I had the opportunity to sit down with Page Hamilton a few nights ago and drink and listen to stories. The night was surreal and the conversation was excellent. He’s a smart guy with opinions. I like people with opinions because it always prompts conversation and makes me think. There was too much conversation to even begin to paraphrase it here but music publishing and distribution was talked about and it got me to thinking about a few things.
Page presented the hypothetical question of, “If someone offered you a record deal right now for $20,000 dollars would you take it.” This is an easy answer for me and it should be for anyone else that really thinks about it. If you do the math on that and factor in taxes, you will make roughly $6.92/hour after taxes if you did music full time for one year. I love music, but that doesn’t pay the bills and I want to do music for longer than a year. On the other side of that, if they are paying you that much how much are they really trying to shop you around? How much of that money will they take IF you do succeed?
Now, let’s look at what you’re signing away. What if you signed and the label didn’t like the record you made for $7/hour. Well guess what, they can sit on it indefinitely. Your contract would likely make you exclusively theirs which means you might not even get to release the record you got payed dick to make. Worse yet, they might not let you release another one while under contract with them. You will have essentially accepted $7/hour for someone to take your work and put it in a closet. You’d then find yourself having to work a day job to pay the bills while a bunch of people that have nothing to do with your music control your art and ultimately your life. You’re back where you were when you started only now you don’t control your art.
There is a solution to this. Don’t let anyone handle your art other than you. If you control your money then you control your art. Get a job you like enough to do regularly and use it to finance your life so that you can make music and have control of the only reason there is to get up in the morning. Your job is the toll you pay to have control of your life and your art, get used to it. If you make your art on your terms, distribute it on your terms, and get famous on your terms then you can quit your job. Don’t count on it though. Plan like it might never happen and you’ll be able to create art indefinitely and it will always have as much integrity as you have.
My point is this. Don’t get so caught up in your ideals that anything that isn’t exactly what you had intended is discredited as selling out. It isn’t. When you start making poor decisions based on ideals you are crippling your ability to do the only thing you love to do.
