Matt Connarton Unleashed: Limp Bizkit vs. UMG

0:00 Speaker 1: You know, we do talk.

0:01 Speaker 2: We know a lot of people in the industry listen to the show in the music industry, and we like to like to talk about things going on in the music industry. Unfortunately, a lot of what does go on in the music industry that is particularly fascinating is it often has to do with people suing each other.

0:17 Speaker 1: You know, I had put way back, remember when we did the segment.

0:21 Speaker 2: About Don Henley suing someone, because Don Henley is very litigious, that segment I had, I had clipped it and put it up on YouTube.

0:33 Speaker 1: And that is by far.

0:35 Speaker 2: The most listened to segment that we've ever done on the show. That still gets views on the YouTube, uh, on our on our YouTube channel.

0:44 Speaker 1: But what is what has been happening?

0:46 Speaker 2: So there's a little bit of new information here on this particular subject. You know, the band Limp Biscuit, they were they first got very big in the nineties and you know, they've had a resurgence and they do very well when they tour. And that that song was that song Dad Vibes, Uh maybe a year ago, maybe maybe longer, maybe two years ago now that I really like it was kind of kind of a comeback single. Maybe a year and a half ago, but yeah, you know I was. I was kind of a fan of Limp Biscuit. Uh back in the day too.

1:19 Speaker 2: I was in a band called I was in a band called the Jinx and wait was it in the Jinkster in My Life Crisis. Our singer Rhino Ryan Pope, he would well. At one point we were covering the song break Stuff, and I wasn't a big fan of doing covers in the bands I was in because I felt that our originals were strong enough we didn't need to do a lot of covers. But they talked the guys talked me into doing break Stuff and the breakdown in that song where Fred Durst gets really intense and like really angry.

1:53 Speaker 2: Uh, Ryan would like would like turn red. He would get so into it and get so into that part of the song. It was fun anyway. So part of why this is so fascinating to me is this is not an uncommon tale. What we're going to talk about. If you don't know about about this, Limp Biscuit is suing their record label UMG Universal Music Group for two hundred million dollars in unpaid royalties. Now artists having to sue their record label. For unpaid royalties is not in and of itself a new story, but for two hundred million dollars is pretty staggering because what has happened is, according to Fred Durst and his representation, Universal Music Group never paid Lympiscuit anything after selling millions and millions and millions of albums.

2:53 Speaker 3: But they're claiming that's not true.

2:56 Speaker 1: UMG, Well of course they are.

2:58 Speaker 4: UMG says they Paidlympus get one point zero three million dollars in back royalties in August of twenty twenty four. Yes, after uh after wait, after the fact, yeah, yeah, after backwards.

3:10 Speaker 2: After after fred Durst spoke up and said, hey, I think you guys owe us some money. Yeah, so they finally, But olymp Biscuit is alleging they owe they owe them two hundred million or or a lower number plus damages however that works out.

3:26 Speaker 1: Now. Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon tale. Though.

3:32 Speaker 2: There's a there's a term I learned recently, spaghetti accounting, and it's a way that these big labels and you know, and you even hear stories with smaller labels, independent labels, but hopefully a lot less because you don't you don't want to hear those stories because, uh, those stories are unpleasant, you know, because you know, especially in a venue like this, we always advocate for artists.

3:57 Speaker 1: But but it's not.

4:00 Speaker 2: Unusual for U record labels and other entities within the music industry to use some creative accounting, shall we say, or spaghetti accounting.

4:10 Speaker 1: That's a term that I just learned recently. And I learned that term for me. Yeah, oh, spaghetti accounting.

4:15 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean I like spaghetti, but I don't think I'm a fan of spaghetti accounting.

4:19 Speaker 3: Must accounting when they get messy.

4:23 Speaker 2: I think that's the idea, so that way it's hard to figure out, uh, where all.

4:27 Speaker 1: That money went. I learned that term from.

4:31 Speaker 2: There's a YouTuber that I really like, uh who we've talked about taught music attorney and or law tuber. That's another term I learned recently, which is a a lawyer who youtubes does youtubing.

4:44 Speaker 1: What is it law tuber?

4:46 Speaker 3: Law tuber.

4:47 Speaker 1: Yes, there's a lot of law tubers. They're they're lawyers who do.

4:50 Speaker 3: We have to keep making up new works, like.

4:52 Speaker 2: Like the Might's Touched that, like the Might's Touch Network, which we're fans of, you know, they're law tubers. So yes, there's always new term. Young people are always coming up with new terms. Anyway, what was the one that I knew?

5:05 Speaker 1: There was a term that I.

5:06 Speaker 2: Knew that that DJ Reckless didn't know, and I was like, how do I know this?

