Eagles.... 3.0

[chaim]

This is becoming farcical, to me, at this point. A money-grubbing affair, as if anyone on this site, or basically anywhere in the world, wishes to do any work without being fairly compensated for the absolute most they can receive. As Irving Azoff said, the Eagles are not a hippie commune.

I totally agree with this point of view in general, but in the case of the Eagles at this point, people (other than rock stars and other artists) their age are usually retired. I think the criticizers see it this way:
The Eagles don't need to work anymore as the Eagles, but they choose to. And maybe it's only because they want even more money.

[Delilah]

I hope you are not referring to me because I have barely mentioned Deacon's (presumed) participation. Please provide me with one example where someone has painted Deacon as a 'scoundrel'. I don't think anyone has done so.

This

If it turns out to be Deacon as one of the two new additions to the bands' lineup no one should be surprised. Run the big screen video. Cue the spotlight. Pass the tissue box. Showtime!

Which basically means: Not only is the band being slammed for its supposedly evil performing-for-profit scheme, but now Deacon is being implicated by partaking in the band's manipulative ploy to pull the heartstrings of clueless ticket-buyers.

As AT pointed out, this is a young man who lost his father. Far be it for anyone to question how he chooses to honor his father and his father's legacy i.e. Eagles.

Now, this may not have been the way it was intended. But I bet if someone else made such a comment (I won't name names), he would be reamed from here to next Tuesday. If Don Felder had made this comment on his FB page, the board would probably explode.

[New Kid In Town]

Delilah - I made the comment about Glenn being the leader in response to numerous comments made by other people. I agree with you in that there was a huge struggle between Glenn and Don in the late 70's over who would be the leader. This was one of the numerous reason why they broke up in 1980.
After they resumed in 1994 for HFO, I think there was still a struggle before they reach some kind of compromise. Somewhere along the way Glenn became the leader. However, I do not believe anything got done without Don's approval. I agree that the struggle between the two ebbed and flowed and it sounded like it continued during the making of LROE.

Chaim - I am not saying that Don, Joe and Tim should not sing together. However, I personally feel calling themselves "Eagles" without one of the two founding member negatively affects the legacy of the band. Nothing more and nothing less.

I know since 1994 that the Eagles have been all about money when it comes to ticket prices. Back than when I saw them I paid $75.00 - which was a lot of money. My friends thought I was crazy to pay that much money. I know they can charge what they want. However, when they charged $1,500.00 downward for tickets for the HOTE Tour they priced themselves out of many, many fans who would have loved to see them. Same thing with the Wast/West Festival, $2,750.00 on down is in MHO, just a crazy amount of money. The festival last year was three days and cost less then this and one day passes were sold.

I never said I hated Don, Tim and Joe. I am just disappointed that they could not be honest up front about this. This festival did not happen over night, it took months to plan. I feel it is wrong to charge those prices and not say who the "guests" are. Just my opinion.

[travlnman2]

You Guys Do relaize the band makes its money from touring right? If they make 3 mill for one show. They dont even see 1 mill of that after Venue, Promotion, Crew expenses the Manager etc.

If this was a cash grab for the band the ticket prices would be MUCH higher. If people still bought albums the ticket prices would be lower?

https://www.theguardian.com/music/mu...expensive-blog

[travlnman2]

Bands DO NOT make money these days by selling vip tickets for $200. Managers, Lawyers, Record company, City, Stadium Owners all get a cut of the momey before the Band ever sees it.

