I don't understand why artists should sign 50/50 deals with a label and give up half of all their revenues (and ownership of their recordings?).

In the future, CD sales / labels will be a side show. It makes more sense for an artist to sign with a management company or an investor and buy / rent all the services labels did provide in the past.

Forget physicals... make money from live performance... and merchandise... old model dead.

Now where I have I been reading a lot of people saying just that recently

Interesting developments from SonyBMG but it still falls short of the mark of what a major label needs to do in the new music industry.

Ged is right that relying on royalties for a living is now a thing of the past but i guess some of us have been singing that mantra for years. Simple human nature and the advances of technology are propelling this new model.

Now if Ged and any other major label executive out there wants their companies to survive they must do more to rid the image of the Major being the enemy of artists and become more of a partner which to be fair to Ged he has come to that conclusion.

1. Set up a site/blog where artists can upload their music.

2. SHARE the income generated from Ads with the artists on the site.

3. OF course have a quality control on the site in other word pick the best tracks to feature on the site.

4. Equip bands who may not make the Label grade to go and prove the label wrong. Of course they pay for these services.

There is a great opportunity for someone to really take hold here we have seen the model in its infancy and now need more companies to enter this market. Service oriented labels is the way forward.

DJones wrote:
I don't understand why artists should sign 50/50 deals with a label and give up half of all their revenues (and ownership of their recordings?).

In the future, CD sales / labels will be a side show. It makes more sense for an artist to sign with a management company or an investor and buy / rent all the services labels did provide in the past.

Exactly as Simply Red have already done - very successfully too.

As far as I know, the model of Simply Red is totally different from the kind of 50/50 deals the majors would like to get.

Mick Hucknall owns the masters and uses the majors only for distribution, as an service for which he pays a fee.

I know exactly why artists signed 50/50 deals, it`s called "being skint at the time".
There sadly is no substitute for that in a deal arrangement.