Most songwriters like the liquidity of being able to sell their songbooks. The Beatles certainly never objected to the sale of theirs, and in any case many of these labels barely make a 5% return on their music labels; for every Swift out there they carry around about 30 mediocre and loser acts, so it's not like they're all cheaters, though there are some hustlers, of course. Most musician aren't any more honest so I can't work up much of a Pity Party for most of them. Swift has every right to buy back her rights, but nobody is obligated to give them back to her for free; she made a choice; they put up the front money to get her career going and still do.
Most people don't have any idea what it costs to market a band or just a single musician; it cost a lot, unless you';re happy with being a YouTube millionaire, and there are many of those. Travel expenses, crew, venue rentals, etc., so yeah, many acts don't even sell enough to break even.
The business has changed.It used to be about an album every year or so and thy could live like kings.Now that has gone and they have to work harder for their money.
With so much illegal downloading and the availability of listening to any song just about when you want via youtube, etc, touring has become the way the artist makes money off their music. Otherwise they are off in the land of merchandising, paid promotions, acting, etc. to support themselves. The irony of course is that the labels still get theirs regardless.
that was pretty much the case form the beginning, actually; the quick money came from the tours, assuming the act was popular enough; you start out in a hole if you want others to finance your act. It takes months for royalties to roll in, and then there are the deductions for the CDs, the packaging, writers' royalties, mangers, etc. none of those people can afford to work for free, but many ' artists' seem the think they all should, and think they're the only ones who should get paid. I've worked with many of them, and the 'artists' aren't any less crooked, so the basically all deserve each other. It's like mafioso complaining their bosses are all crooks.
A label that fronts your act with $100,000 and much more in many cases expects to get paid back, and so do the people who make those cool T-shirts.and other fan targeted junk they like the revenues from. Taylor Swift can fill a 60,000 seat stadium at $60 to $150 a seat, so she really doesn't need the royalties to live on, but it's good to have them in your old age; it's a very fickle fan base in that market niche. Musical talent at that level isn't rare at all, it's just luck for the most part, right place at the right time, etc. whether you're highly talented or have no talent at all.Many of those acts are made much better by the labels and producers anyway, and would go nowhere on their own.
Terry Melcher at Columbia is one example, he put a lot of bands together that did well, others never got off the ground. George Martin and Epstein turned the Beatles into the wildly popular Boy Band they became. they would have been just another mediocre unknown garage band playing strip clubs and beer cellars without Martin spending his own time and money on developing them.Martin tried to do the same for the band America, iirc, good musicians, good songs, but never got nearly as popular, and he lost money on them. The 'good' acts pay from any 'bad' ones, including the 'vanity' acts the producers love for their talent but aren't going to sell out stadiums or millions of songs and downloads.
But, there is always self-producing your own CDs and selling them yourselves, or hoping to go big on YouTube, so it's easily the best times these days for 'indies' even if you don't get on TV or the radio. The Grammies are getting to be a joke, with so many good acts on Youtube out there and local clubs with lots of talent to showcase.
