"Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist."

"Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs"

EMI Music Publishing doesn’t pay royalties.

I know this firsthand.

Let’s forget the issue of underpaying, on certain tracks they don’t account at all.

And the truth is the rest of the major label infrastructure is no different. That’s their business model. Rippling off the acts, not paying them their due. Which is why they’re fading.

Oh, they blame the public for stealing and use declining revenues to extract even more rights from clients in vaunted 360 deals.

But that’s just because their owners, their executives, want to make more money.

The Goldman executive talks about the change in culture at his firm… Let’s talk about how in the past twenty years the label executives got richer than the acts. But without the acts they’re nothing. Isn’t that topsy-turvy?

Meanwhile, not a single high profile executive has come forth to tell the truth. Because the music business is like the Mafia. Workers are afraid of getting whacked. And not being as lucrative as banking, the ranks of those who can give the middle finger and survive are few.

The labels don’t care if you’re the Eagles or a newly-signed act. They’ll still rip you off willy-nilly. The A&R and marketing people will tell you it’s not their purview, that royalties are another division.

How long can an enterprise that puts its clients last and rips them off survive?

Not long.

Which is one of the main reasons the major labels are doomed.