blackcoffeeblues
Student Of The Blues
Check it out---then you might understand more about---my post "LOW DOWN DIRTY TRUTH ABOUT SONG WRITING" I sure hope the plaintive wins.
Back in them days $200 bucks was BIG BUCKS-50s early 60s I made $1.25 an hour making caskets---bring home check was $44.60--rent was $85 a month. So they made just a little less than I made in 5 months. None of them old blues players made much. Even Elvis only made .08 cents a record....when he started out with SUN. You got to sell a lot of records to make any money at them rates---(he did).Lots of folks helped themselves to other peoples songs. Few more so than Willie Dixon if you believe Buddy Guy in his book, When I Left Home.
According to Buddy, Willie was well positioned when bluesmen arrived from Mississippi with a guitar and a song to offer them a couple hundred bucks for the rights to their song. Most signed on the line, knowing they would never see any royalties anyway, and needing the money to eat.
Yeah!I don't know who's in trouble the most----Blues Musicians or The Rappers--(every one of there's sounds the same to me).
she's probably glad she lost>That Katy Perry song had 2.6 BILLION views on Youtube.
If they made 1/2 penny on each view, that's $13 million
That is what it sounds like to me too.---Un talented people reaping $$$$ from talented.---Disgusting to say the least.Lawyers and judges will get paid well, everyone else loses.
That's not the way YouTube works, sadly. She probably saw $13, not $13 million.Yeah!
Good thing is............I don't need to worry about law suits, they only go after the big money.
That Katy Perry song had 2.6 BILLION views on Youtube.
If they made 1/2 penny on each view, that's $13 million
Maybe I need to focus on lawsuits instead of music.
Rant On Brother!That's not the way YouTube works, sadly. She probably saw $13, not $13 million.
There's an interesting trend going on - not to hijack this thread but I think it's relevant...
Many blues artists don't even really bother to write songs anymore (much like many pop artists...) Why do you suppose that is?
Well, I'll give you an example, Peter Frampton said on Twitter that for 55 MILLION streams of "Baby I Love Your Way" on Spotify, he got $1700... not enough to make a living in any market, really.
The public has devalued new music to the point where it is no longer lucrative for many artists to write new music. If there's no benefit to writing a new song, why bother?
Now, obviously, some artists live for that craft - but many don't. They used to take the time and energy to write a song (which is an unproven commodity in the music business) because the rewards could be great if it was a hit.
Now, though, it's much better to take a proven commodity (song) and re-record it and pay the miniscule royalty to the writer and make your money on the tour and with merchandise.
Shoot, half the songs on most of my favorite blues albums now are remakes of classic blues tunes (the new Peter Frampton record comes to mind, as does the last couple of Clapton albums.)
If I were to put out an album full of songs I didn't write, it would cost me a few percent of the tiny amount of money I make from the recording. But, since those songs are proven, it might reach a much larger audience than my songs would (since the public has, by and large, proven that they are not interested in unproven songs) and therefore concert attendance would be bigger and my ticket sales and merchandise sales and potential amp/guitar/whatever endorsements would be bigger.
The monetization of the music industry has shifted dramatically. Joe Bonamassa rode this wave better than anyone. I don't think he wrote more than one song per album on the first several he did. Now he does because he's big enough that people will listen because of his name.
But notice he also did these "tribute" tours where he pulled from the back catalog of the 3 Kings, Howlin' Wolf, etc. Not to mention the British Blues tour he did. Notice that he didn't even bother putting out an album for those, just booked the tour and recorded the show.
If the lawsuits put the final nail in the coffin, you won't see a lot of new material coming from anyone, and that's what will be the real shame.
** end rant **