Making a living from DnB II
Monday, February 19th, 2007
In stark contrast to Dire Strait’s “Money for nothing, and the chicks for free”, being a DnB producer, nothing will come for granted. For the principal choices in DnB life and how to deal with them, please refer to part I, which I posted on Neurocode earlier.
After our recent signing to Renegade Hardware (“Blindfold” – my first, while N.phect already had “Slith” released there), I came to think of the web of implications which drive a producer’s flows of money (however big or small these may be).
Obviously and as pointed out in pt.I, you’re likely to primarily rely on dj bookings for your income. Still, these booking fees are driven by certain factors,
- The irrational old-hero status
- The country you’re from. The potential party attender seems to be attracted by foreign-based artists.
- The importance of the labels you’ve released on
There probably is no short-term way of influencing #1 (and who wants to get involved in all this cocain-and-whores-bizness anyway), while #2 just suggests looking abroad for bookings. Factor #3 in contrast does allow for doing something, that is promoting yourself by releasing on big named labels.
To be more precise, when I think back of our very own history, I’m pretty positive our dj fees rose linearly with bigger labels signing our tunes. Before the first signings, nobody ever asked for our DJ presence. (I guessed we could have played for alcohol in some local bar though.) When Basswerk, Full Force, RH and now Subtitles signed our tunes, we were always worth a certain cumulative amount more from the gig promoters point of view. You could probably put a formula and a label classification scheme to this principle and compute your dj fee from that. (Please remember that I’m not talking about quality, but instead about a DnB producer’s billability only. Quality and bookings have little in common.)
As a conclusion, it must be a producer’s aim to release on as many important labels as possible. Not primarily because of sales figures, but instead to
- be able to associate yourself with the label’s name – I can now write “dizplay (RH)”
- promote yourself to potential gig promoters by having your name appear in reviews and record stores
From my experience, the record sales for a signing are a nice thing on-top, but don’t account for more than maybe 20% of the resulting revenues from the signing. I therefore like to think of releases as promo. Consequently, I don’t rate rips of released tracks on the web such a problem as a label manager has to (and which is fully understood from that perspective!).
But if you went one step further on this promo approach, combined with decreasing vinyl sales figures, you inevitably end up with labels being promotion providers, which don’t pay artists any money (for those rely on the signing to make money through bookings), but act as widely accepted quality filters. Consequently, as they don’t have to finance the artist, making a living as a big label’s manager could be easier. Actually, we’re not too far from the real-world, as many labels already practise this approach. I’m fine with this, but would prefer to have this said frankly before the signing.
Altogether, this proposes a DnB finance model, with integrated money flow from gig promoters to artists only in its purest form, and secondary license-like flows by smaller labels to “buy” interesting artists and therefore raise the label’s importance. The more I think of it, the more I feel this model is already in-place, seemingly authorized by a hidden contract everybody signs.
What is the conclusion?
- Labels are promotion providers. Catch the brand, and move on.
- Know your price. It’s all about the name, not the quality. Raise the bar, the higher you climb.
- Finally, try to reach that weird #1 status mentioned above, meaning get paid not for what you do but for what you did.
Technorati Tags: money, labels, producers, dnb, signing, dj
In stark contrast to Dire Strait’s “Money for nothing, and the chicks for free”, being a DnB producer, nothing will come for granted. For the principal choices in DnB life and how to deal with them, please refer to part I, which I posted on Neurocode earlier.
After our recent signing to Renegade Hardware (“Blindfold” – my first, while N.phect already had “Slith” released there), I came to think of the web of implications which drive a producer’s flows of money (however big or small these may be).
Obviously and as pointed out in pt.I, you’re likely to primarily rely on dj bookings for your income. Still, these booking fees are driven by certain factors,
- The irrational old-hero status
- The country you’re from. The potential party attender seems to be attracted by foreign-based artists.
- The importance of the labels you’ve released on
There probably is no short-term way of influencing #1 (and who wants to get involved in all this cocain-and-whores-bizness anyway), while #2 just suggests looking abroad for bookings. Factor #3 in contrast does allow for doing something, that is promoting yourself by releasing on big named labels.
To be more precise, when I think back of our very own history, I’m pretty positive our dj fees rose linearly with bigger labels signing our tunes. Before the first signings, nobody ever asked for our DJ presence. (I guessed we could have played for alcohol in some local bar though.) When Basswerk, Full Force, RH and now Subtitles signed our tunes, we were always worth a certain cumulative amount more from the gig promoters point of view. You could probably put a formula and a label classification scheme to this principle and compute your dj fee from that. (Please remember that I’m not talking about quality, but instead about a DnB producer’s billability only. Quality and bookings have little in common.)
As a conclusion, it must be a producer’s aim to release on as many important labels as possible. Not primarily because of sales figures, but instead to
- be able to associate yourself with the label’s name – I can now write “dizplay (RH)”
- promote yourself to potential gig promoters by having your name appear in reviews and record stores
From my experience, the record sales for a signing are a nice thing on-top, but don’t account for more than maybe 20% of the resulting revenues from the signing. I therefore like to think of releases as promo. Consequently, I don’t rate rips of released tracks on the web such a problem as a label manager has to (and which is fully understood from that perspective!).
But if you went one step further on this promo approach, combined with decreasing vinyl sales figures, you inevitably end up with labels being promotion providers, which don’t pay artists any money (for those rely on the signing to make money through bookings), but act as widely accepted quality filters. Consequently, as they don’t have to finance the artist, making a living as a big label’s manager could be easier. Actually, we’re not too far from the real-world, as many labels already practise this approach. I’m fine with this, but would prefer to have this said frankly before the signing.
Altogether, this proposes a DnB finance model, with integrated money flow from gig promoters to artists only in its purest form, and secondary license-like flows by smaller labels to “buy” interesting artists and therefore raise the label’s importance. The more I think of it, the more I feel this model is already in-place, seemingly authorized by a hidden contract everybody signs.
What is the conclusion?
- Labels are promotion providers. Catch the brand, and move on.
- Know your price. It’s all about the name, not the quality. Raise the bar, the higher you climb.
- Finally, try to reach that weird #1 status mentioned above, meaning get paid not for what you do but for what you did.
Technorati Tags: money, labels, producers, dnb, signing, dj
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