• Optional
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    1142 minutes ago

    For anyone unaware, the “music industry” had a brief period around 1960-1978 where they led youth culture and brought some decent artists to the fore, including [everyone]. Which was ironic as they started mostly as a goof by rich people or a front by the mafia.

    A “record deal” was always a sucker’s deal because they’d loan you $300,000 or whatever and then decide how much you’d paid them back over however many years you made them money. The companies didn’t buy videos or tour buses or billboards or anything -they fronted the money and the artist paid for that, usually without knowing it.

    Around 1980, in a coke-fueled bender that lasted over a decade, they decided “fuck it” and just screwed everyone they could for every dollar they could. Fortunately, they were so stupid and up their own asses that mp3s destroyed them after a decade of them trying to decide who was going to get fucked more than who else. (Anyone remember the DAT wars?)

    Billions were made but the artist usually only saw a small fraction of that because record companies were “riding the gravy train” and living fat off all the money. Nothing has changed. No one is going to wake up. It was always this bad. It’s just that being a touring musician used to be at least a job and a career and now it’s pretty rare.

    If it helps, think of it like this - there’s no one in any seat of real power in the “music industry” who is a musician. They don’t give a shit about what they’re selling, it could be cow pies for all they care - they’d look and act exactly like they do now because it has 100% nothing to do with music. It’s just marketing a persona and bilking them for all they can.

    And it’s been that way the entire time. Yes, there are exceptions, but not many.

    • @yetiftw
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      115 minutes ago

      I fear this is happening to every industry

  • @Dupree878
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    162 hours ago

    I have no idea who these women are but the music industry knows what it is. And it’s gotten worse. And it doesn’t care. The industry needs to die and art profits should go to the artist.

    It needs to be illegal for record companies to get rights for anything other than distribution.

    If your band is signed with Polygram you can’t even record a duet with an artist on another label without paying Polygram royalties for a song that is not your band’s and has nothing to do with them.

    • @x0x7
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      -856 minutes ago

      I think adults should be able to sign whatever contract they want.

      • @Dupree878
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        1050 minutes ago

        But then you have to remove ALL consumer protections on contracts. Payday loans can start charging 20,000% interest and make you sign a line that uses fancy language to put your car up for collateral. You could prohibit people of a specific race from renting or buying property.

        So go that way, but also disband every government agency because if we’re sovereign then that’s it. Every man is his own government.

        Or maybe we could just keep the protections we have and expand them to cover an industry that’s thrived on screwing over artists it’s whole existence.

      • @whereisk
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        428 minutes ago

        I also think people should be free to sign contracts to become lifelong slaves of other people.

        After all everyone’s circumstances are identical, same genetic lottery and are born with equal opportunity of money, mind, health, physical ability, family and geography.

        Exploitation? Sign away.

        Hidden terms in obscure language? Sign away

        Forced circumstances? Sign away

        Asymmetric power imbalance? Sign away.

        Debt slavery? Sign away.

        Selling your children? Sign away.

        That’s true freedom.

        /s

      • @Fedizen
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        20 minutes ago

        contracts should be standardized unless both parties have a lawyer otherwise you’re pitting lawyers against teenagers

  • @Supervisor194
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    818 hours ago

    Why would this be a wake up call for the music industry? This shows they are operating at peak efficiency!

    • humble peat digger
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      102 hours ago

      Ya. They don’t care.
      And now they got a permission to not do anything at all as artists can make money from side hustles.

      We as a alsociety failing to fight the predatory business models.

  • Pennomi
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    12810 hours ago

    I was under the impression that while streaming was garbage for money that touring was the cash cow. Apparently it’s a loss for these artists. It makes me sad that all the profits get vacuumed up by everybody but the artist.

    • @[email protected]
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      507 hours ago

      It makes me sad that all the profits get vacuumed up by everybody but the artist.

      The average worker experience

      • @[email protected]
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        4110 hours ago

        It’s got to be the ticketing taking too much vig, right? I hear these stories about $300 tickets, I haven’t been to a concert in years but in the 2000’s touring was where the money came from. With $45+ticketmaster tickets.

        They have to be sucking all the money out at point of sale

        • @Dupree878
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          62 hours ago

          The ticketing company owns all the venues now and they own the secondhand scalper sites so they allocate a bunch of tickets to the secondhand site and mark them way up plus they can charge whatever they want for the venue and only pay the artist what they were contracted for

        • @[email protected]
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          42 hours ago

          It’s also probably the one of the few ways for artists to have an income that their lable/manager/publisher/whoever the fuck else doesn’t take a huge cut of. Add in ticket master and company and they’re fucked.