[travlnman2]

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...82610186.shtml

RIAA Accounting: Why Even Major Label Musicians Rarely Make Money From Album Sales
from the going-behind-the-veil dept
We recently had a fun post about Hollywood accounting, about how the movie industry makes sure even big hit movies "lose money" on paper. So how about the recording industry? Well, they're pretty famous for doing something quite similar. Reader Jay pointed out in the comments an article from The Root that goes through who gets paid what for music sales, and the basic answer is not the musician. That report suggests that for every $1,000 sold, the average musician gets $23.40. Here's the chart that the article shows, though you should read the whole article for all of the details:

Source: TheRoot.com

Of course, it's actually even more ridiculous than this report makes it out to be. Going back ten years ago, Courtney Love famously laid out the details of recording economics, where the label can make $11 million... and the actual artists make absolutely nothing. It starts off with a band getting a massive $1 million advance, and then you follow the money:
What happens to that million dollars?

They spend half a million to record their album. That leaves the band with $500,000. They pay $100,000 to their manager for 20 percent commission. They pay $25,000 each to their lawyer and business manager.

That leaves $350,000 for the four band members to split. After $170,000 in taxes, there's $180,000 left. That comes out to $45,000 per person.

That's $45,000 to live on for a year until the record gets released.

The record is a big hit and sells a million copies. (How a bidding-war band sells a million copies of its debut record is another rant entirely, but it's based on any basic civics-class knowledge that any of us have about cartels. Put simply, the antitrust laws in this country are basically a joke, protecting us just enough to not have to re-name our park service the Phillip Morris National Park Service.)

So, this band releases two singles and makes two videos. The two videos cost a million dollars to make and 50 percent of the video production costs are recouped out of the band's royalties.

The band gets $200,000 in tour support, which is 100 percent recoupable.

The record company spends $300,000 on independent radio promotion. You have to pay independent promotion to get your song on the radio; independent promotion is a system where the record companies use middlemen so they can pretend not to know that radio stations -- the unified broadcast system -- are getting paid to play their records.

All of those independent promotion costs are charged to the band.

Since the original million-dollar advance is also recoupable, the band owes $2 million to the record company.

If all of the million records are sold at full price with no discounts or record clubs, the band earns $2 million in royalties, since their 20 percent royalty works out to $2 a record.

Two million dollars in royalties minus $2 million in recoupable expenses equals ... zero!

How much does the record company make?

They grossed $11 million.

It costs $500,000 to manufacture the CDs and they advanced the band $1 million. Plus there were $1 million in video costs, $300,000 in radio promotion and $200,000 in tour support.

The company also paid $750,000 in music publishing royalties.

They spent $2.2 million on marketing. That's mostly retail advertising, but marketing also pays for those huge posters of Marilyn Manson in Times Square and the street scouts who drive around in vans handing out black Korn T-shirts and backwards baseball caps. Not to mention trips to Scores and cash for tips for all and sundry.

Add it up and the record company has spent about $4.4 million.

So their profit is $6.6 million; the band may as well be working at a 7-Eleven.
And that explains why huge megastars like Lyle Lovett have pointed out that he sold 4.6 million records and never made a dime from album sales. It's why the band 30 Seconds to Mars went platinum and sold 2 million records and never made a dime from album sales. You hear these stories quite often.

And note that those are bands that are hugely, massively popular. How about those that just do okay? Remember last year, when Tim Quirk of the band Too Much Joy revealed how Warner Music made a ton of money of of the band's albums, but simply refuses to accurately account for royalties owed, because the band is considered unrecoupable. Sometimes the numbers even go in reverse. If you don't understand RIAA accounting, you might think that if a band hasn't "recouped" its advance, it means that the record labels lost money. Not so in many cases. Quirk explained the neat accounting trick in a footnote to his post about his own royalty statement:
A word here about that unrecouped balance, for those uninitiated in the complex mechanics of major label accounting. While our royalty statement shows Too Much Joy in the red with Warner Bros. (now by only $395,214.71 after that $62.47 digital windfall), this doesn't mean Warner "lost" nearly $400,000 on the band. That's how much they spent on us, and we don't see any royalty checks until it's paid back, but it doesn't get paid back out of the full price of every album sold. It gets paid back out of the band's share of every album sold, which is roughly 10% of the retail price. So, using round numbers to make the math as easy as possible to understand, let's say Warner Bros. spent something like $450,000 total on TMJ. If Warner sold 15,000 copies of each of the three TMJ records they released at a wholesale price of $10 each, they would have earned back the $450,000. But if those records were retailing for $15, TMJ would have only paid back $67,500, and our statement would show an unrecouped balance of $382,500.

