Steve Kilbey quits the Church
October 3, 2012 8:25 PM   Subscribe

Steve Kilbey has decided to quit his own band in protest after receiving his royalty statement for the past year from his record company.
posted by awfurby (28 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Feel free to repost if you find a working link. -- vacapinta



 
I can do no better than to quote Steven Krut's comment from the linked page here:
Why would you leave The Church? The other guys got screwed over just as badly as you did. Seems like you’re all in it together. What you need to do, I think, is just release future Church albums yourselves on the Internet. Maybe you won’t sell as many albums, who knows, but you’ll each definitely get a much bigger income from the records. Of course there’s the matter of your contract with Second Motion. Do you owe them more albums? If so, deliver some ambient stuff and save the good songs for your own releases. Can you get back control of your back catalog? Despite this outrage, you’re definitely better off being a part of such a legendary group. After you’ve calmed down, I hope you can take a positive approach to putting yourself and the band in a better position. Record companies are really redundant these days. Sorry this is happening to you.
posted by hippybear at 8:31 PM on October 3, 2012 [6 favorites]




Yeah, I can understand why he's angry (I've seem Steve Kilbey get angry live. He does it well.) but quitting the band does not seem to be a logical solution to the problem.
posted by Jimbob at 8:34 PM on October 3, 2012


Jesus, that was a painful read. Maybe he can spend that $400 on some capital letters and better punctuation. That said, I applaud him. I would LOVE to see the actual statement because I can only imagine some of the fuckery going on before those guys see a dime.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 8:35 PM on October 3, 2012 [2 favorites]


I really wish he'd post the royalty statement. Seriously. THAT would do some good, instead of just ranting.
posted by twsf at 8:38 PM on October 3, 2012


it seems (tho its hard to tell) that the church might have brought in 30 or 40 grand ( i mean starfish alone brought in 6000 on itunes)

You can record, mix and press an album for less than fifty grand?
posted by Talez at 8:43 PM on October 3, 2012


You can record, mix and press an album for less than fifty grand?

Way less. If you're willing to do all of the logistics yourself, you could do it easily for a fifth of the price.
posted by spiderskull at 8:55 PM on October 3, 2012


Did he... sign a contract?
posted by eugenen at 8:57 PM on October 3, 2012


Maybe he can spend that $400 on some capital letters and better punctuation.

Amen.
posted by LarryC at 9:05 PM on October 3, 2012 [1 favorite]


You can record, mix and press an album for less than fifty grand?

Far, far, far, far, far less.

(More fars could be added to the above sentence.)
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:11 PM on October 3, 2012 [2 favorites]


i have decided to illegally and eventually put all church records up on my bandcamp . you can buy them from me and make sure the money is going to a member of the band.

Why didn't he do this from the get go? Every owner of a successful business likes to think that he did it on his own - and can do it on their own - but to paraphrase the President:

"They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by bands who think, well, it must be because we were so good. There are a lot of talented bands out there. It must be because we worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking bands out there.... If you’ve got a successful band — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen."

No one wants to pay for infrastructure - or to give credit to others - be it roads or record production, recording, and distribution. The successful ones have to help pay for the infrastructure that will enable the next generation to become successful.
posted by three blind mice at 9:12 PM on October 3, 2012 [1 favorite]


The Nuclear Option is having a coupla weeks.
posted by basicchannel at 9:17 PM on October 3, 2012


While I won't deny that most record labels seem to have an unsafe nonconsensual BDSM relationship with their artists, in this case I just don't see it. Production and distribution are fixed costs, whereas revenue is variable. If all the returns these guys make are a couple of thousand per album, then OBVIOUSLY most of it will be eaten up by expenses.
posted by wolfdreams01 at 9:18 PM on October 3, 2012 [1 favorite]


Your threat should be that you'll stay, not that you'll quit. (Said by Danish politician Svend Auken.)
posted by WalkingAround at 9:37 PM on October 3, 2012


That link is currently giving a 404. Anyone save the rant?
posted by plasquatch at 9:47 PM on October 3, 2012


If Kilbey is being more or less accurate he is talking about royalties for the The Church's entire catalog - dozens of records and compilations stretching back to the 80s.

Assume for a minute his math is in the ballpark - receipts on their albums were around $40,000, of this fully 15% ($6,000) are from iTunes sales of Starfish (not particularly out there: Starfish was their only album that made it to gold in the U.S.).

Last I read Apple's cut on an iTunes sale was about 30%: so the label receives $4200. If these iTunes sales represent 15% of receipts, what is 15% of the total royalties paid ($700 - $400 for Kilbey and $100 for 3 band members)? $105. That's two and a half percent. And people are going to talk about expenses? What expenses? All the label is doing with these sales is taking a check from Apple and accounting away 97.5% of it. Obviously that's back of the envelope speculating but if it's anywhere in the ballpark of the real numbers it seems safe to suggest they are indeed getting thoroughly ripped off.
posted by nanojath at 9:55 PM on October 3, 2012 [1 favorite]


If all the returns these guys make are a couple of thousand per album, then OBVIOUSLY most of it will be eaten up by expenses.