5:11 Speaker 1: And you don't.

5:12 Speaker 3: Remember what it was?

5:14 Speaker 4: Oh?

5:14 Speaker 2: It was thought th h O T And I'm not gonna say and I'm not gonna say on the air what it means.

5:19 Speaker 1: But I was stunned.

5:22 Speaker 3: I don't even remember.

5:25 Speaker 2: I'll tell you off, but I was stunned that he that he didn't know what that meant and I did. But anyway, but it's not it's not a nice uh it's not a nice term.

5:33 Speaker 1: But and it's not yeah yeah, right, right exactly.

5:41 Speaker 4: But uh U n G at this point is trying to say this whole thing should be thrown out because.

5:46 Speaker 3: They're making it up. Right, Oh, of course making this up, that's what they're saying.

5:51 Speaker 2: Of course, now what they also claim, So people who don't know how this works with major labels, when a major label signs you, they give you When they sign you and they're they're gonna release your album, they give you they give you an advance on that album. So say, for example, we'll use nice, big round numbers because I'm not good at math, so it makes it easier for me, but it also makes it easier to explain these concepts for people who don't know how this works. So because I think people outside of the industry have this idea that a record label signs you and they give you tons of money up front, and now you're suddenly a millionaire and you're being flown out to LA and you're put up in the Playboy Mansion or something, and and you're surrounded by supermodels all day and everything.

6:43 Speaker 2: I think, at least I think there was a time when that was the general perception that people had about how this this music industry works.

6:50 Speaker 1: And it's not.

6:53 Speaker 2: The money that you're giving up front is actually an advance so they give you. So say they give you a million dollar advance, and again I'm using big round numbers. But let's say they give you a million dollar advance that's to make your album. So you're going to spend that money that's not like your money to just put into your bank account. And now you're a millionaire and you get to go make your album. But now you're a millionaire because you're about to be famous or you're already becoming famous.

7:21 Speaker 2: It doesn't work that way. So that's actually an advance on your earnings. So they're giving you that money, they're investing that money in you, giving you that money upfront for you to go and spend on making your album. Now, what some artists might do in a situation like that, they get that million dollar advance, but they're only going to spend a half a million making their album, you know, So there are ways to do that. Tom Scholz from Boston famously or infamously did something like that where the label advanced them something like

8:02 Speaker 2: the label advanced some some something like fifty grand and he made the record for fifteen hundred dollars at home, in his home studio or something like that.

8:10 Speaker 3: That's awesome.

8:11 Speaker 1: Yeah, so so so that.

8:14 Speaker 2: That that does happen. But but again it's not they're not paying you this money to keep. It's an advance, and advance is recooped. So this term recoupment is where people can get tripped up. So they're gonna get that money back, and the way they're gonna get that money back is you make the album they release the album, they do all the promotion and everything, but they're gonna recoup that money they advanced to you that's not yours to keep and you which means you don't get anything from sales anything until that money is completely paid back.

8:51 Speaker 2: So you're not getting a check from the label until all of that advance money has been recouped by the label. So Limp Biscuit So according to UMG, and again they've they've made additional statements now in recent days. But according to UMG, back when this was first filed, their claim was, well, no, we we hadn't paid Limp Biscuit anything because they hadn't, you know, they hadn't settled the recoupment yet. Now this is this is where it really gets nuts. And again, and I have an article in front of me, and I know you have something as well.

9:30 Speaker 2: I have something from Billboard that'll explain this in a little bit more detail. But right now I'm just speaking extemporaneously about what I know about this so far, because I've been following it pretty closely. Feel I'm fascinated by this kind of thing. So what what what happened at one point was so either Fred Durst or representatives of Fred Durst's management or attorneys whomever, probably all of them at various points.

9:54 Speaker 1: Tried to sign in. It's like a record label, a big company like UMG.

10:00 Speaker 3: They will.

10:03 Speaker 2: Create a portal like you know how for anything financial, right, you know, whether a bank account or some sort of service.

10:11 Speaker 1: You know, you have a portal that you log into and you.

10:13 Speaker 2: Can see all your numbers and see what your bank balance is and do all this stuff. Right, So the record label gives you, as an artist, a portal to sign into. But I guess there was one point where uh, Olympus gets this sounds so we're talking about this huge, you know, multimillion dollar company here, right, But they create a portal and they give and so the artist actually gets, you know, a username and password basically to sign into their portal where they can look at all their stuff. The idea being, you know, you can see what your recoupment balance is, how much is left on your recoupment, what royalties are owed to you.

10:55 Speaker 2: You know, you can compare these numbers. And I guess Limpis gets portal wasn't work correctly or hadn't been updated or something.

11:02 Speaker 3: Just weird stuff. Well, we're talking about.

