Lifetime Loser
Oct 27th, 2003, 06:46 PM
Did anyone read this on worldofbritney.com? Its all BS! Haha Im sure Britney is like the LAST person to be affected by people downloading music. The part about Britney's sells being down because people downloading her cd is funny.
Allright everyone, I just need your attention for 10 minutes. Please read this, it is extremely important to me that you do and in full. I want to make sure that every single visitor of World of Britney.com, and every single true Britney fan out there understands why you should NEVER download "stolen" (i.e Kazaa) music from the Internet. Take this update as general information, not just for Britney, but for any artist. If I manage to persuade 10% of those of you who read this update in its entire format to completely delete Kazaa off your computer and not download anymore copyrighted music from the Internet, I will have succeeded with what I'm about to say, and we'll be making some progress.
I want to explain to you a little bit about how the industry is currently crashing and burning, due to people continuing to download and make available copyrighted songs on the net, and not going out buying records. You may think, but what the hell, it's Britney Spears, she's a millionaire, who cares if I download her songs? She's got all the money she needs !! but wait a minute......let's think OUTSIDE the box for just one second, Britney Spears is NOTHING without the hundreds, if not thousands of people that work at her label to make her what she is today. A&R, Business Affairs, Promotion, Marketing, Executives, they don't make the millions Britney makes, they make money depending on how well the industry is doing.....
So, even then.....you think Britney actually makes a lot of money by selling records? Check this out, and let's start by pointing out the obvious, an artist's success (whatever comes after) is ALL ABOUT record sales. So, let's observe how how this works, bear with me, you'll be shocked.
Let's first start out by pointing out that according to RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), in average, an artist signed through a major label (Universal, Sony, BMG, EMI, Warner Brothers) will only sell 12,000 records. Now, that figure might look stupid to you, but if you realize that only 0.05% of signed artists will ever get to sell over 1 million records, you'll get the idea, or perhaps you thought that just because you got a "record deal", that it meant immediate fame and fortune? think again....
So, before Britney started recording "In The Zone", Jive Records, her label, which is a subsidiary of one of the 5 major labels, BMG, gave Britney what is called an "Advance", to record her album. Now, due to that Britney Spears is in the biz classified as a "Superstar", Jive Records probably gave her somewhere in between $1,500,000 to $2,000,000, now known as "The Recording Fund". The entire recording fund is "recoupable", meaning that......Britney will not make a DIME out of "In The Zone" until her record label has recouped the entire recording fund, BUT.....if Britney's album flops....and does not do good, Britney will not owe her record company ANYTHING.
Now, think about this, BOMT sold 13 million records, OIDIA half of that, and "Britney" half of OIDIA. Do you actually think that the decline in sales had ANYTHING to do with Britney losing popularity? WRONG....Britney has never been more popular for every album that she releases, the declining album sales happened due to people like you and me downloading her songs off the Internet.
Let's go back to recoupment. Britney has a bunch of top producers in her new album.....all of which have to be paid, and trust me, with the firepower of "In The Zone", the producers did NOT come cheap. Due to that Britney is not following the traditional "Pop Album" method, which usually consists of perhaps only one or two producers in an album (i.e Max Martin), Britney went and got a bunch of producers for different tracks in the album. So, let's just imagine, that Britney got $1,750,000 from Jive to record "In The Zone" and out of those $1.75 million, $1.5 million went to produce and finish the album, leaving Britney with $250,000 dollars. These $250,000 are Britney's to keep, BUT....due to that the entire recording fund is recoupable, she has to pay the entire $1.75 million back through what is called the "Artist Royalty Rate".
We have something called the SMRP (Suggested Manufacture's Retail Price) on a CD, which is today $18.99. Before we get talking on how much the artist actually gets from those $18.99, let's start substracting some numbers. From those $18.99, there's a 25% packaging fee. We're down to $14.25 per record. After that, there's a 15% "Free Goods" fee, which is actually meant for CD's that are given away, for things like promotion. That leaves us with roughly $12 per record. THEN, the record label usually only pays the artist for 85% of the total records distributed to cover returns and damaged goods. This leaves us with about $10 per album. You with me? Now....here comes the good part, how much do you think Britney makes off the remaining $10? All of it?, half of it?.....let's look at the breakdown...
The standard NET artist royalty rate (the money the artists gets per record) is 12% of the $10 remaining, but due to that Britney is a huge artist, and Larry Rudolph is a great manager, they have probably negotiated her net artist royalty rate to be somewhere in the 15%-17% range. So....ok....I don't want this to get too confusing, so bear with me.....Britney will only earn about $1.5 dollars for EVERY RECORD sold.....
Now, check this out......out of the $1.5 dollars....Britney has to pay from THAT......15% to her manager, 5% to her business manager and 5% to her lawyer, because the record company does NOT pay for that. That leaves Britney with roughly 1 dollar earned PER RECORD SOLD. So let's go back to "recoupment", remember what that was all about?
