Twenty years ago

guitarnate2000

guitarnate2000

Well-known member
20 years ago, I was a part of something special. My band Tin Henry with the direction of our manager of Dingo Gold Records, took the band to levels I would have never imagined, but always dreamed of.

I still get goosebumps when I watch this video, remember all of the awesome moments that we shared together.

A record deal, a CD charting nationally, and this video

Tin Henry


 
The last gasp of a healthy rock/metal scene, in a lot of ways. So much would change over the next ten years or so in response to piracy, then later music streaming. The changes made it a lot more feast or famine.

The demo side of things also changed a lot due to the advent of home recording. I bet you have some stories there, when things were still done the 'old way'. How'd the record deal come about?
 
Yup, IIRC you have to have roughly 150 stream listens to earn the same payout that you'd get from selling one record back in the day.

We're being ripped-off big-time now.
 
The economics of it are truly abysmal, to the point there's only money left in touring for the vast majority of musicians. I think it also has affected how bands are able to come up the ranks. A lot of the late 90s and 2000s acts came out of the club scene, where packing venues was enough to get sufficient attention from labels. So many mid-sized bands that didn't last the decade but at least put out some music and got to put their stamp on a scene. My brother-in-law discovered Disturbed that way, which seems incredible for a band that went on to sell millions of albums. I'm glad I got to witness at least some of the ways in which that side of the industry operated for decades before it was gutted.

Now, I can't think of any notable bands that came through the club scene, most of it has been online. Brings to mind that Steve Lukather comment about bands having no where to play. Sucks for the players, but the music suffers, too. Iron sharpens iron and all that.
 
We spent so much damn money on the video. 5 times what recording the cd cost

Then equipment and touring.

I think all in all may have generated 50k but we never say any of it
 
guitarnate2000 said:
We spent so much damn money on the video. 5 times what recording the cd cost

Then equipment and touring.

I think all in all may have generated 50k but we never say any of it
Click to expand...

From the label advance? I guess by this point some labels may have been asking bands to fund themselves and were only handling CD pressing and distribution.

This Tim Piece interview popped up on my feed the other week, which seems relevant here. Its broader discussion about the disappearance of the working musician is worth watching in full, but around the 20 minute mark they talk about how much music videos had siphoned off recording budgets by the turn of the millennium. It wasn't unheard of to spend a couple hundred thousand on recording the album and a million plus on the video. I'd imagine that'd be the larger scale version of the 5:1 ratio you mentioned as being your experience.

I figure it was all worth it in hindsight, though? That was the dream for kids my age growing up. Eventually Youtube came along and four treadmills later, the music industry was dead...

 
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