Bill Burr on Joe's Spotify Deal, Hollywood Accounting

This business has always been weird like that. There's always been people- No, that's why you're the king dude, because you got outside of it, but you're totally in it and they can't get you. They can't get you. I'm piling up some stories here, being in the matrix. I won't get into them, but it's the same. It's just the same old corporations only know how to do business one fucking way. Well, they push their advantage. They push their advantage, they have their leverage, and they want the biggest slice of the pie. That's what they do. I don't have a problem with that. It's when they go beyond that and they just straight up steal. Are they stealing from you? Everybody does. Every time you get in business with corporate guys, this is how it works. It's like the check, okay, we're in business to make money from them, and then you get in business with them, and then the check goes to the corporate guy, and then you get your cut off of his checkbook. So right there, I am immediately in a situation where there's no way I can steal from him, but he can rob me fucking blind. Right, and you can add a bunch of expenses on the things that ... Front-end load expenses to make it look like they're losing money. That's Hollywood accounting. Yeah. No, it's stealing. It's stealing is what it is. They just call it Hollywood accounting, but it's not Hollywood accounting. It's corporate accounting, it's scumbag accounting. It's how they do it, and they sleep at night, and then they always have, oh, that's over in the accounting section of the building, not over here where me and my yacht are. I'm artist friendly. You know, I majored in fucking liberal arts and college. Well, it was really interesting when podcasts started to take off, they started to try to get in with the old model and weasel into podcasts and buy pieces of podcasts. Oh, dude, your deal is going to ... If you think the fucking industry is going to sit back when they didn't get to wet their beak on that thing, I'm going to tell every young comic when we get back to this shit, is what they're going to do now is what the music industry did, where they started signing straight across the board deals. They're going to get some young kid who's got no power in the business and it's just like, we'll help you create a podcast, signed with so and so, blah, blah, and what they're going to do is they're going to own the podcast, the advertising money's going to go to them, and they're going to rob them fucking blind. 100%. They're going to 100%, 100% going to fucking steal from them, rob them fucking blind, and then when they get audited and they get caught stealing, they're going to label that kid, that young comic, difficult to work with, meaning difficult to steal from. It's already happening. I know guys, young guys, I won't name any names, but they've come up to me and go, hey, I'm signed to this management company, they want to sign me, but they want a piece of my podcast, they want a piece of this, and they want it in perpetuity. There's no reason, there's no reason. You got to tell people that, dude, because you got to tell people. Do not- I tell them, don't give up anything. Don't give up anything. Don't ever. They're not going to do anything for you. What they're going to do is move the ball quicker that first fucking two years, and then the rest is all going to be you. If you just hang in there and struggle a little bit, like, uh-uh. You've got to grind. You're just going to hang in there and keep going. I mean, I got a lot of offers to buy half of the podcast or to buy, and I'm nothing. I won't do it. I'll never do it, but then Spotify came along and they said, we'll give you a licensing deal. So just put it on our network for three months, but you still own it. I'm like, all right, we're in. That's why we did it that way. But this comic that I won't name, he was telling me that it's this management company, they wanted to sign him. They wanted to own a piece of his podcast forever. And that is fucking crazy. And what that eventually will become, yeah, because what they're going to look at it is they're going to make it like, if you started a podcast while you were with this manager or while you were with this agent, it'll be like back in the day when you booked a sitcom. Exactly. And then if you left the agency or the manager throughout the lifetime of that sitcom, you owed the commission to them. But back then that you needed them to do that. You don't need them for the podcast, but they're going to do that. So then you're going to leave this manager and then for the rest of your fucking life, you're going to be paying this never ending alimony. I mean, there'll be guys eventually they'll try to take 50, 60. I own your podcast. Managers will start agents will start podcast networks because there's nobody regulating them to not do that anymore. I got an offer just five years ago from a company that was a radio company that wanted 50 percent of the podcast. They were going to give me no money. They wanted 50 percent of the podcast just to be associated with them. And like, we're going to pull together all these advertisers and it's going to help your revenue. 