There is a little something I want to get off my chest. It was recently announced that Prince signed a new deal with Warner Brothers. As I am a somewhat smitten fan of Prince, I saw hundreds of posts about this, and on almost every one of them there were people talking about how greedy Prince is and that it is all about money money money. This is my attempt to educate the masses. Yes, Prince is gonna get paid. It's his music, he should be getting paid. But this deal wasn't anywhere near being just about the money. The reason Prince and WB got into their spat 18 years ago is when an artist pours their heart and soul into recording a new song, the record label then claims it as theirs. The song writer/artist has absolutely ZERO rights to the song anymore. THAT is what drove Prince nuts and drove him to write slave on his face and get out of his deal with WB in the first place. This deal Prince just signed gives him ownership of his songs again. Here are a few other details about the music biz that 99% of you do not know. When you, as a fan, purchase an album from your favorite artist, do you know who gets that money? The place you got it from get a couple bucks. The artist/band gets around fifty cents to a buck, and the record label gets the rest. That's right, the band gets the short end of the stick. And in most cases, out of that buck the artist gets, they will then have to pay back the studio for the recording time to make the album, and pay for most of the production marketing costs. The artist will also have to pay for most of the music video expenses. For a good story on this, check out how TLC sold over 10-million albums, and had less than $100,000 to split between the tree of them to show for it. So, yes, part of this new deal with Prince and WB is about money. More of it will be going to the artist instead of the record label. And hopefully this is something other artists/bands will benefit from down the line. You may now go back to your regularly scheduled Easter festivities.