          Those contracts they sign can be fucking brutal. I’m not familiar with either of those artists but it’s a common enough problem in that industry.

        • @[email protected]
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          45 hours ago

          Was ever thus, init.

          The options are 1) Charge less and sell more, or 2) Charge much more and sell less, but make up more than the difference in how much more they charge.

          They always, always take option 2 because they’re shitheads who feel like they have a legal duty to put the shareholders above the customers.

        • @astanix
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          328 hours ago

          Just look at ticket prices on ticketmaster for a US show and compare it to the cost of an international venue.

          When I was pricing David Gilmour it was literally cheaper to buy a plane ticket and fly from NY to Rome and go to the show there than get the worst seats in Madison Square Garden.

          • @Dupree878
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            82 hours ago

            Because Ticketmaster and it’s venues are a monopoly. Pearl Jam tried to warn us 30 years ago.

      • @[email protected]
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        -56 hours ago

        You can still make great money if you’re packing out big venues. I don’t know who either of these people are so I wouldn’t be surprised if they aren’t able to sell out big amphitheaters or stadiums. Small venue shows are great but they aren’t buying you multiple houses.

    • edric
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      249 hours ago

      It’s why I make it a point to buy merch when I see a band I like on tour. They probably earn more from it than the actual tour itself.

        • @Dupree878
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          82 hours ago

          I went with a date to see Tori Amos last year and the merch was stupidly expensive (even for concert merch) and the woman told us to order online because the venue was taking ½ of merch so everything was double

    • themeatbridge
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      3210 hours ago

      Touring has always been a boondoggle. Artists could make bank if they were selling out shows, but the baseline venue prices have skyrocketed out of reach for most fans. The producers, promoters, engineers, technicians, roadies, not to mention lodging, travel, and food, a lot of people expect to be paid before the artist makes a dime.

      • Avid Amoeba
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        187 hours ago

        Ticketmaster and LiveNation (also Ticketmaster) expect to be paid most of all. The own so many venues it’s incredible.

        • @Dupree878
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          42 hours ago

          And the scalping sites.

          They’re totally a monopoly but the government won’t do anything because they only hurt normal people.

          Musk needs to start a ticketing agency so somebody rich has a stake and watch congress do something.

    • @Skullgrid
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      1810 hours ago

      I was under the impression that while streaming was garbage for money that touring was the cash cow. Apparently it’s a loss for these artists.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJSp-yRMrsY

      why you do this - a self documentary from car bomb on why people still make music/tour despite monetary hardship.

      There are tech death musicians out there that give some classical composers a run for their money that still have day jobs, mostly in computer programming of some kind.

      (side note : turns out that technical death metal appeals to the same kind of people that enjoy working on applied mathematics. who could have guessed)

    • @[email protected]
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      1910 hours ago

      I’ve played many shows for free after several hours driving (with gas I paid for), US’s music scene is set up to fail

  • @finitebanjo
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    4210 hours ago

    Hold on, Lily Allen is on OnlyFans? That’s wild, lol, I guess a big part of her brand of feminism is embracing sexuality or something.

    Power to em, idgaf.

    • @halcyoncmdr
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      217 hours ago

      To be fair, artists are one of the original intended uses for OnlyFans. While it is sexually focused now, that’s more a side effect of it being one of the very few creators subscription sites at the time it started up.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      10610 hours ago

      Lily Allen, who started selling pictures of her feet on OnlyFans over summer. She had the idea after seeing that her feet had a perfect five star rating on WikiFeet, a photo-sharing foot fetish website. Subscribers pay £8 a month to access her posts. In October, Allen claimed that shots of her well-pedicured trotters were earning her more money than Spotify streams – and that’s saying something, considering Allen has over 7 million monthly listeners and more than a billion streams on her top three songs.

      Feet pics apparently.

      • @[email protected]
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        278 hours ago

        In another thread someone said Spotify is paying out 17k per month for her streams. And that’s only Spotify. If she’s making more on OF, that means there are a lot of foot people and the music royalty situation is completely fucked up, because I don’t think the money ends up with her.

        • @[email protected]
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          21 minutes ago

          I remember reading that Spotify pays out around 4k per day (~120k per month) for her streams but the majority of that payout goes to the rights holder and Allen gets pennies. I think Spotify is paying a reasonable amount (at least in my opinion but I’m far from an expert on the matter) and the music industry is the one screwing her over.

          • @[email protected]
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            41 hour ago

            Wow, that is a shitton of money. Yeah, it really sounds like the music industry is shit and broken like everything else.

