Search This Blog   Monday, August 12, 2013   In the course of
this really excellent discussion about how musicians are to make
a living nowadays Dave Allen of the Gang Of Four says that after
thirty-five years he's still not recouped from EMI Records.
That's what happens, or at least what used to happen. The record
companies, which operated to all intents and purposes like
banks, advanced a band a certain amount of money out of which
they had to make a record and live.  If the record didn't sell
enough to earn back the advance (and even in the rare cases
where it did), they borrowed another advance to make the next
one, piling new debt on old, in the (usually vain) hope that
they would make it big with the third or fourth album, clear the
debt and advance into the broad sunlit uplands of solvency.  For
the overwhelming majority of acts - as many as 90%, I'm guessing
- it never happened. When the megastores would mount those
mammoth "3 for £10" CD sales ten years ago all those albums were
made by acts who had