OK, here's the deal, you hear a song repeated endlessly on the radio as part of a 30-song playlist. It seeps into your subconscious, pretty much replacing whatever else was lying around in there. Obsessed by the song (and, quite likely, it's well-produced yet rather two-dimensional video), you dash off to the nearest chain store to purchase the full CD. After listening to your new favorite song about 50 times, you decide to listen to the rest of the CD. You may or may not be pleased by what you hear, depending on the amount of "filler" that has been included on the release to support the BIG HIT SINGLE (music, being little more than a commodity these days, is manufactured much like dog food: lots of empty calories and bug parts). This process usually costs you, the consumer, around $14 to $19 dollars. That's a fair amount of cash for something you can hear on the radio almost every hour on the hour...or download for free online!

So just what are you paying for?

In a nutshell, you are paying for SUITS: CEOs, lawyers, publicists, etc. Very little of what you fork over to the underpaid serf behind the counter at your favorite music megastore actually goes to the artist.

Some of you may be shocked by this. If you were not born yesterday I sincerely hope you find a safe way back to the turnip truck.

Do you know how much it costs John Ludi to make a CD/CD-R? Around $1.00. That's it, just about one buck. Here's the breakdown:

50 Blank CD-Rs on a spindle: about $20.00 or so.

or

1000 CDs professionally duplicated w/ printing on spindles: $500 or so (if priced competitively).

So, it's about $0.45 either way.

Jewel Case w/ Tray: $0.20 or so.

Black and White Cover and Insert: $0.30 or so.

That's it for product costs. Mailing costs about $1.50 in terms of postage and shipping materials.

There is a time factor involved in burning the CD-Rs at home: around 10 mins or so...I'm usually doing other things at the time so it's not like I'm hovering over the computer with bated breath. If I have a CD manufacturer create actual fully packaged CDs (when sales are up), it takes no time at all. It's a LITTLE more expensive that way, around $1,200 for 1000.

So even if I charge $5.00 a disk (plus postage and handling) I'm making around a 400% to 500% profit. Pretty cool, eh?

You can only imagine what a major label's buying power can do. If it only costs $0.50 a CD from a manufacturer for a run of 1000, imagine what price the majors get with runs of 10,000 to 100,000.

Of course there are other costs: distribution, promotion, paying outrageous amounts of money to "indie promoters" to get the lousy pap that passes for popular music these days out to the masses, and paying for the private jets of CEOs.

Amusingly enough, a certain amount of this money is held against the royalties of the "artist" as a payback of the advance they get. The advance is basically a draw against commission...and a pretty nasty one at that! There are many explanations of how the royalty structure works out there so I'm not going to get into it here, suffice it to say that the whole royalty system can be creatively visualized as a rather large shaft. (And, oh yes, as the artist you also get to hand over the rights to your music to a bunch of artistically myopic bean counters in the process...such a deal! It's amazing to me that anyone still covets this fool's gold-coated ticket to misery, but the human ego is capable of making extreme sacrifices in the name of vanity and self-glorification. )

So there it is: now armed with this knowledge you can either continue to subsidize the bloated salaries of executives and their lawyers (and help perpetuate the unfair treatment of the artists in the process), or you can buy music from independent artists who may actually have something interesting to say. It's your money, waste it as you like.

Your pal,

John Ludi, Musician, Writer, Scourge.

Let's go back to the INDEX page!