        • @nshibj
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          4 hours ago

          I’m not saying that’s wrong, because I don’t have the information, but I have repeatedly read on different news articles that Spotify pays peanuts: way less than that to big artists. I will have to check for updated and reliable sources.

          • @Dupree878
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            72 hours ago

            They don’t pay as well as Apple and Tidal but they pay much better than YouTube

            When you’re indy you don’t make money from streaming. When you’re actually popular you do, but the record company gets it. It’s like when hard partying rockstars used to all go broke. It’s because they made millions but the corporations took it all and made them pay back the recording and partying costs out of their meager earnings. Then if the band was bust the company would write off the expenses as a loss while still collecting from the artists’ share.

            For Taylor Swift’s 1999 album, there was an article that showed Spotify had paid millions to the record company and Swift got about $200. That’s why she’s re-recording everything as “Taylor’s version.” So she can get the revenue.

            The singer of Cracker showed his earnings from streaming the song Low one month and TouTube had way more views than any streamer and had paid pennies. Seriously it was like .32.

            My last check from streaming was $12 and that was only split two ways.

          • @[email protected]
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            54 hours ago

            Others might pay more, but the point is, that Spotify pays so much more than what ends up with the artists.

            • @nshibj
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              41 hour ago

              Thank you, I didn’t know that. I know that record labels have been screwing artists for decades… but I didn’t know that Spotify was actually paying good money for the listens, it just doesn’t reach the artist.

      • @[email protected]
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        46 hours ago

        I just had a look and her feet do look incredibly nice. If I were so inclined, subscribing to her account might feel worth it.

      • @finitebanjo
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        189 hours ago

        Wow, what a strange world, she have any photos where she grips stuff with her feet?

      • @bassomitron
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        149 hours ago

        Damn, I’ve had so many friends and coworkers joke about selling feet pics and here she is actually doing it and making bank! That’s utterly crazy that she makes more from OF than Spotify. I’m surprised Spotify/streaming subscriptions hasn’t just been killed off by artists/studios if the revenue stream is that awful.

          • @Viking_Hippie
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            In fact, the studios are probably making as much of the money as Spotify itself, if not more. While the artists get like 0.003 of a penny per stream. That’s fucking ridiculous!

            For all the celebrity status and glamour, their labor and creative output is still being exploited almost as badly as that of “regular” workers.

    • @[email protected]
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      2510 hours ago

      It looks like it’s just crazy foot people and she’s not actually exposing anything lol.

      • Boxscape
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        399 hours ago

        It looks like it’s just crazy foot people and she’s not actually exposing anything lol.

        She’s just dipping her toes in first.

        • @[email protected]
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          43 hours ago

          There’s a youtuber who posted completely dressed feet pics - shoes and stockinged ankles peeking out of full skirts on only fan for a parody video on her channel and was surprised by how much it was making her instead.

      • @[email protected]
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        78 hours ago

        It’s an awareness stunt. I get the point - but its also hard to feel bad for very successful music superstars who are having a few down years. That being said these music industry shills running ticketing, touring etc. Are awful so bringing that to attention is a worthwhile cause.

  • @gsfraley
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    249 hours ago

    I can’t comment on these specific individuals, but a situation like that is gutwrenching. Absolutely nothing against OnlyFans and other adult entertainment, there are tons of people who genuinely enjoy and take pride in the work, but if there’s even a slight hesitancy or feeling of pressure to do it just to support their real careers, the notion seems deeply awful and psychologically damaging.

    • @betterdeadthanreddit
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      108 hours ago

      Kinda sounds like a reason some people might try to preserve or widen a gender pay gap. If they can’t keep women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, this is their next best thing.

  • @Fuckswearwords
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    159 hours ago

    I’m sorry to be the asshole here but … She hasn’t been on the charts for nearly 10 years… She probably amassed more wealth than most of us will in a lifetime. If she’s unable to work a regular job now to keep up the lifestyle and has to sell feet pics… Sorry but boohoo

    • @Ledivin
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      8 hours ago

      Her 2018 album hit #8 in 3 different countries 🤷‍♂️ that’s neither a decade nor anything remotely akin to failure.

    • @[email protected]
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      25 hours ago

      Ah they posting adult content? I didn’t read the article and I thought they were using OF for their music.

      • RBG
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        189 hours ago

        The ones with small feet?

        • @Hazor
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          68 hours ago

          Some people are in to that.

    • @BluesF
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      26 hours ago

      I don’t really think she “has” to, at all. I think she saw an opportunity to make extra money and took it.

  • @blazera
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    88 hours ago

    A paltry few millions in networth. Please think of these starving artists