Making a living from DnB II
February 19th, 2007 by dizplay
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.
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what dizplay forgot to mention: you won’t earn any success or respect from promoters/djs/producers if you don’t work on developing your sound. tunes are like handing business cards to people. If you want to be taken as serious artist, you have to CONSTANTLY improve your skills. If you meet a dj or a band and you’re told that they don’t want to play stadiums, then they’re a)dumb or b)liers, cause you want to play to as many people as you can. you want to get your sound heard, so you have to proof with any tune that you have a justification of being booked.
i disagree.
first - we pay you your share from releases, ok, maybe others dont..
second - theres is always people like this and like that - and not everything should be measured like that. there is also something like feeling, faith, friendship and ideals. so some artists take labels as promotion providers and some labels take artists as image improvement tools…..like a machiones with totally rational decision making…… but some stick together cause they share a vision or they just stand together for whatever reason because they are humans
third - this is like the bismarck sausage statement too. i dont think this needs to be analyzed publicly, it just doesnt feel good to have to many of these ” how can i improve my efficiency” things in the head when it comes to making music. each artist, each labels will make own decisions. like football players - some go wherever the money is, some stick to their club, and some are in between. do i want to know whats in podolskis head? wouldnt it demystify anything that maybe makes me enjoy seeing him play? plus -the acting counts finally much more than words
@Greenman:
Thank you for the extensive comment!
Well, first at all, this is our blog, so it will contain our perspective on the dnb biz. Of course, music is something from the heart at first, but the more time you spend on it and with increasing professionalism, the more you inevitably have to think about the mechanisms behind the scenes. And this also concerns money.
Yes, you are definitely right: There is a huge spread of personalities involved, some more pleasant than others. Therefore, we tried to stay as neutral as possible. Because: Though you - and I consider you a friend ;) - are paying us our share, others don’t. And this combined with the way things work in some shady corners of the biz really can get on our nerves. Someone at least has to consider this worth being spoken about. We did.
I don’t think we’re de-mystifying the music. Moreover, like in your soccer example you have the average fan, enjoying the game, drinking a beer and yelling at the referee. And at the other end of the range you have the managers and professionals. Do reasonable amounts of fans drop off the soccer circuit because of some manager’s speech? I highly doubt that. (I’m not quite sure whether the comparison of ourselves and the manager totally fits, but you get the picture.)
I’m pretty sure DnB is lacking professionalism. This is why we put our perspective on things into blog posts. Maybe to inspire. Probably as a therapy. For sure to spread the word.
For once I don’t have a novel to write, but I’d like to say I admire the three of you — Heiner, Henrik, Sebastien — very greatly. I’ve had a lot of obstacles put my own music on hold, but certainly Heiner’s statements speak to the fact of how much more the music means to both artist and listener and everyone in between than just the capital.
You guys are great. ;)
@ dizplay
your last comment makes it clearer what you mean. before, to me it could esily be misinterpreted.
i hope you you havent got me wrong and i dont think you did. I know how easy it is to be misunderstood if you just write something and dont talk to people, therefore when you write, you got to be a bit more careful and sometimes some discussion or extra information - at least to me - makes it better understandable. to get back to the comparison of the football example, still the question is who is involved, fans or professionals. in football, managers decide behind closed doors, but the game is going on public. here we are again somewhere in between.
Very analyitic for sure…. I’d say that this blog is right on the money.
The days of just being a DJ are way over…. these days it’s like the only artists promoters are bringing in are the producers that they like, the people who make the tunes that get their blood flowing, to a degree ofcourse. Back in 99′ to even 2002 85 to 90 percent of the headliners were just DJs and DJ’s only. The times are changing…. if one does not adapt to the new form then you’ll be left behind.
Take me for example…. every gig I’ve ever had was the result of a lot of promotional work with demos and overall good energy. You show up at events, get known and all it really takes is one good performance infront of the crowd/promoters and your almost guranteed a return gig. (take the gig in montreal, jan.21, 2006….. the result of my performance was utmost respect from the promoters, resulting in more gigs for the month of march.
I hope all is well with you two, congrats on the new signings.
i think u all suck ballz and u smoke ur nans ashes in a pipe to get to sleep u cuntz
i think u all suck ballz and u smoke ur nans ashes in a pipe to get to sleep u cuntz