I do not share this information out of a Steve Albini-esque desire to rail against the major label system (he already wrote the definitive rant, which you can find here if you want even more figures, and enjoy having those figures bracketed with cursing and insults). I'm simply explaining why I'm not embarrassed that I "owe" Warner Bros. almost $400,000. They didn't make a lot of money off of Too Much Joy. But they didn't lose any, either. So whenever you hear some label flak claiming 98% of the bands they sign lose money for the company, substitute the phrase "just don't earn enough" for the word "lose."
So, back to our original example of the average musician only earning $23.40 for every $1,000 sold. That money has to go back towards "recouping" the advance, even though the label is still straight up cashing 63% of every sale, which does not go towards making up the advance. The math here gets ridiculous pretty quickly when you start to think about it. These record label deals are basically out and out scams. In a traditional loan, you invest the money and pay back out of your proceeds. But a record label deal is nothing like that at all. They make you a "loan" and then take the first 63% of any dollar you make, get to automatically increase the size of the "loan" by simply adding in all sorts of crazy expenses (did the exec bring in pizza at the recording session? that gets added on), and then tries to get the loan repaid out of what meager pittance they've left for you.

Oh, and after all of that, the record label still owns the copyrights. That's one of the most lopsided business deals ever.

So think of that the next time the RIAA or some major record label exec (or politician) suggests that protecting the record labels is somehow in the musicians' best interests. And then, take a look at the models that some musicians have adopted by going around the major label system. They may not gross as much without the major record label marketing push behind them, but they're netting a whole lot more, and as any business person will tell you (except if that business person is a major label A&R guy trying to sign you to a deal), the net amount is all that matters.

[New Kid In Town]

Travlnman - I understand what you are saying. However, JMO, but the Eagles made mega bucks from touring - they were one of the elite bands left touring. I know you are giving an example, but VIP tickets for the Eagles have not cost $200.00 in probably 20 years or more. VIP ticks for MSG went for $1,500.00 or more. VIP tickets for this festival go from $2,750.00 downward. I know they have high expenses but they also have a high profit. IMHO but comparing Courtney Love to the Eagles is not the same thing. Bernie has stated on numerous occasions he has made a very good income from the sale of the GH Vol.1 - it is the best selling album in the 20th century in the US.
When the Eagles made LROE, they produced it themselves, sold it via their company and the deal with Walmart, and released it on their own record label. While this may have cost them up front, the money they made in the long was huge. It sold at least 6 million copies worldwide. Since they owned the record label, they received all those profits.
I realize the days of making tons of money via record sales ended long ago. However, the Eagles are different than most groups. Don, Glenn and Irving came up with a smart and unique way to make sure most of the profit went to them when they made LROE.

I would assume this of course does not apply to most artists. I am not crying any tears for Courtney Love over how much money she makes. All those major acts make good money.

[travlnman2]

NEW Kid SHE STILL MAKES BIG BIG MONEY. Basically the same ampunt.

[Dawn]

Whoa Nellie ... back that horse up ....

During the interview where he made this announcement Don Henley could have disclosed the identities of the new people added to the bands' lineup but he did not. This was NOT an oversight. It was intentional. Hell, I'll even say manipulative.

As for Deacon Frey, he is the innocent in this circus.

See post 349

[sodascouts]

Questioning someone's opinion is not criticising them.

That's true. What category does your comment below fall under?

Have you ever been part of a forum where the owner actually wants the band to be inactive or decides that as reality is not to their liking they will declare themselves ruler of an alternative reality where they can discard what the actual band does and dictate the relevant history of the band themselves...