1.4.12 Adam News and Info

And I think they could have found a more recent photo of adam to use. 8-)

ME TOO

How can I tell if 107.7 radio played BTIKM yet here in St. Louis besides having to listen to that station? :-/

On the promo discussion --- Sony no longer engages in using indie reps for pay-for-play activities. They paid a $10 million settlement to NY State in 2005 and agreed to stop using independent promotors in this way. Universal, EMI and Warners made a similar agreements.

Radio promotion still costs a lot of money -- can be over $1 million to promote 1 song to US Pop radio but that funding is used to pay for station promotions, free givaways, subsidize radio station contests and pay for indie promotors to push the song to radio personnel. And even though $1 million sound like a lot of money, if you promote a song to 300 radio stations, that is only $3,333 per station. So if you give a station $1,000 worth of prizes, and buy $1,000 worth of radio station web ads, and pay the field guy to put the deal together -- it's $3K.

In other words, the cost is the same, but the methods have changed.

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Also, the cost of radio promo does not come off the project bottomline. In most contracts (including the 19/RCA contracts) RCA pays for the recoupable expenses --- recording costs, promotional and marketing costs, tour costs and music video production costs, as well as other expenses. RCA is making the upfront investment and taking the risk, but the artist eventually ends up paying for most of the costs out of their royalties. 19 Recordings gets a licensing fee and has no risk.

If an album does not sell, the artist keeps their advance and can walk away from the expenses.

If an album sells, but does not recoup all of the expenses, the artist keeps their advance.

If an album sells, and does recoup all of the expenses, the artist gets to keep their advance and get additional royalties. Most major label albums never recoup all of the expenses.

Adam got a high 6-figure advance for this album -- probably north of $600K. He will not be seeing royalties for a while BUT he will also not be starving.