Jazz for aficionados

I don't even pretend to understand the music business, but I always thought the amount of money an artist made was at least in part based on record sales.

If the LP is not released, how does the artist get paid or make money?   Any player with an IQ over 6 would be aware that music recordings sell forever.  A player in 1965 would know that records cut decades before where still being sold.

So what did he think happened to the stuff that was not released? Why didn't the contract demand release?  What didn't he retain the rights to all unreleased sessions?  What was he paid for recording sessions that were not released?  Had they heard of Lawyers?

Why would they think the guys at the studio would put their, the player's, interest before their own?

Do I think all this OK?  No.  It's just human nature.  Today there was a crisis here in my home.  'Our' cat that has set up homestead in our back yard, cleaned out his bowl of food, and then walked right out into the yard and killed a bird at the bird bath.  My wife wants to kill the cat.  i asked, why?  She was just doing what cats do.   They kill things. That's what they do. If she was bigger, she would kill us.

Jazz players make music, and business men make money.  That's what they do.  The more the businessmen makes, the less the player makes.

Cheers

G.F. Händel: Water Music - Akademie für alte Musik Berlin:

Fabulous!  If I could could give it six stars (and anybody cared), I would.  Beautiful and spirited playing of this wonderful music.  Truth is, I have never been a huge fan of the "period instrument" movement for some of the very reasons that I didn't like the French orchestra's performance.  This is special.  The period instruments display their unique timbres and overall "softer" tones; but, when appropriate, these players dig in and play them with real verve and without the often heard sense that there is something unusually precious about these period instruments or the way they are supposed to be played.  Fabulous baroque oboe, baroque flute and natural horn playing (would like to know Learsfool's take on the latter).  Excellent intonation and section to section balance (!) overall.

There is something special, when it works, about a conductorless orchestra.  In this case the "conductor" is the concert master.  Players are forced (a good thing) to listen to each other with a level of care that is not always the case when there is a conductor's beat to follow.  Some really magical things can happen as a resuIt.  It doesn't always work and in no way should the role of a great conductor be underestimated.  This definitely works.

They are standing as was common practice at the time the music was composed.  Not all are standing; only the ones who can.  I don't know that this is the same performance that would be on the disc as I read a reference to the one on the disc having been recorded in a studio.  Harmonia Mundi recording is a sure bet that it will be great sounding and no reason to expect that it would not be a performance at least as good as the one heard on this video.

Loved it.  Thanks and will be ordering it myself.

Hi guys - first, to answer a question Rok posed:  "If the LP is not released, how does the artist get paid or make money?"  Answer:  the artists are paid for their work in the recording sessions themselves - in fact, this is the biggest single payment they receive, unless the album does incredibly well and they end up making a fair amount of royalties over many years.  Most albums don't sell that much, though, and the royalties do not usually add up to what the original payment for the recording sessions were.  Only the very biggest artists make a significant amount of money in royalties - also the studio musicians who do most of the movies in LA and London.  Also guys that play for TV and radio commercials that end up getting used over and over again for years and years do very well if they are lucky enough to have done one of those (for instance, think of those Motel 6 radio ads that may have the voice-over changed up, but it is that same music that they originally recorded and gets re-used in otherwise new commercials - those guys that did that session still make very good money in re-use payments, but that is unusual nowadays).  For orchestral musicians, the upfront payment we get for the session itself is much bigger than anything we ever get afterwards in the way of royalties, if there even are any.  It also depends, for us, on the type of recording and the agreement it is recorded under.  Many orchestras now self-produce their recordings, and they have a limited, local release, which makes it cheaper for them.  

The Academy of Early Music Berlin is one of the finer early music ensembles going right now, and that is a very nice performance.  The very best early music groups are still in England, though, which is sort of where that whole movement got started.  There are some good ones here in the states, too.  To answer Frogman's question on my opinion of the natural horn playing - I think those guys are pretty good, though there is definitely better around the world, both here and in England.  The best performance of the Water Music on natural horns that I know of is John Eliot Gardiner's group (The English Baroque Soloists) - those guys that play for him are really great.  That is something I have always had an interest in doing but have never pulled the trigger on - I don't own a natural horn.  I really should, as there is a need for it where I am - I could easily get enough work with it to justify the purchase and learning the technique.  Part of it is that I am a low horn player, and much of the solo natural horn work would be high, quite a bit different from what I normally do.  I have always wanted to find a good high horn player to do it with me as a pair, so it would suit me better, but that hasn't happened yet.  

It is rare the artist that retains the rights to unreleased material. It is possible to include a provision in an artist’s contract that stipulates that, should the label fail to release the recording, the artist then retains the copyright to that recording. However, this is rare and the record label usually owns all of the contracted artist’s material for (usually) fifty years or so.

Agree or disagree the record labels reasoning and justification for these practices is their claim that it takes a great deal of upfront investment to record, release and promote a recording. As Rok points out, they are a business and in the business of. making money. Having said that, I think it’s important to remember that if the label doesn’t make money, no artist makes money (from recordings). I don’t believe that a record label sets out to NOT release a recording and then save it until the artist has passed in an effort to make money. They don’t release a particular recording because they don’t feel it is commercially viable AT THAT PARTICULAR TIME. Contrary to popular belief here, some artists DO make and HAVE made inferior recordings. I use this example not to start yet another war here, but as an expression of my viewpoint.

The often discussed great (and he was) Grant Green made recordings late in his career that where, in my opinion, considerably inferior to his classics. The most recently posted clips of his work show an artist going into a (soul-funk-whatever) genre that was populated by some pretty stiff competition like George Benson and Wes Montgomery; players who were receiving a lot of attention and backing. Importantly, for some reason, his backing bands in these later recordings sometimes left a lot to be desired, imo. Case in point, the recently posted "Live At The Lighthouse". Whose idea was it to hire Claude Bartee for that recording? Who knows. But it was not a good choice; he sounds absolutely awful on soprano saxophone. I can see a scenario where label executives would decide to not release a recording like that because there was so much other music in a similar bag being released by them or other labels. I hate posting recordings of what I consider inferior music, but simply to make a point here is a recording that, to my way of thinking, one has to wonder "what where they thinking?"; and almost twenty minutes of it!! Terrible horn arrangements. Sometimes artists make bad choices; sometimes producers make bad choices or decisions. Simple as that.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zKVvBHusoMY

Even the great Michael Brecker's solo sounds a little "dialed in".

The Frogman / Learsfool:

Thanks for the insight into the music business and the review / comments on the Handel piece.  I did not notice the absence of a conductor.  I was so focused on the players.

I also have the John Gardiner CD.  I should branch out, and try more Classical  Composers..  I tend to buy the best performances of the stuff  with which I am familiar.  I have noticed that the names of the Composers being reviewed are starting to be more and more unfamiliar.  Back in the day, all the reviews seemed to be of the usual suspects.

Cheers