The record company took half the profits according to the contract. Did the record company really only make $500 after expenses?
posted by Danila at 9:55 PM on October 3, 2012


That link is currently giving a 404. Anyone save the rant?
posted by plasquatch at 11:47 PM


Here is the original:

totally disgruntled! i know you guys hear a lot of musicians complaining that they never get paid…..i know i know…we’re s’posed to do it for the love of it. the church got their “royalty statement” yesterday from our record company second motion. (months late as usual!)the other 3 got a hundred bucks each. i got 400 bucks. oh yeah ! a hundred bucks…? is that all we earned in over one years r
ecord sales in the US? well if you look at the spread sheets seems like plenny of money coming in. but gosh darn theres a fee for handling this a fee for handling that a fee for processing this fee a charge here a deduction there. eventually he whittles it down to a hundred bucks each(400 for me coz of my solo albums!) . and i’m s’posed to go…oh thanks…a hundred bucks i made from our 30 records or so. for one year or more in the US. here are some fees deducted to whet your appetite…distribution fee, returns processing fee, license, , “less reserves”, liquidated reserves, and then the clincher due to artist” :50%.(ie he took the other 50 after hed taken everything else!) anyway what you do(if youd like your own record company) is basically kick it all around until you lose it. it seems (tho its hard to tell) that the church might have brought in 30 or 40 grand ( i mean starfish alone brought in 6000 on itunes)…but the members of the group got 100 bucks each. i mean he couldnt give us nothing so he came up with 100 bucks each. i am insulted. i have decided to leave the church. this is not a joke. i will complete the current tour and then i’m done. i implore you all not to buy any records from second motion records. as you see none of it will come to us. same as it ever was. i have decided to leave my own band permanently as a protest to being fucking treated like this. i have decided to illegally and eventually put all church records up on my bandcamp . you can buy them from me and make sure the money is going to a member of the band. at the end of one year i can chuck the other guys a hundred bucks and i can call myself a real record company. i may even post my second emotion spread sheets on line if youd like to have a look at how the big boys (like me) whove been doing for a long time get paid off ! this is no joke. if i cant get any satisfaction any other way i will do everything i can of this nature to provoke some response from someone for this INSULT!

an addenda to below. i’m sorry starfish didnt make 6k on itunes it made 3,800 k. i mis read the sheet in my hot headed fashion . so im sorry it was 3800 not 6000. my mistake.heyday did nearly 2000.blurred crusade : nearly 2k.skins n heart: 2 k deep in shallows 3 k.u23 766.seance did 785. so we can see that the (alleged) total for digital downloads was around $14 k. of course second motion will poi

nt out that there is a reason we did not receive virtually any of that there alone (remember we are just discussing the digital component here too!) . a record company can ALWAYS find a reason not to pay an artist. yes look at john fogarty and a billion others. they send you a statement and youre supposed to believe the figures they put on there. oh boy those negative residuals, oh boy those packaging whatsys oh boy the unrecouped blah blah blah. well i was happily going along with all this until a few weeks ago when i put up garage sutra on bandcamp. i sold a few hundred copies . I WAS AMAZED AT THE MONEY THAT CAME IN FOR THOSE FEW HUNDRED COPIES . it came in instantly as the punters were buying em. people wanted hard copies. so we got a few hundred made up at an incredible price. but i’m sorry , the ludicrousness of making 20 times more money out of a few hundred records than the church will collectively see from nth american sales is just unbearable. i have exploded . i have imploded. rest assured if and when someone from a record company answers these wild assertions from me it will be backed up with some figures and clauses and a few examples of why i’m wrong. my records just dont sell anymore. you can download any of my or anyone elses albums for free anywhere. or go round your mates house n get them off his itunes. its all up for grabs, isnt it? i wanna make my grab. i had a few grabs before make no mistake. oh but i am way behind ! i wrote almost all those songs or i cowrote them and wrote the words. this stuff came out of my head. i didnt/ i dont do it to make money but fuck if theres money to be made from it howcome its so hard to get my share? i have been shafted and shafted good since i got in the business. cocaine addicted tour managers making small amounts vanish to totally legit big bizness publishers sending my money round n round the world (at each stop deducting a handling charge) during the nineteen nineties you may be horrified to know that sometimes my entire publishing cheque including utmw was for 250 bucks every six months. they just kept sending it on until there was about 250 left. it was legal. it was quite a thing in the 60s apparently. some still try it on. i am not a businessman. i am a musician and it consumes all my thoughts. i have trusted and trusted and trusted. i have waited 32 years with my hand out thinking sooner or later i will get my just reward for how many records i sold in the last six months…thats all. if it was a hundred bucks fair enough…if thats all i did. ok im gonna let it all go now. i cant let this consume me. i seriously doubt this will achieve anything…let alone us actually getting a FAIR payment. i cant help it. the music biz is unfairly positioned to exploit the musicians at the heart of it because most of em arent by their very nature good at business. the only way i can deal with this any longer is just to do it all my self. then i dont need to ponder bullshit contracts and spread sheets designed to obfuscate the truth from naive blokes like me. amen

posted by nanojath at 9:56 PM on October 3, 2012 [5 favorites]


FWIW, I did buy "Starfish" twice: once back when it was new and once a couple years back, the Aussie remastered 2xCD.

