How much artists make per sale?

[sno-man]

Hi, does any know roughly how much artists make per single and album sale?

[andy hughes]

It's a how long is a piece of string question, because it depends entirely on the deal the artist has with the record company. Deals are usually complicated, involving a sliding scale of payments for increasing sales, different rates for different territories (that's countries to you and me!) and payments of advances against sales, so the answer is not standard at all.A deal may be pence, per sale, or pounds, depending on wether you are Robbie Williams or Fred Williams, and you are signed to EMI, or you're pressing your recodrs through your mate at the pub who knows someone ... It's all down to the best deal an artist can get - obviously the more popular ones have more leverage to re-negotiate, new stars on the block have to get what they are given, but any musician will tell you, what ever they get, it's not enough!

[mikewith]

Don't forget that the songwriters get their cut too -- a pretty healthy one, compared with the artists -- so, in your average band, the principal songwriter is going to find her/himself richer than the drummer when the royalty cheques start rolling in.

[WaldoMcFroog]

Here's something from my favorite band, Marillion, from their website at http://www.marillion.com : "Here is one example of how little we get paid by EMI for the sale of one copy of our biggest selling album. Misplaced Childhood is what's called a "mid-priced album" and sells for roughly �9 -�10. We are paid the princely sum of 15p, not each, but between us! Didn't we have a lawyer look over the contract? Yes, of course we did. He thought it was OK. That's how it was, and still is, in the music industry. Legal theft."

The usually mad as a brick Courtney Love also has an excellent article about such things here: http://dir.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/
index.html

[sft42]

For more info on the whole royalties and fees subject try visiting the performing rights socities site

http://www.prs.co.uk/

All the answers given apply unless your average band happen to be genesis in which case the Drummer is doing very nicely thank you very much!

[Headtime]

It's not just sales. Radio play can make bands a massive amount of money. A friend who works in the music biz tells me Songwriters get �40 a pop each time their track is played - And that's even on little YokelFM type stations. Despite being basically one hit wonders, EMF became millionaires on the back of 'Unbelievable'. Also Betty Boo - who wrote 'Pure and Simple' for HearSay, will undoubtably have made far more than the band themselves.