OFF: Star Nation-Napster

[Paul Mather]

Doug Pearson wrote:

> Also, remember that major labels hold outstanding loans ("advances") on all
> the artists they sign.  It's not too difficult to doctor the books in such
> a way that "expenses" related to the artist are shown to be greater than
> the royalties due to the artist, hence the artist is always in debt to the
> company, and the company never has to pay the artist.

I recall that one of Frank Zappa's beefs with Warner Bros was
discovering that large numbers of "units" had been flogged out the back
door, off the books, and so he never earned a dime from them.  Mind you,
this may have been a case of Herb Cohen stiffing him, not just Warner
Bros, which is where I guess we get our on-topic link (can anyone say
"Doug Smith" when assembling the top ten list of crappy managers?:)

There is a very interesting section on "creative accounting practices"
in Glebbeek's landmark biography of Jimi Hendrix.

Cheers,

Paul.
--
e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production
 deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
        --- Frank Vincent Zappa