Peter Frampton "For 55 million streams of, ‘Baby I Love Your Way’, I got $1,700,"

In Crosby's defense, a lot of people have to do a lot of things due to financial decisions made by other people. Todd Rundgren has to tour at age 70 because he and his wife were victims of a Washington Mutual mortgage scam during the so-called "financial crisis" when a sleazeball swapped his fixed-rate mortgage for a balloon one.

 

So either he's rich, and he's got no right to complain about being ripped off, or he's not rich, and his opinion is worthless because he mismanaged his money at some point in the past.

Thanks for clearing that up, y'all.

 

I suppose you get more opportunities to get good at immersion if you're able to do music full-time, but that's not my point. I'm saying that if you go into the creation of a piece of music -- or of anything -- with the mentality of focusing on the outcome ("I have to hit a home run or no one will like me/I'll go broke") rather than the process ("Here comes the pitch, I can see it banking slightly down and to the left..."), then you'll probably perform at a lower level.

In other words, it doesn't really matter what motivates a person to make a piece of music, unless that motivation dominates their thoughts at the expense of the quality of their work, or leads them to cut corners in order to get to their goal (in this case, pumping out product and making $$$) more quickly.

I've definitely had gigs where I thought "Doing this for the money, doing this for the money..." and my performance probably suffered -- though in fairness to myself, if I had good musicians to play with and/or good music to work with, that was usually enough of a pleasure to snap me out of that mindset.

 

Not gonna ask you to go through the whole thread, but the tl;dr boils down to:

* Somebody covered "Baby I Love Your Way" for the soundtrack to "Reality Bites" in the 90s.

* This performance got "featured" on two Spotify playlists and ended up getting streamed 55million times. (Frampton's own performance was streamed 20mil times, separately)

* Frampton got a $1700 check for his authorship on the cover.

* Yes, he was probably tied up in a crappy publishing deal in 1977 when "Frampton Comes Alive" became a megahit.

 

It could be he lives in a big house in a rich neighborhood. He could downsize and move away, but that would be stressful in itself.

 

That's... probably true? But I don't think it has any relevance to this discussion. Focusing on the process is generally how people get good enough at what they do that they can earn a living from it.

 

And Joan Crawford had to make "Trog" in 1970. Your point?

 

Or it could be he's playing it smart by hiding his income and/or
he is loathed to discuss money with strangers.

But if people think he doesn't have money....well he has agreed to pay out
$3 Million to a jogger he hit in 2016 while driving his Tesla.

Broke people don't own Teslas - and don't agree to pay out $3 Million.

 

Ok, thanks. Mechanical royalty rates are a lot lower.

 

... and don't forget this cover in the film beloved by Hoffmanites:



"Is that Peter ****ing Frampton?"

 

When you called up your local DJ ( if you could get through) did he play your request right away and related songs for the next several hours ?

 

Thank you very much for the excellent Executive Summary.

 

My point was that, while comments about "Musicians shouldn't make music for the money/do their best work when it's not for the money" are perhaps misguided (and/or offensive to broke musicians ), there's an element of truth to them when viewed from the right angle. That's all.

(I was also trying to keep the discussion from getting derailed into a predictable back-and-forth about it, by finding a way of phrasing things that both sides could accept. Perhaps I failed in that; it wouldn't be the first time.)

 

People keep bringing up that "he wrote this 40 years ago" as some kind of justification of the small payout.

I assume that if an artist released a song that was written last week, and it streamed 55 million times, the payout would be the same providing the artist's ownership and publishing terms were the same as in Frampton's case.

 

You're missing the point. I never said they were the SAME THING. Just that one medium has largely replaced another one in terms of popularity. Cars replaced horses and buggies, but that doesn't mean that they functioned the same.

 

I got that. But imho when people are choosing exactly what they want to hear then they should pay more. Like with juke boxes.

 

Well you have to be able to afford the legal fight. If you go up against a large corporation with the resources they have you better have time (Crosby turns 77 this week) and money to pay for a legal team that can at least stay close enough to see the corporation legal teams taillights. So practically speaking no an individual legal challenge isn't realistic in many cases.

 

He doesn't have the leverage. His voice is the only means to affect any change.

 

I disagree. People pay plenty for streaming. Let the record companies work out deals with the streaming companies that better favor the artists. Record companies have been finding ways to shortchange artists for decades, then the blame gets passed on to the listeners--like when people complained that cassette tapes were going to kill the record industry. And I'm sure there's a lot of listeners who'd be willing to pay higher fees to streaming services. But you're naïve if you think those higher fees would result in a larger cut for the artists. The record companies will find any excuse to maximize their own profits when negotiating deals with the streaming services.

 

I think that question of motivation has a lot more to do with specific individuals than it does with any generalization about "pros" vs. "amateurs".

 

I totally agree that the labels cut is too big and more should be shared with the artist who actually created the content.

Very surprised that these new streaming deals were even made because they were never in original artist contracts.

I knew some very famous photographers who actually got extra license fees when CDs came out. They fought that their images were only licensed for albums and tapes. Most won

 

Unfortunately, the standard for photography is that photographers own the copyright in their pictures and license them for use.

The standard in the music business is that record companies own the sound recordings that their artists paid to produce.

 

Mostly yes although some labels and clients demand work for hire and all ownership from photographers. Some have clout and others don’t. Some artists own their masters. But very few.

As a photo agent for 32 years I’m still dealing with this stuff. Clients now want so much more for so much less.

 

No, you have to have a case with a reasonable chance of winning. Lots of lawyers are happy to sue on your behalf, as long as they get to keep a third of the payout. If you find no lawyer to take your case, that ought to tell you something about the nature of the contract you voluntarily signed.

 

My post wasn't meant in any way to connect to that earlier discussion. It was simply a direct response to the proposition that musicians should do it for the love of the music (and yes, I'm aware of the etymology of "amateur" ).