The error usally is the artist

SOMEONE STOLE OUR SONG!!!

Another email in the distribution. Some artist discovers that a name is taking money from them on certain sites. We can see the error so we ask if they have licensed it, someone?

- No, we are the master owner, so we have the rights to the money.
- Yes, you have. But no if you have licensed the song somewhere.
- No, we have only uploaded through you.
- Still, there is a conflict with another account from another distributor?
- Well, we have never done anything, we just want our money.

So I start looking, takes around an hour until I find their stuff on an old record label. Of course, that label has just sold their catalog to a new label and of course when they put it out the conflict is there.

So I get a hold of the new label, that doesn't know anything about that the band has the right to the master. But they goes back to the old label and ask. This procedure takes around one week. In the meantime, the artist is screaming and emailing all the time that we should resolve the problem and do it fast.

Then it comes back that the first label has a contract and the rights to the master. I present that to the screaming artist.

- Ohh that old label we didn't know they still existed!
- They don't but the master is theirs and they sold it to this new company.
- THEY CAN'T DO THAT!
- You have to contact them, we just the distributor, don't scream at us.
- You have to help us, we have the rights to the master.
- First, we are not your legal service. But they have a contract signed by you that they own the master, and it clearly says they can sell that asset.
- We just thought that it was an old contract and that it's gone now.

I have this conversation in many different ways every month. It's never the artist's fault, but in the end, its' clearly their fault by doing some stuff some years back. And always they give information like, we never have done this or that and when you check it's always that they have done it.

This is the reason I don't want to clean up older bands stuff. It's full of things. in many cases, you can't get the information this easy that I did in this case.

What really annoys me I that they are wasting my time, I have nothing to do with your master in a distribution thing.

Get these blogs updates straight to your mail.
Enter your email address:

Some knowledge is required!

I just got a mail.

Hello, I'm the manager of the artist **** and I have some questions about some stuff. Can you email me or call me at ****.

This is an artist that we dropped three years ago, mainly because he was a pain in the ass stupid. The funny part is that the manager is also an artist we dropped several years ago for the same reason. I guess now they joined forces to be the stupidest team in the music industry.

And yes they are stupid, you just look on the email which contains two rows and you see it. So you want me to dig something up from years ago around an artist that we don't work with any longer or have any rights around any longer? But you are not smart enough to write what you want to be dug up. No, you require that I should take my precious time to write back to you by email or call you up to find out what you want!

Second, whatever it is that you want we probably can't help. Whatever you forgot back in the past is not worth getting back to. Specially when the things never worked out and didn't go anywhere.

In reality, I don't have time to spend on shit like this so of course I just marked it off. And yes I know he will bug around trying to make contact but not revealing what the fuck he wants. And he will be complaining that we never answer.

And here you have the answer why people say we are hard to reach. Yes for some people we are. The ones with the right questions get answers in minutes others days and some never.

Knowledge like this is crucial and required.

Discussions on stupidity.

Over the week on FMF I have heard so many of the issues I have brought up in the blog. Even that these stories are going on at higher levels.

One time we got into a battle who had the dumbest artist issue. I didn't win.

I less and less believe that I one day will see the Diy totally self-made. And start to more see that to much DIY is actually not good for the artist. Well, I have a bunch of new stuff coming up soon from this conference.

People are just plain stupid sometimes

You wonder sometimes if it even worth it! I work on the side of my normal job for a company doing some work for their artists. Get them out in the press put up meeting with industry professionals and so on. Usually I don’t even get paid for it. Here and there they pay me a dinner or a ticket when I travel. I do it mainly becuse I know they don't have the money. Now they got a big chunk of money to develop their company from the government and they called me up tell me that they are hiring a new person in their office.
- Yes this person we are hiring doesn’t have that much of experience; she is fresh out of school. So we were thinking that she could go alongside you so she can work up her network and get a feeling how the industry is working.

I was kind of stunned. You never paid me for any of the work I have done and now when you get money suddenly I should teach someone to do the job I never got paid for. So I went on.
- How much do I get for that?
- Well our budget is very estranged. We don’t have that much money. We were thinking if she could just follow you on your trip to The Great Escape next week, we can buy her tickets.

