New Vocal Talent

A lot of it is because of how they come to fame. These competition show winners get burdened down with contracts and people like Cowell don't care if their voices get shredded etc as long as they can generate a cash flow for a year or two.

 

14 year old Leah Barniville

 

Incredibly cute.

 

I wish they would air some of the Euro and Asian winners here in the U.S. I found out about Jonathan and Charlotte completely randomly, and I even liked the rather cheesy and cheaply produced CD of their BGT performances.

 

AGT and American Idol have the best record of making stars out of contestants, while The Voice has the worst record. Why is that??? It should the other way around, at least so it seems to me. Anybody in show biz who knows how that works? I can barely remember who won these shows a week after their season ends. Jackie Evancho didn't even win her season, yet went on to become one of the top vocalists around, can't remember the name of the guy who beat her out; I can remember Laith Alsaadi from The Voice, great guitarist, but can't remember who won that season.

 

I can't say why but I know the judges on The Voice have openly complained that the record label these winners have been contracted to do not get enough promotion.

 

It is a trade off I suppose. Phillip Phillips sued to get out of his contract after AI because they were making him do so much free promotional stuff he wasn't being paid for.

 

Sounds about right. That would be Universal's dozens of labels. They also own the network the Voice is on, or at least they used to. Haven't checked lately but a few years ago the 'name' labels were all owned by three companies. Maybe it's down to two now, I don't know.

In any case, there is a whole lot of 'talent' out there now, all competing for the 'big bucks' demographics, which has remained the same since rock n roll came about almost 70 years ago, adolescent and teenage girls. Not many good writers, though, which is what most of them need far more than game show like prime time appearances.

These shows at least fill some of the vacuum left by the death of 60's and 70's variety shows that showcased new talent every week. Relying on 'word of mouth' and internet marketing generally sucks for the most part. You still need the big distributors and producers to make the the big bucks, and in many cases they're better at their jobs than the bands themselves are; see the Beatles and a few others for how that works for most musicians and bands. A good producer and songwriter team can make all the difference.

 

Well, he wasn't working for 'free', he was working for himself, selling his own music I assume; musicians basically are just contractors to record labels, and get billed for everything against their royalties. If they don't sell enough to cover the bucks the labels front them, then no, they don't get paid, but then they don't usually have to pay for what isn't covered, so it works both ways. He got millions in free advertising by just being on the show that he didn't pay for out of his own pocket, after all, plus they paid them at least scale. Call up a major network and ask them what it would cost for you to buy ad time for however many minutes you're on the air.

 

My understanding is most artists these days make relatively nothing on royalties for the first 20 years a song is out because they are assigned to the record label. They increasingly make their money doing tours, appearances, and endorsements, so if he was having to do those for virtually free, then maybe not.

 

Sales of CD's is way down the last few years so yes, royalties are down with the decreases in sales, and the I-tunes and other download sites don't pay new artists much in royalties per individual song downloads relative to the past. The tour gate money is the big cash cow these days, but royalties are still significant for the artists who can sell a lot consistently, like the Taylor Swifts and Adeles who can negotiate better terms. The profits for record labels aren't very good, and they're essentially vanity projects compared to the profits they could make in other investments. Major Artists like Swift and others essentially carry most of the smaller artists, most of whom don't even break even on their up front costs; this has been true for most of the industry's history. Production, artist development, and promotion costs a piles of money up front, and maybe one out twenty artists will ever break even these days, so it's not like artists are being totally robbed of anything, despite the reputation the big labels have.Few artists have the million bucks or so to pay for the tour productions costs out of their own pockets, and nobody is obligated to do it for them for free, just because they're 'artists'.

The consistently good writers and musicians who treat it like the business it is will do well long term, while most just blow their up front money as quick as they can, and then proceed to blow through even more on top of that, and end up owing far more than they earned, and will then turn around and claim 'we wuz robbed!!!', so it's not like it's just the big labels who are crooked, the acts are their own worst enemies the majority of the time. You can get famous for one hit, but there are no vast fortunes for having just one hit, at least in the sort term, and never has been. Most 'artists' vastly over-rate their own importance and talents, and think money should just rain on them for being so wonderful, and don't realize musical talent or gimmick acts aren't nearly a rare one, and they're easily forgotten and audiences move on, especially in rock and pop.

Evancho is a good example; one of the best vocalists of this generation, an interpretative genius, but doesn't sell a lot of CD's or songs outside of the classical and cross-over categories, despite her pop songs being as musically excellent as anything put out by anybody in the biz, but Sony's Portrait label will still puts out her music anyway, regardless. She isn't making piles of royalties, and the label doesn't make big bucks off of her sales, but she consistently brings in good money for her live performances, and she gets good prices per ticket, so even filling the small 800 seat venues at $60 for the cheap seats pay well for her. She isn't even out of high school yet, but she is going to have a very long and well paid career, already has a fairly large core following, and most of it due to to Simon Colwell's show AGT. He won't see another dime from her outside of selling vids of her AGT performances.

