Achei por bem partilhar este comunicado/desabafo da Alissa White-Gluz, vocalista dos The Agonist, que retrata na perfeição as dificuldades vividas actualmente pelas bandas que não são de primeira linha.
Resumindo, se gostas de uma banda, de uma música ou de álbum específico, compra qualquer coisa (senão o CD pelo menos o merchandising). Se não o podes fazer, compensa divulgando as bandas, fazendo os amigos ir aos concertos, etc.
Eis o comunicado na íntegra :
“Here’s a little insider info just to clarify, since a lot of people don’t understand how the industry now works. We would feel bad divulging this kind of info and shattering the dream, but a lot of metal musicians seem to be doing it nowadays so I think we’re ok to do so as well.
Why
are we asking you to buy the album? We don’t see money from album
sales. We have never seen a single royalty penny. But, if your band is
known to sell a lot of albums, especially in the first week of release,
you get more offers for tours, therefore making it more possible to play
to more fans.
Ticket Money: As
an opener, we do not see any money from ticket sales or have any
control over ticket price. As a headliner we rarely see any money from
ticket sales as well.
YouTube: If
you think we are making money off of YouTube plays, check out who’s
channel our videos are on (Hint: It ain’t our channel!;)) Again, we’ve
never seen a penny from YouTube plays.
Merch / CD Sales: To
get our albums shipped out to us we need to pay about $10. We sell them
for $15. Venue takes about 15% usually, manager takes 10%. Therefore,
we are left with about $1.25 profit per CD. T-shirts, they cost about
$10 to create and ship, we sell them for $20; again you can do the math.
So we have a few dollars profit per item sold, but about $200 – $300 in
gas per show, plus the expense of work visas (about $4000 for the USA),
vehicle and trailer leasing, and all the other expenses that go into
touring.
We
sleep in the van, don’t eat, don’t get to bathe. We hire no crew. We
get maybe $20 or $30 a day to get food or save up to pay rent. We
invested years of our lives into this and some had to take time off work
to record this album. And this is not just our band. We can safely say
that this applies to every opening metal act we have ever toured with.
Sorry
to shatter the rockstar fantasy but the truth is, we all work 9-5 as
soon as we get home from tour, if our jobs are gracious enough to allow
us to leave and return. Otherwise we scramble to find even the most
menial jobs just to cover our bills in between tours.
So
– taking our project without paying for it is STEALING. But, if you
repay us by spreading the word about the band, getting your friends to
come out to our shows, buying our merch, giving us a place to stay or
some other form of support, you’ve paid us back. Nobody wants to go to
work and not get their salary, but bands do it ALL THE TIME. So, have
some respect for the work they do and support in whatever way you can.”
Alissa White-Gluz
The Agonist
June 2012
The Agonist - Thank You Pain :
The Agonist
June 2012
The Agonist - Thank You Pain :
