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THERE’S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS |
… AND THERE’S ABSOLUTELY NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS. OINK!’S VERY OWN SHOW BIZ EDITOR HAS BEEN DIGGING AND DELVING AND GETTING TO GRIPS WITH THE UPS AND DOWNS AND THE INS AND OUTS OF THE “MUSIC BIZ”. AND HERE HE IS… HAMMOND EGG!
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I WANT TO BE FAMOUS!
Everybody, it seems, wants to get into music these days. And it’s so easy, right? All you need is a bedroom, some whizzy computer equipment with the right music track programmes on it, and presto – you’re a composer, a producer. Or a singer. Or a band. Making megabucks. But hang on a minute. What are you going to do with the music you’ve produced? Aha – I hear you say: that’s OK, we’ll pop it onto YOUTUBE or FACEBOOK or iTUNES and the world will download it. You’ll be famous. People will be flocking to your site, to hear you, to know more about you. But hold on again – is the music any good? Does anybody want it? How do you know until you’re ‘out there’? Does anybody care?
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So you say to yourself, I know – I’ll go out on the road, and promote my music. Put myself about a bit. Everybody does it: Natasha Bedingfield; The Rolling Stones; Arctic Monkeys; KT Dunstall. If they can – I can! Good on you, as they say. Good luck. You’ll need it. It’s not as easy as it seems.
CD sales are falling, sheet music sales are getting lower all the time, downloads are OK, but only if you’re lucky or BIG, and a lot of artists are actually giving their music away free. Prince gave away thousands of copies of his last CD on the front cover of a newspaper. (He, of course, was paid a HUGE amount of money for doing this!)
So, how do you make any money from your music? The bottom line is, you may not: it’s very, very difficult. Unless you are a working musician – and a good one at that – or one of the few music makers who can sell CDs or downloads, you need to be able to write something that other people want. You can then make money from the music’s publishing rights, licensing the music for others to use (that is, giving others permission to use your music for a fee).
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Boosey & Hawkes is a very old music publishing company which owns vast amounts of concert and show music. They licence this to people who want to perform it and make a lot of money in the process. So do the composers they represent as publishers. For instance, look out for the Lloyds TSB commercial on television: the music you’ll hear has been ‘licensed’ by Booseys, as they’re called. Licensing music for commercials and other television productions is very big business, and the companies involved make a lot of money.
We’ve all seen The Transformers. The producer behind the series owned all the music in each episode. Every time it’s shown on television, anywhere in the world, he makes money. And a lot of it. So much that he went on to own Fox Kids Television! The composers who write the theme tunes for soaps like Eastenders make money each time it’s shown. The chap who wrote the theme tune for Coronation Street only really wrote one successful piece of music. In this case, it’s all he needed. Every time a piece of music is broadcast, the composer gets paid what they call a royalty, which is a small fee for the use of the music.
This is big business, and there are a number of major music publishers involved in promoting hits from the 1950’s through to nineties for use on TV commercials and elsewhere. See how many you can spot.
Other big bucks come when you are asked to write music for a film, television show, a commercial or even a major singing star. But it’s difficult to break into this part of the music business. You need talent, but you also need luck: the lucky break we all hear about.
If you fancy yourself a singer, or are part of a band, you could go out on the road and give live performances, if you can get them. You’ve got to be good to get anywhere and be prepared to work for practically peanuts until you’re “discovered” as the next great thing to hit show biz.
If you have a band, or are a solo act, live shows or concerts help, but when you’re starting out, the money you make from them hardly pays for the expense of getting to the gig in the first place. Some bands get only £40 to £60 for a night of playing – and that’s got to be split between the band members.
Several issues ago, OINK! covered the job of breaking a new band. Sometimes the band has to actually pay the promoter of a concert to appear on the same bill as a famous name.
It’s only when you get to be as big as POLICE, or The Arctics, or Prince, of course, that the serious bucks start coming in. If anyone has tried to get tickets for a top line concert recently, you’ll know what I mean! At this level, the artist will be making money. But remember that they’re having to pay out for roadies, sound men, wardrobe, makeup, production – the lot.
Still want to get into the music |
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