Sucks that their royalties are so crappy.
posted by starscream at 10:09 PM on October 3, 2012


Blurred Crusade was awesome. I may have to buy it. Well, when they might get some of the money...
posted by Windopaene at 10:13 PM on October 3, 2012


Looks like he took his post down.
posted by awfurby at 10:13 PM on October 3, 2012


Way less. If you're willing to do all of the logistics yourself, you could do it easily for a fifth of the price.

Despite electronic musicians from the late 90s and mid 00s pushing forward cheaper software-based production tools, it is still expensive for musicians to DIY.

Tom Maxwell, a former lead vocalist and musician with the Squirrel Nut Zippers, put out a solo record after leaving the band, and he found himself struggling for years afterwards, as a result:

ST: By striking out on your own, you've taken control of your career. How does the move sit with you and how can artists in search of control of their own live a life free of nightmares, if at all? Can the recording industry foster creativity at this rate or is it due for a shutdown?

TM: Go ask Ani DiFranco about that! At best, my self-releasing Samsara stalled my career, because it broke me. I was cocky and thought I could do it on my own, and stood to make $7 a unit -- instead of the $1.50 the Zips made -- so it looked good on paper. But everything came out of my pocket -- radio promotion, retail promotion, publicity ($2500/month), tour support, sidemen salary, etc. Then we went out and played for 30 people a night. Do the math -- tank city! I have to pay the distributor for buying back all the units that didn't sell. That'll keep you up at night.


Logic Pro is relatively cheap, but there seems to be more to a successful music career than at first glance.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:15 PM on October 3, 2012 [1 favorite]


WHoa I totally didn't read the whole thing either. Well screw my imaginary math. Still I think unless he is totally off base about something it still looks like they are getting pennies on the dollar. At this point it sort of baffles me that anyone would even argue about whether record companies exploit accounting tricks to eat artists' revenue far beyond reasonable expenses and profits.

It is hard to read (it looks like it was written on a phone) but I think the fascinating issue is how what puts him over the edge is putting material up on Bandcamp, which as I know from experience takes 15% off the top (10% if you make more than $5,000 in annual sales) and that's that. I mean sure, of course labels played a role in the fact that anybody knows who Steve Kilbey is in the first place but get real: I think they made their fair money off of 1988's Starfish don't you? The labels keep moaning how nobody will buy albums because of THE PIRATES but it makes you wonder: Kilbey puts his little solo joint out for $17 AUD and sells "a few hundred" copies, I bet he was amazed when he saw over $4000 come to him - TEN TIMES his royalties for a year's sales of the entire Church catalog spanning 30 years.

Why in hell wouldn't he focus on his solo career. The Church is probably contractually obligated to the label.

(Man but I seriously haven't thought about The Church since college radio days. Distinct, vaguely shameful memories of singing Under the Milky Way to acoustic guitar accompaniment by my friend Matt in a dismal rented bedroom that was probably legally zoned as a closet. So Old.)
posted by nanojath at 10:25 PM on October 3, 2012




At best, my self-releasing Samsara stalled my career, because it broke me.

Granted, I do think it's easy to overstate the accessibility of both recording and selling (duplicating, distributing, promoting) music independently (though there's no question it's just getting easier and cheaper... still if I had a dollar for every time I listened to something really fundamentally decent and thought "if only they had access to a real recording engineer!").

But Samsara... Maxwell went pretty far out on that one musically. The sad fact is that most people do not want to see their favorite artists stretch and grow and experiement. They want their favorite hits rehashed. And it also seems like he tried to launch the album on a scale comparable to a label release. If you're playing to crowds of 30 as an established artist, and having to buy back all sorts of unsold albums, I think your main issue is that you made an unpopular album. And all this was almost completely before the revolution of digital distribution.
posted by nanojath at 10:54 PM on October 3, 2012


Agreed.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:08 PM on October 3, 2012


In the case of the Squirrel Nut Zippers guy I don't think the meager promotion is what drove people from his music. People still gotta want what you are selling.
posted by basicchannel at 11:19 PM on October 3, 2012


Where do I send my donation for his legal fees when the record company sue him after he uploads the back catalogue?
posted by goshling at 11:47 PM on October 3, 2012


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