. And the artists generally get guaranteed money in place of zero risk and investment of their own money. The rapper Master P made a very smart deal back in the mid-90s, when we was about to be signed. After selling 200,000 copies of his records on his own, he turned down all advances and opted for a straight pressing and distribution deal with Priority Records in return to keep a bigger share (80% I believe) of his future record sales. He made a ton of money, but he also gave up millions in guaranteed money to do so. In the end, he went bankrupt, but that's not really relevant.
Louis, himself said, "Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you."
He also put up a considerable amount of money in production costs (near $200,000), development for the website, and significantly more work and time put into the final product. That is a huge risk!
No one is really stopping any of these artists, rappers, musicians, comedians, porn stars, etc from making their own money sans a label, but there is also a daunting amount of work and risk ahead of them in production costs and other areas that most just choose to go for the guaranteed money that a label provides.
It's not always so cut and dry.
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the labels do very little innovative marketing
they currently outsource so much of the promotion that it now possible buy the same exact promotion yourself if you have money
i have personally done this with artist, after they got a development deal offer i have had them do a crowdfunding campaign (with the advance as their goal), done properly on average they get 23.53% more money from the crowd.
all without having to give up 90% to the label in the future.
Right now given those condition yes i can guarrentee that a new artist will make more by not signing with the label
maybe the labels will get off their asses and start to use the innovative techniques, but with the current suckers game of give us 90% and cover all cost out of your 10% they really don't have an insentive to validate the alternative that the artist can do themselves.