Re: Who Cares About Commercial Success?

[chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu (chris williams)]

Fiona writes:
>If Kate's records do not sell well, do you think she is going to get
>continued support (i.e. $$$) from the record cos. to keep doing
>what she is doing? Do you want her work to be widely distributed and
>easily accessible, or do you want her work to be available only in
>small stores and/or by mail order, with little possibility of it
>gaining a wider audience? 

   We haven't actually seen Kate's contract, so a lot of this is
conjecture, but every indication is that Kate doesn't *get* an advance
from her record company. Kate's "record company" is Novercia, a label
with one artist. Kate produces a recording for Novercia, Novercia
delivers the finished master tape to EMI and Columbia for distribution.
If reports are to be believed, nobody at EMI heard a single note of
any of Kate's albums before the final mixdown.
   So Kate bears the financial burden of producing the album in exchange
for the freedom to produce exactly the album she wishes to create.

>Like it or not, those are the sort of "perks" that commercial success
>brings. Record companies are not going to give money to artists who
>aren't selling. And someone working at Kate's level, as far as I can
>tell (e.g. four years in the studio), needs money to continue in
>that fashion. I'm not debating art here, but there are financial realities
>that go into making that art possible and making it widely accessible.
>
>So let's not be too hasty about not giving a rat's ass about commercial
>success. Commercial success ensures that Kate can keep working and that
>all of us can get our greedy little hands on her products ;)

   Kate is a long way from poverty and still quite a distance from not
having enough money to produce another album. The other perk of her
relationship with the record companies is that she gets a larger
percentage of the wholesale costs of her recordings. She doesn't *need*
to sell as many (ugh) "units" as Paula Abdul to continue producing
music. Todd Rundgren is a good example; her sells between 100 and 200
thousand copies of anything he releases. It's been enough for him to
keep releasing records. Some are attempts break into the charts, some
exist entirely because that was what he wanted to do at the time.

   Kate has far more freedom to produce what she wishes than almost
any other artist at her level of sales. Even if she was to drop down
to below-100,000 copy level, she would still have a record contract.

(I wish she had signed with Warner in the US, not Columbia. Warner
is known for the fairly large number of "prestige" artists that they
support - Van Dyke Parks, Randy Newman - regardless of sales.)


                          Chris Williams of
                             Chris'n'Vickie of Chicago
                               chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu (his)
                                 vickie@njin.rutgers.edu      (hers)