http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Showbi ... 2004?f=rss

It was this bit that caught my eye:



Presumably no other label will touch him now... I was going to say nobody in their right mind would give away half their earnings, but then I don't think Williams is

Though I suppose if all this was happening in conjunction with his return to Take That There...

Not at that price. The £80m contract was signed on the expectation that he'd break America and make the record company pots of cash. Of course he didn't, he isn't ever going to and the contract is now considered to be a massive folly (although they won't have actually paid him anything like £80m in the end). The idea that his worth is now anywhere near even half that is complete fantasy. I'd say his worth as a future investment is now about 1/10th of what he's asking for and that will mostly be from touring and related income, not from recording revenue.

The point is he doesn't write songs (or at least not ones anybody likes) and didn't write any of his big hits. As a result his income from recordings is actually fairly limited. Quite where he thinks £50M is going to come from given the current economic climate and the general decline in music revenues god only knows.

Jon

I think it's worth bearing in mind that this story came from Sky News in regards to the Williams bit

This ain't nothing new, electronic music labels not to mention Marillion and Simply Red have been doing this for years.

I subscribe to a label called minus for 30 euros a year I get all their output in 256kb mp3, and 10% discount on back catalogue and merchandising as well as guest list for most of their gigs. It truly is the way ahead, buy direct from the artists everyone wins and the giant record companies either adapt or die and we can be safe in the knowledge it's only chinese and russian hackers reading our emails as opposed to Peter Mandelson and David Geffen and Universal and Sony and BMG.

If he's got 80 million in the bank, why not fund his own recordings?

He doesn't, or at least not that 80 million.

When you sign a record contract (among other things) the headline figure is both a total which you will only be paid once certain targets are met plus it's considered to be an 'advance' on the cost of any recordings made under the contract i.e. the record company pay for the album to be made but they take the costs out of the artists 'share'. The record company essentially passes most of the costs on to the artist, while retaining a large chunk (usually the majority) of the profits. I remember reading the transcript of a keynote from some while ago in which the accounts of an american band's first album was broken down - the album made $1m profit in total, but the musicians would actually have made more money if they'd been working in MacDonald's at the time. Plus williams didn't write the songs on the albums so he doesn't get writers PRS payments. Given the generally unsuccessful nature of Williams's career since he signed the contract, I'd expect him to have made less than £8m, let alone £80m. the fact he was too stupid to realise the actual situation when he gave the press conference and proclaimed how incredibly wealthy he now was (great piece of pr Robbie, really) just reflects badly upon him.

The fundamental point you have to remember is this : record company executives = vast sums of money for little or no work. Frankly, they're the only people who are stealing a living even more than share traders.

Jon