Monday, March 8, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
THE GREATEST GUITARIST
1.
JIMI HENDRIX
I feel sad for people who have to judge Jimi Hendrix on the basis of recordings and film alone; because in the flesh he was so extraordinary. He had a kind of alchemist's ability; when he was on the stage, he changed. He physically changed. He became incredibly graceful and beautiful. It wasn't just people taking LSD, though that was going on, there's no question. But he had a power that almost sobered you up if you were on an acid trip. He was bigger than LSD.
What he played was fucking loud but also incredibly lyrical and expert. He managed to build this bridge between true blues guitar — the kind that Eric Clapton had been battling with for years and years — and modern sounds, the kind of Syd Barrett-meets-Townshend sound, the wall of screaming guitar sound that U2 popularized. He brought the two together brilliantly. And it was supported by a visual magic that obviously you won't get if you just listen to the music. He did this thing where he would play a chord, and then he would sweep his left hand through the air in a curve, and it would almost take you away from the idea that there was a guitar player here and that the music was actually coming out of the end of his fingers. And then people say, "Well, you were obviously on drugs." But I wasn't, and I wasn't drunk, either. I can just remember being taken over by this, and the images he was producing or evoking were naturally psychedelic in tone because we were surrounded by psychedelic graphics. All of the images that were around us at the time had this kind of echoey, acidy quality to them. The lighting in all the clubs was psychedelic and drippy.
He was dusty — he had cobwebs and dust all over him. He was a very unremarkable-looking guy with an old military jacket on that was pretty dirty. It looked like he'd maybe slept in it a few nights running. When he would walk toward the stage, nobody would really take much notice of him. But when he walked off, I saw him walk up to some of the most covetable women in the world. Hendrix would snap his fingers, and they followed him. Onstage, he was very erotic as well. To a man watching, he was erotic like Mick Jagger is erotic. It wasn't "You know, I'd like to take that guy in the bathroom and fuck him." It was a high form of eroticism, almost spiritual in quality. There was a sense of wanting to possess him and wanting to be a part of him, to know how he did what he did because he was so powerfully affecting. Johnny Rotten did it, Kurt Cobain did it. As a man, you wanted to be a part of Johnny Rotten's gang, you wanted to be a part of Kurt Cobain's gang.
He was shy and kind and sweet, and he was fucked up and insecure. If you were as lucky as I was, you'd spend a few hours with him after a gig and watch him descend out of this incredibly colorful, energized face. There was also something quite sad about watching him. There was a hedonism about him. Toward the end of his life, he seemed to be having fun, but maybe a little bit too much. It was happening to a lot of people, but it was sad to see it happen to him.
With Jimi, I didn't have any envy. I never had any sense that I could ever come close. I remember feeling quite sorry for Eric, who thought that he might actually be able to emulate Jimi. I also felt sorry that he should think that he needed to. Because I thought Eric was wonderful anyway. Perhaps I make assumptions here that I shouldn't, but it's true. Once — I think it was at a gig Jimi played at the Scotch of St. James [in London] — Eric and I found ourselves holding each other's hands. You know, what we were watching was so profoundly powerful.
The third or fourth time that I saw him, he was supporting the Who at the Saville Theatre. That was the first time I saw him set his guitar on fire. It didn't do very much. He poured lighter fluid over the guitar and set fire to it, and then the next day he would be playing with a guitar that was a little bit charred. In fact, I remember teasing him, saying, "That's not good enough — you need a proper flamethrower, it needs to be completely destroyed." We started getting into an argument about destroying your guitar — if you're going to do it, you have to do it properly. You have to break every little piece of the guitar, and then you have to give it away so it can't be rebuilt. Only that is proper breaking your guitar. He was looking at me like I was fucking mad.
