Jakob Dylan on "The Record Business"

There's always been that situation too where you have these really hungry talented artists and they get taken advantage of by whether it's executives or whoever is the money people that figure out how to lock these people into some long term contract where the lion's share of all their work and creativity is going to be enjoyed by the company and not by the artists themselves. You always have these crazy... That part of the model is... Hopefully there's enough pie to go around and everybody is kind of okay with that. There's a certain number you get to where you probably don't care anymore how much they're making because you're making so much also. But that model, that's not a mystery especially if you're coming up the times when I came up, we already knew all that. If you got locked into a bad record contract where somebody screwed you over, it's kind of on you a little bit. It's not the 50s or the 60s where we stepped into things and didn't know. It has nothing with my background. I never got screwed over though. The worst people I've ever met in this business were the bands. They were not the labels because you know who they are. You know what they're doing. They don't really change. You won't be fooled. It's the people that you have camaraderie with that you think are in the trenches with you that you find out. Those are the people that you lay down more that you get hoodwinked by. The business people, there's no secret what they're doing. Have you been hoodwinked by other artists? Well, everybody has. Really? Yeah, I'm not making a point about artists or shit. I'm just saying the big bad record business, not for me, not my days. I've worked with some great people. Some really supportive, positive people who've been a great part of my career. I actually can't, I can only name like I can name out of 30 years maybe like one or two people I came across who I hope I never see again in that end of the business. Otherwise, that's a pretty good ratio. That is a very good ratio. Essentially, there's always going to be people that take advantage of people that don't really understand or are too eager and accept a bad contract. Yeah, but there's no excuses for not reading that. We're just too far along. It shouldn't be that easy to full-saw on today. I've been offered a lot of bad contracts, but I didn't sign them either. It's that same kind of situation. I've been in situations where I've looked at a contract and that's the nature of most business is someone's going to do better than somebody else. When you look at that and you realize it looks like you're no matter what going to do, but this isn't a good situation. I don't take that as like a personal attack or think, okay, well, this isn't good for me. I'll go find somewhere else to do this. They're just establishing shitty rules for the game for you. There's no connect. Yeah, but they're in business. It's like, again, Prince, what was his, what did he say? They owned his name, right? I think it was something, I'm going to get the quote wrong, but somewhere around the time where he changed his, just the symbol and they said something about, somebody said something about the record business. He said, no, I'm not in the record business. You're in the record business. I make music, and that's kind of it. It's true, but there's no similarities to them. There's no reason that you're a great talent, that you should also have a great understanding of the business side of things. You're not really interconnected for most people, but we are far enough along now where hopefully you have somebody with you and things are more transparent that you shouldn't get locked into these horrible deals anymore. Do you remember when Courtney Love wrote that piece where she was explaining the music, I think it was in Spin Magazine, where she was explaining the music business in terms of where the money goes and how they fuck over artists? Do you remember that? I don't remember that, but then don't get in the music business. That's not new. I mean, is that a revelation? Did you read that or like, wow? It was shocking to me because I'm not in the music business. To me, I was like, wow, so that's how they do it? I was confused when it went into like- If you're a band, people, bands don't do this anymore. If your band sells two million records, everybody in that band is probably making a lot of money buying houses, right? That CD costs $18. You're making your money, you're pretty happy. It's only down the road where someone says, okay, you guys, you did buy a house. Did you see how much that they made? And you are shocked for a second to realize you take that CD and you divide it up between yourselves, your band, and what the record ... Yeah, they make a lot more than you. That's why they're in the record business. Some of them are too smart to be in the bands. Or not smart enough. Well, it depends on what you can handle. I couldn't handle that kind of lifestyle myself. I invent things that are nothing. I don't want to be somebody who ... My whole livelihood is reactionary to other people creating something that I can now work with. I want to make it from scratch. Yeah, that's a weird situation to be in, relying upon other people's creativity for you to make a living. Yeah. You can do that when you don't have a creative bone