June 21st, 2010 at 7:17am
Here’s an observation Mick Jagger made on the upheavals in the music industry:
…people only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn’t make any money out of records because record companies wouldn’t pay you! They didn’t pay anyone!
Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone.
So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there was a 25 year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the time they didn’t.
Jagger studied economics at LSE.
I think Mick has a point. I would also argue that during that time the labels did better than the artists, so even though they made money, the labels owned the rights and still took the majority of revenue from the sales.
So, even during “golden period”, artists still got the shaft!
[...] Mick Jagger on Record Industry Economics [...]