We guessed that Jive gave Britney $1,750,000 as the "Recording Fund" for "In The Zone", but Britney HAS to give back the entire $1.75 million to Jive FROM her artist royalty rate....., so, how many copies of "In The Zone" must be sold before Britney can start making money from the album? Let's do the simple math....if Britney makes $1 out of every album sold after ALL her deductions, "In The Zone" must sell 1,750,000 copies, before Britney can start MAKING A SINGLE penny off her 4th album !! Do you start understanding now how IMPORTANT record sales are for the artist? Also, we can't forget about the songwriters, the songwriters are sometimes the people that are the most affected by all this. Songwriters get something called "Mechanical" Royalties which are usually 8 cents per song, and mechanical royalties are unrecoupable meaning they start getting the royalty since the first album sold. If you download music illegaly on the net, songwriters will never get paid !
Now, you might wonder, but wait a minute, where does the other 85% of the total album sale go since Britney only gets a 15% artist royalty rate? That everybody, goes BACK to the label.....and you might think, but WTF, that's over 10 million dollars !!! RECORD LABELS ARE CHEAP ! but no......think about it this way. During one year, a record label might sign 50 acts.......and invest an average of let's say, $300,000 on each act for them to make their record....that's $15 million dollars...., now, out of these 50 acts, perhaps only 5 acts actually make the label some money......that means that the label in average, lost about $10 million dollars, and when do they get that back? well....when an artist like Britney Spears comes along, and sells 10 million records......got it? BUT, BUT, BUT.....what happens.....when "Britney", which was Britney's last album, only sold 4 million copies?? and what will happen if "In The Zone" only sells 2 million copies?? CRASH AND BURN BABY, and we cannot let this happen, important important, ,this is ALL DUE TO ILLEGAL DOWNLOADS ON THE INTERNET, we can change this all together, we can make this happen, we can make a change, DO NOT....download copyrighted music anymore, trust me it is not ONLY about Britney Spears and all the money she already has....it is about everybody that is connected to her that makes her entire foundation function, without those people, there is NO Britney, we will just have a beautiful girl with a lot of talent but no juice.
You get what I'm saying??? Spread the word around......we have to united together as fans and music lovers and understand that we have to STOP downloading music. We might think we have the right to, but if you own a shoe store, does somebody have the right to come in, pick a pair and just leave without paying?? NOooooo !!! If you have been downloading music from Kazaa all along, I'm just gonna tell you, OK that's fine, but from NOW ON.....after you were educated with this article, STOP IT, go out, buy the single, buy the record, if you don't, in the end, it will only hurt Britney. It might not hurt Britney's pocket because she has all the money she needs, but it WILL affect the people that make her happen, which hey, as just as important in this biz because without them, there is no Britney !.
OK?! Are you with ME?? :D
Booooyakasha :D
Written by Ruben
Allright everyone, I just need your attention for 10 minutes. Please read this, it is extremely important to me that you do and in full. I want to make sure that every single visitor of World of Britney.com, and every single true Britney fan out there understands why you should NEVER download "stolen" (i.e Kazaa) music from the Internet. Take this update as general information, not just for Britney, but for any artist. If I manage to persuade 10% of those of you who read this update in its entire format to completely delete Kazaa off your computer and not download anymore copyrighted music from the Internet, I will have succeeded with what I'm about to say, and we'll be making some progress.
I want to explain to you a little bit about how the industry is currently crashing and burning, due to people continuing to download and make available copyrighted songs on the net, and not going out buying records. You may think, but what the hell, it's Britney Spears, she's a millionaire, who cares if I download her songs? She's got all the money she needs !! but wait a minute......let's think OUTSIDE the box for just one second, Britney Spears is NOTHING without the hundreds, if not thousands of people that work at her label to make her what she is today. A&R, Business Affairs, Promotion, Marketing, Executives, they don't make the millions Britney makes, they make money depending on how well the industry is doing.....
So, even then.....you think Britney actually makes a lot of money by selling records? Check this out, and let's start by pointing out the obvious, an artist's success (whatever comes after) is ALL ABOUT record sales. So, let's observe how how this works, bear with me, you'll be shocked.
Let's first start out by pointing out that according to RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), in average, an artist signed through a major label (Universal, Sony, BMG, EMI, Warner Brothers) will only sell 12,000 records. Now, that figure might look stupid to you, but if you realize that only 0.05% of signed artists will ever get to sell over 1 million records, you'll get the idea, or perhaps you thought that just because you got a "record deal", that it meant immediate fame and fortune? think again....
So, before Britney started recording "In The Zone", Jive Records, her label, which is a subsidiary of one of the 5 major labels, BMG, gave Britney what is called an "Advance", to record her album. Now, due to that Britney Spears is in the biz classified as a "Superstar", Jive Records probably gave her somewhere in between $1,500,000 to $2,000,000, now known as "The Recording Fund". The entire recording fund is "recoupable", meaning that......Britney will not make a DIME out of "In The Zone" until her record label has recouped the entire recording fund, BUT.....if Britney's album flops....and does not do good, Britney will not owe her record company ANYTHING.