50 percent. So that they never deliver what they say they're going to and then they come in and they just they just they got the thing. Well, the beautiful thing about podcasts is podcasts all get big on word of mouth. Like, I've never advertised this podcast. I never did anything with it. I never bought billboards or put ads up anywhere. It's just from word of mouth. And the way other podcasts grow is people get on people's podcasts and they say, hey, you listen to Bill Burr's podcast, Money Morning Podcasts, fucking hilarious. And then it just grows. I think it's the job of people making money in podcast and let new podcasters know do not sign those deals ever. Do not let the Fox into the hen house because they are going to fucking rob you blind. And you don't need it. And I saw this documentary one time on this heavy metal band Anvil. Right. This crazy thing about this band that just was around forever and never quite made it. And there was I think it was I think it was that one. It's one of those ones about an old like metal band from the 80s. And this guy said like the truest shit ever when he was talking about the music business. And this goes straight across podcast and everything. He goes, you're better to own something 100 percent and only sell 20,000 copies than you are to not own it at all and sell 20 million. Like you're literally going to make more if you just sell 20, 20 crazy. Yeah, no, they fuck. Because and then another thing that they do. Oh my God, dude. Another thing that they do is then all the people that they lose on, they dump that on you. Yes. Yes. Like I remember one time I forget what I was with this network and I had a CD that was already made. I already made it and I just wanted them to put it out on their label and they and they wanted to own the CD. And I was like, no, I'm not. No, I don't want you to own it. I just need you to to to like distribute it. I need you as a distributor. And the guy said to me, goes, well, you know, ownership shouldn't be that big a deal for you. It should be about exposure. I said, all right, well, let me ask you this. If ownership shouldn't be that big a deal to me, why is it such a big deal to you? And he started like stammering. And then he basically said, well, you know, we get in business with something. He named a couple of the comics whose CDs didn't sell and we have to recoup those losses. It's like that ain't my fault. That's hilarious. I could have told you not to sign that fucking jerk off. What is your? It's not my fault. You didn't do the fucking work. So that's the way. I had another one one time I signed this back when I made like CDs and I did one and I had a 60 40. You get you know, I was getting 60 and they were getting 40. But their 40 was off the gross. Mine was off the net and all expenses for the album was on me. It's like I thought we were doing this together. Every fucking thing, the artwork, printing it, all of that, all of those expenses came to me. And in the end, that 60 40 60 net 40 gross. They made way more money than I did. It's just how they knew like, oh, OK, well, I'm getting six dollars on every 10. Yeah. Plus the anything. It's just hilarious that they would come up to you and tell you that we did some deals with some other comics. I get business one time to make this TV show and the fucking guys sends this the bill for the whole fucking thing. I shouldn't be saying it, but this is a while ago, right? The guy was going to bill us twenty five hundred bucks a month to use this copier machine and did you in another I don't know, forty five hundred bucks to use as editing. Let's say, dude, we have both of those things. We don't need those. Let's take that money and put it on the screen. We're trying to get this thing to go. And and the guy like he was a funny shit. He goes like I'm insulted by those questions or something like that, which is my favorite thing ever. The the the offense, like the what is the like the I don't know. You're a fucking thief and you actually have the audacity to be like taken aback, like fanning yourself. Like I can't believe you. It's like how many fucking shows you charge in twenty five hundred bucks a month to go, you know, fucking use your copy machine. Yeah. A lot of money. That's rent for a nice apartment. No fucking thieves. The fucking machine. How much does it cost to use that copy machine? Really, first of all, the copy machine probably doesn't even cost twenty five hundred bucks. Probably renting it. Probably rents it for a couple hundred bucks a fucking month. But even to buy a copy, he probably has nine shows paying twenty five hundred bucks a month for him to go. That's it. If you have like a really big one, one of those commercial grade copy machines, what does it cost? Ten grand. I mean, how much could it cost? I mean, I think he's bought a couple of houses off of owning that copy machine. And I just I just love telling these fucking stories because these are the things that you like. What's great about podcasting is you can say this. This is for every person out there who has a fucking business. And you know, there's that thing where you want to take it to the next level. And then these these guys come in and then they're all just like, yeah, well, hey, we're going to take a piece of it. And they take a big fucking chunk out of it. And what they do is their risk is all the way down here. Yours is up here. And then somehow they just I'm telling you, like, you're better. You're better to sell twenty thousand copies, own it 100 percent than twenty million and not own any of it. Because you're going to make more money. That's just how the game is played. And those fucking guys who steal from people, they they sleep very comfortably. But it's also just podcast, just the stress of dealing with other people's eliminated, just the stress of dealing with production people, slows it down. It slows it down. Yeah, it's awful. It's awful. Yeah. I mean, the only thing Spotify has ever done so far is ask, do you know who the first guest will be? And already I'm like, oh, yeah, they're