Trying to work out how he affected me at my ground zero, the fact is that I felt like I was robbed. I felt the Who were in some ways quite a silly little group, that they were indeed my art-school installation. They were constructed ideas and images and some cool little pop songs. Some of the music was good, but a lot of what the Who did was very tongue-in-cheek, or we reserved the right to pretend it was tongue-in-cheek if the audience laughed at it. The Who would always look like we didn't really mean it, like it didn't really matter. You know, you smash a guitar, you walk off and go, "Fuck it all. It's all a load of tripe anyway." That really was the beginning of that punk consciousness. And Jimi arrived with proper music.
He made the electric guitar beautiful. It had always been dangerous, it had always been able to evoke anger. If you go right back to the beginning of it, John Lee Hooker shoving a microphone into his guitar back in the 1940s, it made his guitar sound angry, impetuous, and dangerous. The guitar players who worked through the Fifties and with the early rock artists — James Burton, who worked with Ricky Nelson and the Everly Brothers, Steve Cropper with Booker T. — these Nashville-influenced players had a steely, flick-knife sound, really kind of spiky compared to the beautiful sound of the six-string acoustic being played in the background. In those great early Elvis songs, you hear Elvis himself playing guitar on songs like "Hound Dog," and then you hear an electric guitar come in, and it's not a pleasant sound. Early blues players, too — Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Albert King — they did it to hurt your ears. Jimi made it beautiful and made it OK to make it beautiful.
2 Duane Allman
If the late Duane Allman had done nothing but session work, he would still be on this list. His contributions on lead and slide guitar to dozens of records as fine and as varied as Wilson Pickett's down-home '69 cover of "Hey Jude" and Eric Clapton's 1970 masterpiece with Derek and the Dominos, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, constitute an astounding body of work. But Allman also transformed the poetry of jamming with the Allman Brothers Band, the group he founded in 1969 with his younger brother, singer-organist Gregg. Duane applied the same black soul and rebel fire he displayed as a sideman to the Allmans' extended investigations of Muddy Waters and Blind Willie McTell covers and to his psychedelic-jazz interplay with second guitarist Dickey Betts in live showpieces such as "Whipping Post." Although Duane and Gregg had played in bands together since 1960, Duane did not learn to play slide until shortly before the start of the Allmans. In his only Rolling Stone interview, in early' 71, Duane said that the first song he tried to conquer was McTell's "Statesboro Blues." Allman's blastoff licks in the recording that opens his band's third album, At Fillmore East, show how far and fast he had come — and leave you wondering how much further he could have gone. In October 1971, eight months after the Fillmore East gigs, Allman died in a motorcycle accident in the band's home base of Macon, Georgia.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Future Of Music
Music Industry - Change or Die
Sep 14
Posted in File Sharing / P2P, Music Copyright / Legal, Music Industry
A friend just sent over this post on how the newly elected Chairman of the Entertainment Retailers Association, said that illegal P2P filesharing is the greatest challenge facing entertainment retailers and urged members to lobby Government for a crackdown on a problem he said “is bleeding our industry dry”.
Speaking at the association’s annual general meeting, Quirk said, “Too often the debate over illegal filesharing is portrayed as an ideological battle, but for us this is a commercial matter. Illegal filesharing is damaging our businesses, both physical and digital, on a daily basis, and the Government needs to tackle it swiftly and decisively in order to protect jobs, businesses and investment.
“First the filesharers targeted the music business and the Government did nothing. Now the filesharers have come again for TV and movies. Unless action is taken the filesharers will come for computer games, books, in fact anything which can be digitised and what will be at stake will be not just the entertainment industry but huge swathes of the UK economy. We need action now.”
Read more of this insanity here at Mi2N
Well now…
I was visiting with my Dad last weekend and thought of an interesting parallel between digital music and encyclopedias.
When I was a kid, my father had a summer job going door to door selling Comptons Encyclopedias. He would carry a couple of these huge books under his arms and try and get the husband or wife to buy the complete Comptons collection for the kids. This was big business and my dad made a healthy living during the summer.
