Question on Itunes vs. CDs

[adaher]

Does it matter to the artist financially which we buy?

Another question, for my unique situation. I work for a CD distributor and I get to buy CDs at cost. Am I right to assume that when my company bought the CD that the artist already gets his royalty, or does my buying at cost take that away or reduce it?

 

[TribunalRecords]

Does it matter to the artist financially which we buy?

Another question, for my unique situation. I work for a CD distributor and I get to buy CDs at cost. Am I right to assume that when my company bought the CD that the artist already gets his royalty, or does my buying at cost take that away or reduce it?

either way when you buy from iTunes or physical CD the artist should see mechanical royalties and then royalties on the sale if they break even. how much depends on their deal.

and yes, the only person you are cutting out of the equation buying at cost from a distributor is the store or other outlet you would be purchasing from. the artists profits are not tied into final sale at stores.

 

[Jasonic]

Many bands and underground labels go through a distributor to get their music at places like ITUNES. I know SONY is a major distributor for that outlet.

I would say the best way to support an underground band would be to purchase the CD direct from their record label. This would show the label there is demand for the artist. Also, you know then that the artist (hopefully) would get their just royalty.

 

[Prog_Please]

As mentioned previously, I think once the CD hits the shelf on the store, the band has already received their royalties for that item. I am not 100% sure, but thats what the local CD store told me.

 

[skyrefuge]

Does it matter to the artist financially which we buy?

I've tried fairly hard to find the answer to this in the past, and the best I could come up with is "it depends". You really need to know what modern-day recording contracts look like, and people don't seem to like publishing those.

I've seen talk that some record contracts treat digital downloads differently than CDs, paying out lower royalty rates. But then I've also seen talk that some contracts still make a 25% "packaging deduction" from downloads like they do from CDs, even though there is no packaging for digital bits. Maybe the lower download royalty rates only exist in contracts where the packaging deduction is removed, with the idea being to keep the same "per album" amount paid to the artist between CD and download?

Overall, I think it probably doesn't matter much for signed bands, as the difference in what the artist sees will be small, particularly since I get the feeling that these days most underground artists don't expect to make much money from album sales anyway.

However, on theoretical basis, iTunes *should* provide more money to the artist+label combination, simply because there minimal packaging and distribution expense. So if artists see less money from downloads, it's only because the contract is stupid, and in that case the label is probably getting *more* money.

This is proven when you look at label-less artists, where iTunes wins. In this writeup, the author reports that his band nets $6.37 per iTunes sale, $4.50 per CDBaby CD, and $4 per brick-and-mortar CD.

That might tip you towards downloads, because even if your money isn't all going directly to the artist, you would still probably prefer it going to the people at the label than to the plastic manufacturers and truck drivers, right?

Neil