Quote:
Originally Posted by Delirium-Zer0
Any company in their right mind is going to do what they can to get as much money as possible. That money goes to the artists, the people running the company, studio time, graphic designers, lawyers, accountants, rent on office space, TONS of unseen people making the business work. Whatever you have to do as a company to make sure everyone gets paid, do it.
I'd MUCH rather they release best-of after best-of than force artists to do shows all day every day and record 2-3 albums a year, that's for sure. The more money they can make without Ayu doing any actual work, the better for everyone involved.
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Labels don't have much control over their artists' touring schedule. In all actuality, the artist makes a very tiny fraction of the money generated from an album sale.
Say Ayumi Hamasaki sells 100,000 copies of a new album at $34.00 USD each. That's a total profit of 3.4 million USD. Now, we have to break down where that money goes:
$3,400,000 (Total Market Revenue for 100,000 in sales of an album)
- $510,000 (Subtract Retail Markup of 20% per album)
-----------
$2,890,000 (Actualized Revenue Record Label Earns)
- $578,000 (Subtract Ayumi's Royalties Per Album - 20% of Label's Revenues)
+ $250,000 (Add Back Ayumi's Advance from Label)
-----------
- $328,000 (Ayumi's Actualized Royalties After Advances)
-----------
$2,312,000 (AVEX's Actual Revenues)
$328,000 (Ayumi's Income from 100,000 Sales of a New Album)
- $65,600 (Subtract Manager's 20% Cut)
- $49,200 (Subtract Agent's 15% Cut)
---------
$213,200 (Ayumi's Actualized Income from 100,000 in Sales.)
At the end of the day, Ayumi makes
extremely little from the recording and sale of a new album. However, in order to maintain her contract, she has to be generating profit for Avex, and this is partially why album releases from her and Koda are more common than from artists like Namie right now.
My calculations are extremely lenient though.
Now, compare this to touring where the label is only granted a limited gift of tickets and measly 10% of touring profits:
$3,460,000 (20,000 People Attend Concerts at an average price of $173)
- $500,000 (Subtract Touring Costs)
- $250,000 (Subtract All Musicians' and Dancers' Salaries)
- $346,000 (Subtract Label's ~10% Royalties)
-----------
$2,364,000 (Ayumi's Income from the tour)
- $472,800 (Subtract Touring Agent's 20% Cut)
-----------
$1,891,200 (Ayumi's Actualized Income from 20,000 people attending a tour.)
Generally, artists release material through a label to promote tours, not really the other way around. If people like the songs, they end up selling more tickets and this is how the artists will make their money.
BTW, I may be WAAAY off on some of these figures, but it's just meant to show how much of a difference there is to Ayumi's pocket from an album release and a tour. So, the gist of this is:
Avex does a lot of things that aren't profitable for Ayumi because they are clearly profitable for the label.