Over the years the encyclopedia book business began to dry up. To start it all off, Comptons put their entire encyclopedia library on a CD-ROM and sold it via a new company they formed, called Comptons New Media. They put the CD-ROM in a chipboard box and sold it at Comp-USA, Software Etc and other retailers for $200-$300. It became big business for a while in the early 1990’s, and Comptons New Media flourished and was eventually purchased by the Tribune Co for a lot of dough.
It didn’t take long before some hackers cracked the CD-ROM and then pirated versions of the whole enchilada began making their way into stores and online outlets. By now, of course, the multi-volume Comptons Encyclopedia Book business had gone the way of the dinosaur, and countless pavement pounding salespeople were no longer going door to door selling encyclopedias - and the entire book business basically went away. Gone in a matter of a few years. I think they still sell some to schools somewhere.
The same thing soon happened to Comptons New Media as digital competitors emerged, from Microsoft “Encarta” and others, and soon price competition and the internet gave way to this information moving online for free.
Now we have something called “Wikipedia”.
–
The information contained in the encyclopedias is still being researched and published and edited by now, tens of thousands of people who put it online in a living, dynamic format. By and large, no one is getting directly paid to do this work, yet no-one can dispute the fact that society in general is benefiting from Wikipedia and other community-based information resources. You might even notice that there is a lot more information being produced and updated and cross referenced than ever before. This is all without the infrastructure of the past (ie Comptons) being in-place anymore, and almost no money changing hands.
Just like Comptons, the record industry digitized all of its assets and put the entire thing out there for the public to enjoy. And just like Comptons the record industry in now suffering from price erosion, shifting formats and piracy. They can try and hang in there and bash the problem away with legislation, or they could seriously consider other methods of delivery and renumeration, or they could sell off their remaining assets and shut down. No matter what, the game they have played is over, caput. Time to face the music and change.
There are no guarantees in business that things will remain the same. Indeed, the only real constant is change and businesses that try and hold onto the past will be crushed by their own weight and failure to adapt, or in some cases, to just shut down. Nothing is forever except change. People should stop complaining about it and start working on creating a future that benefits us all.
Do I know exactly what that future is going to be? Of course not. I wish I could say with certainty but I can’t - for now. But I think it will look a lot more like wikipedia than comptons encyclopedia sets.
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Next Generation Leadership in Music
Sep 01
Posted in Music Industry
A new study, released by the US Department of Education, found that many types of online education for a college degree are better at raising student achievement than face-to-face teaching is.
That’s quite a seal of approval.
The big advantage in digital learning is the “time on task,” or flexibility for a student to absorb the content of a subject. Once students are given “control of their interactions,” they can set their own pace. They often study longer or visualize a problem differently. Professors are also forced to design better instructional techniques by the very nature of the technology.
The most effective learning occurs when a school combines e-learning with classroom teaching. Yet for many students, such as stay-at-home parents or those with day jobs or those with low income, online learning is all they can afford in time or money.
The Education Department is making plans to create free, online courses for the nation’s 1,200 community colleges – which teach nearly half of undergrads – to make it easier for students to learn basic skills for jobs. The courses would be offered as part of a “national skills college” managed by the department.
The rapid rise of e-learning may finally help burst the bubble in rising tuition costs, which now average more than $25,000 a year for a degree from a private bricks-and-mortar institution.
Someday the best college teachers in the country won’t need to be confined to one institution but will find their lectures and course materials spread to millions of students at low cost via the Internet. That would be a huge, historic leap in productivity for the education industry.
The US needs more competitive workers with advanced degrees, a goal set by President Obama. In the past decade, the number of university students worldwide is up by nearly half to 153 million. Any country that makes learning more accessible and less expensive through cutting-edge cybertechnology – say, by putting textbooks on devices such as the Kindle – will have a leg up in the global knowledge economy.
Read more from CS Monitor.
Check out Berklee’s Online Music School
3 Comments | Email This Post | Permalink
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Is Downloading Music Sustainable and Green?