11:05 Speaker 2: A multimillion dollar company here, right, UMG is a huge company, but they can't get the little things right to even make it so that limp Biscuit as a business entity can see what's going on with their account. And but the suspicion is, well that's intentional. Of course, they make it hard because they're trying to hide things. They're trying to hide things from you. They don't want you to see what the real numbers are.

11:33 Speaker 1: Longer.

11:34 Speaker 4: And the other side of that too, that you forget about, is that the longer that UMG has the money in their bank account, the more money it's making for them, right, and exactly exactly. Insurance companies do the same thing. The longer it takes they have to pay out, the more money they make.

11:51 Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, of course it's yeah, it's a dirty business.

11:57 Speaker 4: So makes you wonder if there wouldn't be some way to prevent that, like could there be some way to protect artists in law that precludes them from being able to hould onto money like that?

12:12 Speaker 2: Move that MinC up a little bit, would you yere? Just so I'm not loud enough? Yeah, there you go.

12:18 Speaker 3: This is something that we don't normally experience.

12:20 Speaker 1: There you go.

12:22 Speaker 2: But uh yeah, and that so that one million dollars, it was roughly one million that they finally paid Limp Biscuit in September of this year of this year, twenty twenty four, after they started making noise about hey, we haven't been paid anything. That that they they claim that the reason that wasn't paid, it should have been paid, but the reason that wasn't was because of a software error. So because of a software error that that one million dollars just sat there and hadn't gone to the band yet again, Universal Music Group, this enormous, multimillion dollar company.

13:00 Speaker 2: But you know, like it's it's hard. I mean, this will will all be a.

13:05 Speaker 3: Blaming game too.

13:06 Speaker 4: It's a blaming game because UMG is saying, oh no, that this is your management's fault, that your your big manager wasn't like keeping track of things.

13:17 Speaker 3: It's not us, because.

13:21 Speaker 4: They're saying that they can show for over a year they were having good communications with this guy Paul, who's in charge of the manager, but the business manager, and that they were keeping in contact with him, and it's all about them, not you know, it's interesting how they try to like go, oh, look over here, your guy wasn't keeping track of things, so never mind us.

13:46 Speaker 3: Like, look over, it's your guy's fault.

13:48 Speaker 4: He didn't keep track of things, so it's not our fault for not paying you. You know, that's like so twisted that that's what they walk in with and that's actually considered a possibility.

14:00 Speaker 3: How does that even get entertained?

14:01 Speaker 4: Yeah, oh, your guy wasn't paying attention, so we got away with keeping more money.

14:05 Speaker 3: So hahaha.

14:07 Speaker 1: This seems wrong.

14:09 Speaker 4: Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but that's pretty much what it sounds like they're trying to indicate with me, is we didn't conceal anything.

14:16 Speaker 3: You guys just.

14:16 Speaker 1: Didn't keep track of it, right right. This is and sometimes it's not always necessarily malfeasance. Sometimes somebody just signs.

14:27 Speaker 2: A bad deal or or people get in over their heads they don't understand how this all works. Remember when TLC, this is probably one of the greatest examples. When TLC. You know that first album, Crazy Sexy Cool was huge. It sold a gazillion copies, right, well, I think it was triple platinum, but it seems like it was because CLC was everywhere. It seems like the album was was. Uh, you know, I think he sold three million, but they were broke with a triple plat an album. Because of the way the contract was structured and the recruitment, they weren't getting any royalties and they and they were very public about it, and they got their deal renegotiated because because they were very public about it, like they were, they were not shy about talking about what was going on.

15:19 Speaker 2: But they're you know, they're at the Grammys, you know, getting an award for Best New Album or whatever it was, and they're like and they're like, yeah, we we have no money and we've sold three million copies of our album and we're broke. And and that's that's one of the most well publicized examples because I think because they were so public about it, because a lot of times too, you learn about these things later on because at the time that it's happening to an artist, they don't necessarily want to go public about it because they don't want, you know, they don't want to deal with the embarrassment of it.

15:56 Speaker 2: You know, Oh, I got I kind of got screwed here or whatever. My favorite band. Of course, as longtime listeners know, Kiss they actually sued PolyGram. They were on PolyGram. This was in the early eighties, very early eighties. This was like when they were making the transition from makeup to non makeup, and they sued PolyGram for back royalties and they got a settlement over it, although it was kind of well, it was kind of small, but they did get something from it. But we should look at So.

16:33 Speaker 4: The other thing about this, though, this isn't just limp biscuit. And I didn't even realize this until looking back on the notes now that there's another organization that apparently owes some of this, owns some of the copyright, the Flawless Records. It's called Yeah, so apparently that's his imprint, by the way, So what do you mean his imprint?