in your body. Some people are really good at numbers and math. Some people are really creative. If you recognize early on, well, I would like to ... That's a lot of the great people who work outside of bands, once wanted to be in a band, but realized, I don't have it. I love music, but I want to be a part of it anyway. I want to help someone else do great things. I'm not the guy to be in the band or the girl. If you have your own music and you own your music, what does a record label do for you in 2021? What do you mean? If you own your own music? If you create your own music, say you hire- What could a record label do for you? They have money that you don't have to promote and spend and put you on tour. Young bands need ... They can't ... A van or no van. It costs money to tour a lot. They basically loan you the money. That's how they can be good for a young band, really. Any band, otherwise you don't have the tools, the assets to get your music in lots of places. There's more opportunities with social media, of course. The good news is anybody can do it now and the bad news is anybody can do it now. It just means it's crowded and it's hard to know what anybody's up to. Record labels, they can still have a great purpose, of course. Some people say they're banks. They're just funding your trip and you have a big bill at the end. They have a connection to streaming services. Yeah, they have all those contacts that you wouldn't have on your own. When a person is, say if you're a new band and you get signed by a record company, how does someone find out about you? What is the primary way they find out about you? If it's not the radio, which it always used to be, do they find out about you through streaming services? Are there channels that are sponsored that people get excited about because they know that this channel is where new interesting music gets broken? We're both going to do some homework after this. If I find out, I'll let you know. I mean, really, that's the question. I don't know. I mean, because it's just jammed up everywhere. There's a lot of great things about the way things work now. The models that we had before were really effective too and at least you could put yourself on a path that if you did X, Y, and Z, maybe your band would get a shot. Maybe your clubs get your demo taped together. Maybe a rec company wants to work with you and they're going to give you some money to practice. You make that record, you make a video and they give you some money to go on tour. This was a path to maybe being a band that was successful. You take that away. It is just every man and woman for themselves just trying to find a way to, quote unquote, get lucky. If you're an established act, you got opportunities. If you're doing it the other way, it's really everybody is trying to get lucky. When someone sees what that person did, by the time you figure it out, it's too late. It's got to do something else. That's what it is. As far as I know. I'm also not brand new. If I was 21 years old, I'd probably understand this better than I do. The way I came up was just a different model. That's okay that a lot of that's gone. It's changed so drastically. You remember in the late 90s, remember what the Diamond Award was? No. I had to invent it. It was the gold record, platinum record. It wasn't enough. People were going like 12 times platinum. They invented the Diamond Award, which was 10 million. Whoa. The Diamond Award, yeah. That's how much money was going around in those days before the internet really. How many people buy CDs today? Do they still sell? I don't know where you buy one. Online I guess? I guess. Amazon? Yeah, there's stuff. I guess where are you going to play it? I mean let's find out. Laptops don't even have hard drives. I think vinyl sells more than CDs right now but I might get a breakdown real quick. That's interesting. What is it? Oh for sure. No, no, it actually flopped. It was for a while like a bonus if your company wanted to spend some money and make vinyl with you. Now it's kind of like ... You can throw in CDs but the production of that is like ... It's the cardboard you put around it. It's cool now to have vinyl. CDs don't seem cool. But why would you have CDs? Streaming is one thing. These are ... Uh oh. Wow, streaming is 83% of music industry venue. Wow. What is sync? What is sync? That's getting your songs and TV and commercials and you can get licenses. That's 2%. Physical, 9% is physical. So that's live performances? No, physical is a combination of CDs and LPs and vinyl. Oh, physical things. Oh I get it. And then digital downloads are 6%. So physical copies are just 9%. So we're taking up the bulk of that pie right there. And then streaming. Streaming takes up the bulk of the pie. So yeah. Oh, interesting. So CDs in ... It's kind of in 2020. What is happening in 2020? It says what? It's more vinyl than it is CD and other physical. What are we looking at? That's ... The green and the blue, that's no CD vinyl. The green is vinyl which is the largest. Vinyl is not like blowing up. Anybody tells you it's back? It's not like it's not buying Kiss records in those days. Right. It's a boutiquey kind of thing. It's cool. Catch new episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience for free only on Spotify. 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