Bravado = Nah

Signatures = No

FEA = No way

Cinderblock = Sure

Merchdirect = Sure

Bandmerch = Maybe they used to be

Record Labels that start merch companies = Dont think so

The point of this post is that most busineess exists to make a profit. Thats not hard to understand. Maybe some smaller companies do start out with the intention of really helping the artist by providing a great service, or interesting ideas. But at some point those companies all become the same, neither one having any real competitive advantage over the other in regards to technology, or customer service, or product. The only clear advantage you can have is MONEY. Money to lock up the rights to as many artists as possible.

Years ago Bandmerch had a cool philosophy, “we refuse to give merch advances”. They had good ideas too. Artists and managers gravitated towards them in hopes their experience there would be different, exciting, whatever. It worked for a short period of time. But they didnt have the experienced personnel to keep it going. So realizing this, Bandmerch sells to AEG to have access to what? Money. Now their business plan is to go around offering advances to everyone, to abandon the very reaons why they started the company in the first place, they’ve become exaclty what they set out NOT TO BE.

I think “artist friendly” in the merchandise world in 2008 should mean more control back to the artist. Just because you give a artist an advance (why are people still doing this?), shouldnt mean you control everything! Or does it? Artists give up alot of control when they take an advance. Maybe they dont care? Maybe they need money? Maybe they dont think they’ll be relevant in a couple years? Maybe their managers are dumb and just want money too? Who knows, but for artists who really do SELL merch, taking an advance on merch almost never works out in their favor.

Now that record labels are doing 360 deals, they are essentially stealing more and more money from their artists only to prop up their dying businesses. Taking a cut of merchandise profit isnt going to save the music industry, but it will give any artist who signs a deal like this one more reason to hate their record label.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 8:24 am and is filed under WAR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.