Now, think about this, BOMT sold 13 million records, OIDIA half of that, and "Britney" half of OIDIA. Do you actually think that the decline in sales had ANYTHING to do with Britney losing popularity? WRONG....Britney has never been more popular for every album that she releases, the declining album sales happened due to people like you and me downloading her songs off the Internet.
Let's go back to recoupment. Britney has a bunch of top producers in her new album.....all of which have to be paid, and trust me, with the firepower of "In The Zone", the producers did NOT come cheap. Due to that Britney is not following the traditional "Pop Album" method, which usually consists of perhaps only one or two producers in an album (i.e Max Martin), Britney went and got a bunch of producers for different tracks in the album. So, let's just imagine, that Britney got $1,750,000 from Jive to record "In The Zone" and out of those $1.75 million, $1.5 million went to produce and finish the album, leaving Britney with $250,000 dollars. These $250,000 are Britney's to keep, BUT....due to that the entire recording fund is recoupable, she has to pay the entire $1.75 million back through what is called the "Artist Royalty Rate".
We have something called the SMRP (Suggested Manufacture's Retail Price) on a CD, which is today $18.99. Before we get talking on how much the artist actually gets from those $18.99, let's start substracting some numbers. From those $18.99, there's a 25% packaging fee. We're down to $14.25 per record. After that, there's a 15% "Free Goods" fee, which is actually meant for CD's that are given away, for things like promotion. That leaves us with roughly $12 per record. THEN, the record label usually only pays the artist for 85% of the total records distributed to cover returns and damaged goods. This leaves us with about $10 per album. You with me? Now....here comes the good part, how much do you think Britney makes off the remaining $10? All of it?, half of it?.....let's look at the breakdown...
The standard NET artist royalty rate (the money the artists gets per record) is 12% of the $10 remaining, but due to that Britney is a huge artist, and Larry Rudolph is a great manager, they have probably negotiated her net artist royalty rate to be somewhere in the 15%-17% range. So....ok....I don't want this to get too confusing, so bear with me.....Britney will only earn about $1.5 dollars for EVERY RECORD sold.....
Now, check this out......out of the $1.5 dollars....Britney has to pay from THAT......15% to her manager, 5% to her business manager and 5% to her lawyer, because the record company does NOT pay for that. That leaves Britney with roughly 1 dollar earned PER RECORD SOLD. So let's go back to "recoupment", remember what that was all about?
We guessed that Jive gave Britney $1,750,000 as the "Recording Fund" for "In The Zone", but Britney HAS to give back the entire $1.75 million to Jive FROM her artist royalty rate....., so, how many copies of "In The Zone" must be sold before Britney can start making money from the album? Let's do the simple math....if Britney makes $1 out of every album sold after ALL her deductions, "In The Zone" must sell 1,750,000 copies, before Britney can start MAKING A SINGLE penny off her 4th album !! Do you start understanding now how IMPORTANT record sales are for the artist? Also, we can't forget about the songwriters, the songwriters are sometimes the people that are the most affected by all this. Songwriters get something called "Mechanical" Royalties which are usually 8 cents per song, and mechanical royalties are unrecoupable meaning they start getting the royalty since the first album sold. If you download music illegaly on the net, songwriters will never get paid !
Now, you might wonder, but wait a minute, where does the other 85% of the total album sale go since Britney only gets a 15% artist royalty rate? That everybody, goes BACK to the label.....and you might think, but WTF, that's over 10 million dollars !!! RECORD LABELS ARE CHEAP ! but no......think about it this way. During one year, a record label might sign 50 acts.......and invest an average of let's say, $300,000 on each act for them to make their record....that's $15 million dollars...., now, out of these 50 acts, perhaps only 5 acts actually make the label some money......that means that the label in average, lost about $10 million dollars, and when do they get that back? well....when an artist like Britney Spears comes along, and sells 10 million records......got it? BUT, BUT, BUT.....what happens.....when "Britney", which was Britney's last album, only sold 4 million copies?? and what will happen if "In The Zone" only sells 2 million copies?? CRASH AND BURN BABY, and we cannot let this happen, important important, ,this is ALL DUE TO ILLEGAL DOWNLOADS ON THE INTERNET, we can change this all together, we can make this happen, we can make a change, DO NOT....download copyrighted music anymore, trust me it is not ONLY about Britney Spears and all the money she already has....it is about everybody that is connected to her that makes her entire foundation function, without those people, there is NO Britney, we will just have a beautiful girl with a lot of talent but no juice.
You get what I'm saying??? Spread the word around......we have to united together as fans and music lovers and understand that we have to STOP downloading music. We might think we have the right to, but if you own a shoe store, does somebody have the right to come in, pick a pair and just leave without paying?? NOooooo !!! If you have been downloading music from Kazaa all along, I'm just gonna tell you, OK that's fine, but from NOW ON.....after you were educated with this article, STOP IT, go out, buy the single, buy the record, if you don't, in the end, it will only hurt Britney. It might not hurt Britney's pocket because she has all the money she needs, but it WILL affect the people that make her happen, which hey, as just as important in this biz because without them, there is no Britney !.
OK?! Are you with ME?? :D
Booooyakasha :D
Written by Ruben