Living Off Royalties As a Rockstar

Motley Crue

"So it kind of really shows you the state of where everything’s at. I don’t put too much into that anyway because we don’t see a penny off of record sales and we never have. For us it’s all about touring.”

This is a recent quote from Jim Root of Slipknot. I don't know whether he's taking the piss or he's absolutely genuine, but seriously, where would that money be going? I mean Slipknot have nine members so does that mean the album costs a ton to make, does it mean that beyond the advance Root gets before the album comes out he doesn't get anything even if it sells at No 1?

I mean, Slipknot are going to do an arena tour around the UK....surely their album has made them more money then, say, Lower Than Atlantis? Then Kirk Hamlett says this a few weeks ago to Rolling Stone...

“The cycles of taking two years off don’t exist anymore. We were able to do that because we had record royalties coming in consistently. Now you put out an album, and you have a windfall maybe once or twice but not the way it used to be — a check every three months.”

I know that Metallica have probably sold as much as they'll ever sell but the Black Album is ALWAYS selling something and their material will have residuals. Won't it?

I mean, where does this money go?

bnt

Record companies and royalties - now there's a topic for a book or three. Robert Fripp (of King Crimson) keeps threatening to write a book, called Endless Grief, about his experiences in this area. To cut a long story short: The Crim were orignally signed to and managed by a new small label, E'G Records, and for years they were great, but as time went buy and the management changed, things got worse and worse. Other artists on the label such as Brian Eno were affected too. By the late '80s, E'G was run by lawyers who lost all their artists' royalties on the Lloyds Insurance market, then sold the back catalogue to Virgn Records. Then it was sold to Universal in the 2000s, and Fripp spent years in legal battles with them, getting them to honour their commitments. It's only in the last couple of years that he was successful and felt able to get the old band back together.

PS: have a read of this for some details of where the money goes.