I will be very upfront here and say that the whole Seattle grunge thing sort of passed me by. I can’t honestly say I am a big fan of Nirvana or Courtney Love. But I found this article that Courtney wrote back in 2000 for
Salon: Courtney Love does the math and she really impressed me.
Here is the opening
“Today I want to talk about piracy and music. What is piracy? Piracy is the act of stealing an artist’s work without any intention of paying for it. I’m not talking about Napster-type software.
I’m talking about major label recording contracts.
I want to start with a story about rock bands and record companies, and do some recording-contract math:
This story is about a bidding-war band that gets a huge deal with a 20 percent royalty rate and a million-dollar advance. (No bidding-war band ever got a 20 percent royalty, but whatever.) This is my “funny” math based on some reality and I just want to qualify it by saying I’m positive it’s better math than what Edgar Bronfman Jr. [the president and CEO of Seagram, which owns Polygram] would provide.
So what happens to the million dollars?” read the article and find out.
It is strange reading this 4 years later and realising that not much has really changed. (Except Salon seems to have tons more ads).