In a recent interview with the guys at Digg.com Trent Reznor of the Nine Inch Nails went through some interesting responses to questions about how he sees his future and the future of music.

To quote him from the AudioLife blog page:

“One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract. I said, ‘Wait – you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it? Who the f**k made that rule? Oh! The record labels made it because artists are dumb and they’ll sign anything’ – like I did. When we found out we’d been released (from their recording contract) it was like, ‘Thank God!’. But 20 minutes later it was, ‘Uh-oh, now what are we going to do?’ It was incredibly liberating, and it was terrifying.”

The only thing I would like to add to this is that the great rock and roll swindle is still out there, but its now on the Internet too. So musicians beware!

But beware guys! some of the new guys are trying to screw you too! hear about the licensing site that just cut their artists earnings by 30% to finance their own expansion? (cheaper than paying a bank interest or shareholders dividends I guess). Also there are some other guys out there who call themselves ‘innovative’ who are offering only 25% cut on a small music sale as a loss leader to charging clients $400 for device installations to listen to the music! So the artists effectively get a minority stake in the loss leader. I do worry that there are musicians out there who don’t understand the value of their music and may think to themselves that sort of deal is “25% of something I won’t get unless I sign up”. But hopefully most will ignore it and consider the better business propositions out there who are aiming to champion the value of music licensed for business use and royalty free background music subscription services elsewhere.

Here at Kesseny Music Publishing all deals are as they should be so we split all our agreements 50 50. My costs, your costs. You earn, I earn. Make it simple, everyone wins, no greed, happy world

Fair Trade Royalty Free Music Rules