Sep 01
Posted in Music Formats, Music Industry, Music Marketing, The Future
A new study by research teams from Carnegie Mellon University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Stanford University verifies that downloading music cuts energy consumption and CO2 emissions significantly in comparison to shopping at your local music store.
The study shows that purchasing digital music downloads results in a 40-80 percent reduction in energy use and carbon emissions compared to distributing CDs. The study took into consideration the energy used to download the files over the Internet. It compared 4 different ways of obtaining and listening to music.
The least energy intensive way of acquiring music is to download it and listen to it digitally.
Downloading and burning a CD wastes more energy, purchasing a CD online wastes even more energy, and finally purchasing a CD at a retail store wastes the most energy. And, if you have to drive to the store to buy music in person, you waste even more energy.
Now the study does not take into account the environmental impact of manufacturing the computers, routers and digital infrastructure that makes this all happen in the first place, but assuming that cost is already sunk, downloading is the “greener” way to acquire music.
So it looks like downloading music is better for the environment than any other means of acquisition to date. Now if we can only find a way to properly monetize that activity across the board, we all win, the artists, the infrastructure and the environment. Additional motivation for the ultimate solution of a music ecosystem that flows like water.
Sep 14
Posted in File Sharing / P2P, Music Copyright / Legal, Music Industry
A friend just sent over this post on how the newly elected Chairman of the Entertainment Retailers Association, said that illegal P2P filesharing is the greatest challenge facing entertainment retailers and urged members to lobby Government for a crackdown on a problem he said “is bleeding our industry dry”.
Speaking at the association’s annual general meeting, Quirk said, “Too often the debate over illegal filesharing is portrayed as an ideological battle, but for us this is a commercial matter. Illegal filesharing is damaging our businesses, both physical and digital, on a daily basis, and the Government needs to tackle it swiftly and decisively in order to protect jobs, businesses and investment.
“First the filesharers targeted the music business and the Government did nothing. Now the filesharers have come again for TV and movies. Unless action is taken the filesharers will come for computer games, books, in fact anything which can be digitised and what will be at stake will be not just the entertainment industry but huge swathes of the UK economy. We need action now.”
Read more of this insanity here at Mi2N
Well now…
I was visiting with my Dad last weekend and thought of an interesting parallel between digital music and encyclopedias.
When I was a kid, my father had a summer job going door to door selling Comptons Encyclopedias. He would carry a couple of these huge books under his arms and try and get the husband or wife to buy the complete Comptons collection for the kids. This was big business and my dad made a healthy living during the summer.
Over the years the encyclopedia book business began to dry up. To start it all off, Comptons put their entire encyclopedia library on a CD-ROM and sold it via a new company they formed, called Comptons New Media. They put the CD-ROM in a chipboard box and sold it at Comp-USA, Software Etc and other retailers for $200-$300. It became big business for a while in the early 1990’s, and Comptons New Media flourished and was eventually purchased by the Tribune Co for a lot of dough.
It didn’t take long before some hackers cracked the CD-ROM and then pirated versions of the whole enchilada began making their way into stores and online outlets. By now, of course, the multi-volume Comptons Encyclopedia Book business had gone the way of the dinosaur, and countless pavement pounding salespeople were no longer going door to door selling encyclopedias - and the entire book business basically went away. Gone in a matter of a few years. I think they still sell some to schools somewhere.
The same thing soon happened to Comptons New Media as digital competitors emerged, from Microsoft “Encarta” and others, and soon price competition and the internet gave way to this information moving online for free.
Now we have something called “Wikipedia”.
–
The information contained in the encyclopedias is still being researched and published and edited by now, tens of thousands of people who put it online in a living, dynamic format. By and large, no one is getting directly paid to do this work, yet no-one can dispute the fact that society in general is benefiting from Wikipedia and other community-based information resources. You might even notice that there is a lot more information being produced and updated and cross referenced than ever before. This is all without the infrastructure of the past (ie Comptons) being in-place anymore, and almost no money changing hands.