going to be who they're going to be. You know, they're going to be great. I'm going to try to call that. I call that the funniest people. That's them justifying their desk. Like, I can't just sit here like, Joe knows what he's doing. Any idea? Well, I'd like to start an email chain and we could maybe circle back later and have a conference call. And they're just trying to fill up there. Yeah, they just have to use time. Yeah. But the Spotify people have been great. They literally said, we don't want to do anything. We want you to just do what you're doing. Just do what you're doing. But even asking me who the guest going to be, I was like, oh, no, please let this be the only question. Yeah, I'm never available. And that's nothing, though. That's nothing. I mean, they're great. But could you imagine if you were doing that with a network? Like, imagine if you were in business with ABC or something like that and they were helping produce your podcast. You'd have to go in for meetings. You'd have to go and sign into the office. Bill, you sign in here, you go and sit down and waste your fucking afternoon having some dopey conversation. You kind of complain a lot when you read these letters. Bill, do you have to when people are signing the emails? Maybe you should be happy. Can we get a reread on the blabble? What do you think? How do you feel about product placement? Because we've got a got a great deal with Coca-Cola. Look, I just wanted to I just wanted to tell a few of those for younger people out there, because it actually really bothers me that people do that to people. Yes, it really bothers me. And I love comics and I love seeing new comics coming up that have talent. And I hate seeing them get fucked over. So hopefully people listen and they do it. But they're fucking worms, man. They're fucking worms. There's a lot of worms out there and there's a lot of worms that try to grab comics real that they're talented, but real raw. And they try to lock you up to some enormous lifetime management deal. And when you take off and you have something, say if you're. I remember back in the day when everyone went on companies were like shooting specials before comics started shooting them. And the amount of guys that got that. Yeah, we only got enough money for to shoot one, you know, to only you can only shoot it one time, but you're going to crush it, man. You got this hour down. We only got enough in the budget. And then they'd show up early and they'd be shooting another comic special off their money. The deal to double them as a management company, what they would get or an agency. The amount of fucking times that that happened with the same audience. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. The best one I ever heard. Jim Brewer was filming a special. Sold out this theater and the people that were filming the special told him that the money for the ticket sales was theirs because it was all about the production, because the money that people were paying for the production. He's like, the fuck are you talking about? This is my audience. That's my money. His management tried to steal the money from ticket sales and say that it went towards production. Went all the way to court with it. His manager's on the way to court. Has a fucking panic attack. Goes to the hospital like the whole thing's a nightmare. I think he won. Yeah, of course he won. Yeah, he won. Well, it's thievery. It's thievery. Like these are tick people are paying to see Jim Brewer. I have a million of those fucking stores. But this is the thing. This is what kills me about a lot of this. This rhetoric that's going on out there, which I agree with 90 percent of it. But if you if you agree with 100 percent of it, like you and I are not supposed to be having stories like this. We're supposed to be the ones doing it. And it's just like you have to like as far as the the whole, you know, oh, you're a white male, heterosexual, you know, doors just fly open and people like, hey, what are your dream? They like I'm not saying and I'm not obviously not bitching, but I'm just saying that like like people will fuck you. It's all about money. They don't. They don't give a fuck. And they and they all those people that do that shit really. Yeah. So there's a long history of Hollywood accounting. There's a long history that I mean, there's been so many stories about people who made killer hit movies and never got paid because Hollywood's like, look, you know, we have this much had to go to advertising. And this is the production. Look how bad Elvis got fucked. Oh, yeah. Elvis got fucked so bad. And then one of the main ways he got fucked on the road, he only did one out of the country date, I believe he did Toronto and he never traveled the world because his manager had something going on with his visa. And he was worried if he left, he wouldn't be able to come back. So that kind of like fucked him Elvis in a ton of fucking money and see in the world or whatever the fuck he might have wanted to do. Keep doing these movies, Elvis. You want to go on the road? That is hilarious. Well, you know, the best version of breaking down how corrupt the music business is was by Courtney Love. They said she had a ghostwriter. I don't know, but she did. But it was it's a it's a great article that she wrote documenting exactly how much you get paid versus how much money gets generated and where it all goes and how they fuck you. Yeah. Now, it's it's. They've always done it that way. I mean, that's just always the way they've done it. That's the answer. Young people. That's the answer to it as well. I mean, that's how that's how it's done.