“7 Things a Record Deal Teaches You About the Music Industry”

I wish I could have written this myself, but alas, I did not have the experience.

This is the best non-sour grapes delineation of what it means to make a deal with a major I’ve ever read. It illustrates that first and foremost major labels are about money, not art, and you should never forget this.

Teaching people that making deals with major labels is selling their souls is an enterprise just as worthless as trying to convince them their mobile provider is not the best and acts don’t scalp their own tickets. People keep lining up at the door of these companies for a rocket to stardom. Actually, you can buy a rocket to the stars, the Russians sell one, you too can be a cosmonaut for…TWENTY MILLION! (Actually, now they charge $71 million, Lance Bass was gonna get a sweetheart deal.)

Money talks and we’re the living proof, that’s what Ray Davies said, and he should know. If you take it, you’re owned by it.

And never forget that major labels are not in the artist development business, but the hit business. Their idea of artist development is taking nine months or a year to break something, if you think they’re going to sit idly by while you noodle in the studio and record three stiff albums…you must’ve been signed to Warner Brothers back in the seventies.

However, although Spose says he’s got a successful Kickstarter campaign and a fan base that generates cash, don’t delude yourself into thinking he’s a star. That’s the major label’s business. Or your own if you’re really that damn good and willing to pound the boards building an audience over a period of years.

You cannot build an audience via Twitter and Facebook, social networking can only burnish the brand at most. It’s the core that drives people to you…your music and your performance.

There is no easy way out.

Or, you can make a deal with the devil, but please have no illusions he’s an angel.

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I was wrong. Larry David was involved with the “Seinfeld” Super Bowl spot. He cowrote it with Jerry and directed it.

Mea culpa.

But the Beatles never got back together and the “Seinfeld” people should hang it up too. Otherwise it looks like you’re holding on to the last gasp of fame. Then again, the “Seinfeld” reunion on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” was great, proving that there are no rules.

Then again, Jerry is the guy who is friends with both Leno and Letterman, the way he sits above it all bothers me. In other words, if you don’t have enemies, if you don’t have faults, if you’ve got no insecurities…I’ve got a hard time relating to you.