Just like Comptons, the record industry digitized all of its assets and put the entire thing out there for the public to enjoy. And just like Comptons the record industry in now suffering from price erosion, shifting formats and piracy. They can try and hang in there and bash the problem away with legislation, or they could seriously consider other methods of delivery and renumeration, or they could sell off their remaining assets and shut down. No matter what, the game they have played is over, caput. Time to face the music and change.
There are no guarantees in business that things will remain the same. Indeed, the only real constant is change and businesses that try and hold onto the past will be crushed by their own weight and failure to adapt, or in some cases, to just shut down. Nothing is forever except change. People should stop complaining about it and start working on creating a future that benefits us all.
Do I know exactly what that future is going to be? Of course not. I wish I could say with certainty but I can’t - for now. But I think it will look a lot more like wikipedia than comptons encyclopedia sets.
4 Comments | Email This Post | Permalink
Related Posts
No Related Posts
Next Generation Leadership in Music
Sep 01
Posted in Music Industry
A new study, released by the US Department of Education, found that many types of online education for a college degree are better at raising student achievement than face-to-face teaching is.
That’s quite a seal of approval.
The big advantage in digital learning is the “time on task,” or flexibility for a student to absorb the content of a subject. Once students are given “control of their interactions,” they can set their own pace. They often study longer or visualize a problem differently. Professors are also forced to design better instructional techniques by the very nature of the technology.
The most effective learning occurs when a school combines e-learning with classroom teaching. Yet for many students, such as stay-at-home parents or those with day jobs or those with low income, online learning is all they can afford in time or money.
The Education Department is making plans to create free, online courses for the nation’s 1,200 community colleges – which teach nearly half of undergrads – to make it easier for students to learn basic skills for jobs. The courses would be offered as part of a “national skills college” managed by the department.
The rapid rise of e-learning may finally help burst the bubble in rising tuition costs, which now average more than $25,000 a year for a degree from a private bricks-and-mortar institution.
Someday the best college teachers in the country won’t need to be confined to one institution but will find their lectures and course materials spread to millions of students at low cost via the Internet. That would be a huge, historic leap in productivity for the education industry.
The US needs more competitive workers with advanced degrees, a goal set by President Obama. In the past decade, the number of university students worldwide is up by nearly half to 153 million. Any country that makes learning more accessible and less expensive through cutting-edge cybertechnology – say, by putting textbooks on devices such as the Kindle – will have a leg up in the global knowledge economy.
Read more from CS Monitor.
Check out Berklee’s Online Music School
3 Comments | Email This Post | Permalink
Related Posts
No Related Posts
Is Downloading Music Sustainable and Green?
Sep 01
Posted in Music Formats, Music Industry, Music Marketing, The Future
A new study by research teams from Carnegie Mellon University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Stanford University verifies that downloading music cuts energy consumption and CO2 emissions significantly in comparison to shopping at your local music store.
The study shows that purchasing digital music downloads results in a 40-80 percent reduction in energy use and carbon emissions compared to distributing CDs. The study took into consideration the energy used to download the files over the Internet. It compared 4 different ways of obtaining and listening to music.
The least energy intensive way of acquiring music is to download it and listen to it digitally.
Downloading and burning a CD wastes more energy, purchasing a CD online wastes even more energy, and finally purchasing a CD at a retail store wastes the most energy. And, if you have to drive to the store to buy music in person, you waste even more energy.
Now the study does not take into account the environmental impact of manufacturing the computers, routers and digital infrastructure that makes this all happen in the first place, but assuming that cost is already sunk, downloading is the “greener” way to acquire music.
So it looks like downloading music is better for the environment than any other means of acquisition to date. Now if we can only find a way to properly monetize that activity across the board, we all win, the artists, the infrastructure and the environment. Additional motivation for the ultimate solution of a music ecosystem that flows like water.
