given in New York on May 16, 2000 on the
creative math that the record companies do with regards to the artists.
6 pages long - good read. takes on record label profits, Napster and
"sucka VCs."
By Courtney Love June 14, 2000
Today
I want to talk about piracy and music. What is piracy? Piracy is the
act of stealing an artist's work without any intention of paying for
it. I'm not talking about Napster-type software.
I'm
talking about major label recording contracts. I want to start with a
story about rock bands and record companies, and do some
recording-contract math:
This story is about a bidding-war band that gets a huge deal with a 20 percent royalty rate and a million-dollar advance. (No
bidding-war band ever got a 20 percent royalty, but whatever.) This is
my "funny" math based on some reality and I just want to qualify it by
saying I'm positive it's better math than what Edgar Bronfman Jr. [the
president and CEO of Seagram, which owns Polygram] would provide.
What happens to that million dollars?