As for royalties taking 20 years, I don't think so, they pay out as long as the song sells, and most sell very little after the first few weeks of being a 'hit'.

 

Addendum: A big music label conglomerate like Universal's collection of labels counts itself lucky if it clears a 5% return off of its investment in its music distribution operations in a good year. Factor in all the costs and the fact that most music acts don't put anything in up front and 'working for free' is actually a good deal for them as they aren't eating any costs out of their own pockets for being 'famous', and they draw crowds from the 'fame' that cost them relatively nothing at the expense of the labels and it's debatable who is really 'working for free'. Far fewer people would have heard of this Phillip guy, I certainly haven't heard of him, without Simon Colwell's showcases, and he certainly doesn't isn't going to share the gate at most of his venues with Colwell after he gets 'famous' from these 'free promotions' of himself, assuming he has real talent that will last in the business, which is doubtful for even the best in show business these days.

Colwell is doing this guy a huge favor, really; I know from my own personal contacts in the business that Colwell has a pretty decent reputation and isn't some big crook, despite the snivelings of some who don't really know the business and think they're the center of the universe just because they have a gimmick and an ego. He's an excellent promoter and deserves what he makes; many acts have gotten great career boosts off of his productions without risking a single dime of their own money.

 

I recommend you seek out Chris Martin from Cold Play's interview with Howard Stern where he talks about the publishing rights not coming back to them for twenty years after a song is released. IIRC he was also hired by Simon Cowell to write "Phillip Phillips's Song" Home while the "competition" was still under way. I also have little doubt Cowell will have his fingers in the One Direction back catalog until he is dead.

A&R generally works differently in the US than it does in other places. Here you have to have somewhat of a following and developed a name for yourself these days or they won't look twice at you, but in the UK the reps might put their card in the hands of some noob they see at a pub they like. They carry more dead weight in their stable there as a result than happens in the US. If you ever get in the follow loop on twitter for emerging artists, this is why you will get a ton of followers from artists hoping you will follow back so they can say, "Hey, I've 60 60K followers, you should listen to my music!!"

 

The way publishing rights work is the writer splits the royalties with the publishing house; it has always worked that way. In 20 years, the entire rights shift back to artist in 20 years, in which case if they keep the full royalties they also have to do their own song promotions for themselves on their own instead of having the publishing company do the work, something most artists don't have the time or the sales team for, so it's not the 'bad deal' it's made out to be; I seriously doubt even Chris Martin wants to spend his time doing that in 20 twenty years since it's highly unlikely anything he writes now will still be a big seller in 20 years, and he doesn't have to spend his time running around collecting his own royalties and handling sales, he can do performances and make more money that way. Very few songs have that kind of staying power to be a 'standard', which is why artists like Paul McCartney will sell their catalogs to people like Michael Jackson and others rather than spend their days going door to door trying to collect royalties themselves and marketing some song or other to commercial and movie producers and the like when their publishing rights revert back to them. Chris Martin is making much more money by splitting the royalties with a publisher than doing all that work himself, and it is work and requires an organization and time and effort to keep on top of who owes you for what and how much; true, some publishers are better than others, but that's true in any business.

Nothing stops these people from self-publishing, except the fact that they don't want to work at it themselves and hire people, run a company, etc., they want to spend their time performing and write or whatever instead of managing an office and doing promotion, collections, and the like.

Does Adele really want to spend her daytime hours auditing radio stations to see how much they owe her for playing her songs x times a day? Or auditing every Wal-Mart store's sales of her CD's every quarter? Calling up advertisers and movie people trying to get them to use her songs in upcoming movies? I seriously doubt it. She doesn't want to run a publishing company, especially an international one.

From what I've read about current royalties they're higher than what they were in the past, so all these artists Po Facin It and claiming to be 'robbed' is a lot of noise and not nearly as big a 'rip off' as they would like us to believe, they just don't like anybody else getting paid for their work and think all 'the little people' should all be working for them for free or something, that's all. When they prove themselves to be consistent and genuine solid earners they all invariably negotiate better deals and that's the way it works in any business or product marketing enterprise.

 

This little girl wasn't selected (don't know why) but I thought her audition was amazing.

 

My prediction for the winner of America's Got Talent 2017, Johnny Manuel. This is his quarter-final performance:

 

This lady should also make the AGT Finals if not win it. Amazingly she is deaf.

 

Faith Peshah, winner of Arab's Got Talent 2017, from audition to finale.