Duff Mckagan Says Guns N' Roses Toured For Two Years In Support Of 'Use Your Illusion' Just To Break Even - Blabbermouth.net
Duff: "..In 1994, I'd just gotten sober and I was kind of figuring some stuff out. And our lawyer said, 'We're gonna audit Geffen,' audit our record company. Before that, I lived in this sort of fantasy world that they were our partner in this thing. Well, they didn't pay us on something like six million records. Six million records! And they said, 'Okay, fine. We'll pay you for two. Or you can sue us.' This is our record company."
'You can sue us for the rest, but it's gonna cost you. We have lawyers on staff.' So you do an audit settlement. So you settle for about a third of what's owed you. And we've done now an audit every three years."
Duff goes on to say that record labels could have avoided online piracy. This is interesting because he's referring to Napster, (the first big file-sharing site) one that set a huge precedent for music/ album sales/ band tours: pretty much the entire world of music - as we know it today.
Duff: "Napster, in 1997, said, 'We didn't invent the computer or digital music. We didn't invent this. It's out there. We have this central site where you can get all the music.' They were talking to the four major labels. The labels were trying to sue 'em, sue Napster. And Napster was going, 'You guys, it's already out there. So we're getting all this revenue from ads. Here's what we propose: Just give us all your music. We'll share in all this hundreds of millions of dollars of ad revenue that we're getting, and we can probably get that huger now that we're all together and you can pay your artists. It's a win-win.'
And the labels, in '97, basically buried their heads in the sand and said, 'We're gonna sue you and take you out.' And Napster, the whole time, was going, 'I didn't invent this. It's still out there. If it's not me, it's gonna be somebody else.' And he was right."
SO. When you think about what killed the music industry: it really was greed. Greedy record labels charging $5.95 for a single song on tape cassette, (back in 1989-90) and later $16.99 for compact disc album. Meanwhile they aren't even disclosing actual real profits to artists!
Now we're seeing more and more bands do their own recording. More bands releasing material via websites like Bandcamp. I dont' know if capitalism killed music industry. It kinda feels like it got exploited and is now in the self-correcting phase.