Never got to their mind that I had bought my tickets, trip and hotel by myself.

- And then I saw that you were on another conference two weeks after can you fix her tickets to that one so she can follow?

Since their budget only covered the new employee there was not calculation to pay me anything. They also insisted that they will send her to The Great Escape and that I should take care of her, and this is how it works. They don’t think.
I just ended the conversation really saying nothing. I guess they believed that I would take care of their new employee during the first conference and fix ticket to the second one.

The fact is that they pay her to do that job so why should I do that? Just to be nice? Like oh I do all the work and then you can take my salary?

Practical they will be thrown back a couple of years. The things I build up I just take with me, I won’t pass that along. The sad part of this is having seen it all before.

In the evening I went on a show in Stockholm. There I bumped into a guy that they choose for a government project a couple of years ago. Same procedure, I worked to get the project started when they got money they hired a local guy with no connections. The project never become successful, it just turned into that they paid three years this guy a salary. I spoke with the guy for a while; he has now left the music industry and was working in a cloth store. Another waste of VAT money in Sweden I would say.

That is also tragically, many of the projects gets bad names since they are unsuccessful. The problem is that the idea is good is just that they never employ people that actually has the education, and no this education you can’t get to be in a school. Still they think if we hire young kids they will fix it.
Then another person came by. It was a person working for a record label doing the same stunt a couple of years ago. Not exactly the same, they mainly wanted me to work for free with no percentage and if I got lucky I would be paid. Back then I always showed a bit what we were doing and helped them in a couple of months. Then of course they fucked up and I left the building and I haven’t seen them in years.

I have seen though that the project went to hell just a couple of months after I left.  Mainly because they thought if they had some people in the network it was good enough. But these people where loyal, they usually are since they know I’m still here and that project is long gone.
I had to ask anyway how it was with the project. And he told me all the problems they got after we left. I just nodded. I guessed that he really didn’t get that these problems came since I left and just let him keep on talking. Then he stopped and started to talk about a new project he had and if I was interested to work with that since I did a good job on the first one.

I’m stunned they really don’t think. Is it even worth to explain for them that they really, really fucked up? And if you fuck up, you’re gone. And if I was the mob I would just shoot their heads off! Luckily I’m not the mob, I’m just a person wondering how stupid people actually can be and how many projects I will see going down because of incompetence?

I just saw a post just like this from a friend, I guess it's life in the music industry.

Don't be like this..

We got this to our record label inbox, Of course I’m censor who it was from. But it's a typical email we get several of every week. People that hasn't done their homework and now face a problem.

Hello my name is *******. This year 2016 I released a cd called ****** . I am
now looking for someone to distribute my new cd.  Jazz/pop rock genrer.
I am from Sweden. I am not a signed artist. I have produced the cd and Swedish
broadcasting Corporation has produced the recording. Which distributors do you prefer ?
I have 900 dvs physical at Home.

Kindly *****

I really don’t know witch planet this person is on. First of all the CD (or is it a DVD look on the last sentance it says dvs...this could easily be DVD:s) is already released. The person has already printed over 900 copies of the shit and now realized that she need a distributor. And since almost every record store is closed in Sweden by know finding distribution for a product like this…well it’s probably smarter to get down and buy 5 tickets to the powerball lottery and actually take out that you are going to win and spend the money beforehand.

Second even though this person printed the CD what’s the deal with the Swedish broadcast cooperation, does it really have all the paper on this? Since they are writing an email like this I wouldn’t trust a word that everything is in its order.

And the genre what is Jazz/pop/rock? I guess this is some stupid Jazz project, the people that plays Jazz usually don’t have any knowledge and should immediately stop giving out music. Jazz is no music is just a sound, not music.

Then to the question: Which distributors do you prefer? What I should just stop what I’m doing and start helping this utterly stupid project. People like this should be stopped by NCB already starting doing stupid things like this.

The thing is also most of this information is online, if you just start to use Google and do some search you will find it EASY! Just hate artist that do stupid stuff and then wants to be curled like a small child.

When you later meet people like this on different kind of meetings they always take up time by complaining that is so hard din the music industry. I guess it becomes harder if you just do it this way.