Business on music industry
The music industry is made up of various players, including individuals, companies, unions, not-for-profit associations, rights collectives, and other bodies. Professional musicians, including band leaders, rhythm section members, musical ensembles, vocalists, conductors, composers/arrangers, and sound engineers create sound recordings of music or perform live in venues ranging from small clubs to stadiums. Occasionally professional musicians negotiate their wages, contractual conditions, and other conditions of work through Musicians' Unions or other guilds. Composers and songwriters write the music and lyrics to songs and other musical works, which are sold in print form as sheet music or scores by music publishers. Composers and performers get part of their income from writers' copyright collectives and performance rights organization such as the ASCAP and BMI (or MCPS and PRS respectively for the UK). These societies and collectives ensure that composers and performers are compensated when their works are used on the radio or TV or in films. When musicians and singers make a CD or DVD, the creative process is often coordinated by a record producer, whose role in the recording may range from suggesting songs and backing musicians to having a direct hands-on role in the studio, coaching singers, giving advice to session musicians on playing styles, and working with the senior sound engineer to shape the recorded sound through effects and mixing.
Some professional musicians, bands, and singers are signed with record labels, which are companies that finance the recording process in return for part or full share of the rights to the recording. Record label companies manage brands and trademarks in the course of marketing the recordings, and they can also oversee the production of videos for broadcast or retail sale. Labels may comprise a record group — one or more label companies, plus ancillary businesses such as manufacturers and distributors. A record group may be, in turn, part of a music group which includes music publishers. Publishers represent the rights in the compositions — the music as written, rather than as recorded — and are traditionally separate entities from the record label companies. The publisher of the composition for each recording may or may not be part of the record label's music group; many publishers are wholly independent and are owned by the artists themselves.
Record labels that are not part of or under the control of the "Big Four" music groups are generally considered to be independent or "indie" labels, even if they are part of large, well-financed corporations with complex structures. Some music critics prefer to use the term indie label to refer to only those independent labels that adhere to criteria of corporate structure and size, and some consider an indie label to be almost any label that releases non-mainstream music, regardless of its corporate structure.
Record labels may use an "A&R" (Artists and Repertoire) manager to not just seek out bands & singers to sign, but to also help develop the performing style of those already signed to the label. A&R managers may organize shared tours with similar bands or find playing opportunities for the label's groups which will broaden their musical experience. For example, an A&R manager may decide to send an emerging young singer-songwriter with little live playing experience on a major tour with an established electric folk rock act from the same label, so that this person will gain more confidence.
A record distributor is a company that works with record labels to promote and distribute sound recordings. Once a CD is recorded, record distribution companies organize the shipping of the CDs to music stores and department stores.
When CDs sell in stores or on websites such as the iTunes Store, part of the money obtained by the record label for the sales may be paid to the performers in the form of royalties. Of the recordings which generate substantial revenues for the labels, most do so only for a short period after they are released, after which the song becomes part of the label's "back catalogue" or library. A much smaller number of recordings have become "classics", with longstanding popularity, such as CDs by the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. These albums have continued to generate revenue for the labels and often, in turn, royalties for artists, long after their original release.
Successful artists may hire a number of people from other fields to assist them with their career. The band manager oversees all aspects of an artist's career in exchange for a percentage of the artist's income. An entertainment lawyer assists them with the details of their contracts with record companies and other deals. A business manager handles financial transactions, taxes and bookkeeping. A booking agency represents the artist to promoters, makes deals and books performances. A travel agent makes travel arrangements. A road crew is a semi-permanent touring organization that travels with the artist. This is headed by a tour manager and includes staff to move equipment on and off-stage, drive tour buses or vans, and do stage lighting, live sound reinforcement and musical instrument tuning and maintenance. The tour manager's tasks can vary widely depending on the type of tour and where the group is playing. The tour manager's typical tasks of ensuring that hotel, restaurant and travel arrangements are confirmed may expand into other tasks, if the venue where the band is playing does not have certain equipment. For example, if the venue lacks a grand piano or Hammond organ that the band needs for the show, the tour manager will be responsible for finding a rental instrument for the show and having it moved onstage. Or, if a band member needs an emergency instrument repair, the tour manager and/or the guitar tech will help to find a repair person or replacement instrument. The most high-profile celebrity performers may also have personal assistants, a chef, and bodyguards. Singers may hire a vocal coach to give them suggestions on how to take care of their voice or develop their singing range.
Some professional musicians, bands, and singers are signed with record labels, which are companies that finance the recording process in return for part or full share of the rights to the recording. Record label companies manage brands and trademarks in the course of marketing the recordings, and they can also oversee the production of videos for broadcast or retail sale. Labels may comprise a record group — one or more label companies, plus ancillary businesses such as manufacturers and distributors. A record group may be, in turn, part of a music group which includes music publishers. Publishers represent the rights in the compositions — the music as written, rather than as recorded — and are traditionally separate entities from the record label companies. The publisher of the composition for each recording may or may not be part of the record label's music group; many publishers are wholly independent and are owned by the artists themselves.
Record labels that are not part of or under the control of the "Big Four" music groups are generally considered to be independent or "indie" labels, even if they are part of large, well-financed corporations with complex structures. Some music critics prefer to use the term indie label to refer to only those independent labels that adhere to criteria of corporate structure and size, and some consider an indie label to be almost any label that releases non-mainstream music, regardless of its corporate structure.
Record labels may use an "A&R" (Artists and Repertoire) manager to not just seek out bands & singers to sign, but to also help develop the performing style of those already signed to the label. A&R managers may organize shared tours with similar bands or find playing opportunities for the label's groups which will broaden their musical experience. For example, an A&R manager may decide to send an emerging young singer-songwriter with little live playing experience on a major tour with an established electric folk rock act from the same label, so that this person will gain more confidence.
A record distributor is a company that works with record labels to promote and distribute sound recordings. Once a CD is recorded, record distribution companies organize the shipping of the CDs to music stores and department stores.
When CDs sell in stores or on websites such as the iTunes Store, part of the money obtained by the record label for the sales may be paid to the performers in the form of royalties. Of the recordings which generate substantial revenues for the labels, most do so only for a short period after they are released, after which the song becomes part of the label's "back catalogue" or library. A much smaller number of recordings have become "classics", with longstanding popularity, such as CDs by the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. These albums have continued to generate revenue for the labels and often, in turn, royalties for artists, long after their original release.
Successful artists may hire a number of people from other fields to assist them with their career. The band manager oversees all aspects of an artist's career in exchange for a percentage of the artist's income. An entertainment lawyer assists them with the details of their contracts with record companies and other deals. A business manager handles financial transactions, taxes and bookkeeping. A booking agency represents the artist to promoters, makes deals and books performances. A travel agent makes travel arrangements. A road crew is a semi-permanent touring organization that travels with the artist. This is headed by a tour manager and includes staff to move equipment on and off-stage, drive tour buses or vans, and do stage lighting, live sound reinforcement and musical instrument tuning and maintenance. The tour manager's tasks can vary widely depending on the type of tour and where the group is playing. The tour manager's typical tasks of ensuring that hotel, restaurant and travel arrangements are confirmed may expand into other tasks, if the venue where the band is playing does not have certain equipment. For example, if the venue lacks a grand piano or Hammond organ that the band needs for the show, the tour manager will be responsible for finding a rental instrument for the show and having it moved onstage. Or, if a band member needs an emergency instrument repair, the tour manager and/or the guitar tech will help to find a repair person or replacement instrument. The most high-profile celebrity performers may also have personal assistants, a chef, and bodyguards. Singers may hire a vocal coach to give them suggestions on how to take care of their voice or develop their singing range.
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