16:51 Speaker 2: So there was this thing it started happening in the nineties where some artists would if they were on a label, the label would give the art if they were interested in developing other artists, they would give them almost like a sub label, oh, which is part of the bigger label, and they would call that an imprint. So Flawless Records was Fred Durst's imprint, and he actually did break a couple of bands on his imprint label.

17:18 Speaker 4: Well, it's just interesting that you noted they gave limp Biscuit a million. Well, they gave another two million the flawless records.

17:27 Speaker 3: But we don't really owe you any money. It's made up.

17:29 Speaker 4: They're claiming you've made this up, but we're dishing out over three million more dollars. Ooh, sorry, you know, just some money, but we didn't really do anything.

17:39 Speaker 1: It's faked spaghetti accounting.

17:41 Speaker 3: How the heck does that work in law? Though?

17:43 Speaker 4: How do you say this is all made up? And then you're paying money out the other side. But it's like it's like I'm guilty, but I'm not guilty.

17:53 Speaker 2: Right, Well, I think probably they would say flawless records. I mean that's a separate account from the olymp Biscuit account.

18:02 Speaker 1: In fact, flawless records.

18:04 Speaker 2: Probably they probably have a separate user name and password for their their their big fancy portal.

18:12 Speaker 3: Two factor identification.

18:14 Speaker 1: Yes, it's probably very, very up to date.

18:17 Speaker 3: I'm sure it operates much like insurance portals.

18:19 Speaker 4: You know. It's like you want to appeal that. Okay, get a pen and paper. Let's sit down and write an old fashioned letter. Nothing electronic about this.

18:28 Speaker 1: Yeah, send us a certified letter.

18:30 Speaker 3: Meanwhile, give us your money.

18:31 Speaker 1: Maybe maybe you'll get your royalties.

18:33 Speaker 3: You don't even have to.

18:34 Speaker 4: Put your card in, just skin it. I'll take your money very easily. Yeah, but not the other way around.

18:41 Speaker 1: So this is the update.

18:42 Speaker 2: This is from Billboard dot com. UMG hits back at Olympus guts two hundred million dollar lawsuit, calls hidden royalty accusations fiction. It says here UMG is firing back at a lawsuit from Olympus at front Manfred Durst, claiming the label owes the band more than two hundred million dollars, calling the allegation's fiction, and demanding they be thrown out of court. The blockbuster lawsuit, filed last month in LA federal court, claimed that Durst had not seen a diamond royalties over the decades, and that hundreds of other artists may have been treated similarly under systemic and fraudulent policies.

19:19 Speaker 2: But in UMG's first response, this is UMG's they're finally responding to this officially after several months, well a couple months. In their first response on Friday, attorneys for the label said the lawsuit must be dismissed immediately because it is based on a fallacy.

19:37 Speaker 1: Writers. Rolin A.

19:39 Speaker 2: Ransom, an attorney with the law firm Sidley Austen who represents UMG in the suit, said, quote, Plaintiff's entire narrative that UMG tried to conceal royalties is a fiction. Plaintiff's complaint fails as a matter of law and should be dismissed with prejudice unquote. The key problem with Durst's claims, according to UMG these attorneys, it's that documents included in his own lawsuit eviscerate his allegations. They specifically cite emails in which a UMG exec appears to have reached out to get royalties flowing, but was rebuffed by the band's own business manager.

20:15 Speaker 1: Yeah.

20:16 Speaker 2: I remember reading that part too, and that doesn't make sense, like why would that even happen? But that's that's what they're claiming now. The company also said in Friday's filing, quote, over a year before plaintiff's discovery of allegedly concealed royalties, UMG affirmatively and unilaterally reached out to Olympis Gut's representative so that it could begin making royalty payments to the band, and was instead informed by him that all members of Olympis Gut but one, including plaintiff Durst, had assigned their royalty shares to others and were therefore not entitled any royalty payments from UMG unquote.

20:57 Speaker 3: So it's not that I owe you money. It's that or not. I don't. You don't actually have the right to assume me. So even the way all your.

21:04 Speaker 1: Money, I'm not going to give it to you, I don't know, don't.

21:07 Speaker 3: Almost, I don't know. That's what it feels like. But you were right.

21:10 Speaker 4: There's another notation I just found on Music Business World that it's also involving other artists. Yeah, from that Durst did have under flawless records. Yeah, yeah, So it's not just Lumbiscuit, it's other bands music as well.

21:25 Speaker 1: Does it mention who are there? Anything?

21:27 Speaker 3: It does it?

21:27 Speaker 1: It does it?

21:29 Speaker 3: It just says other.

21:30 Speaker 2: Because there's at least one one band that that he broke, that broke big, that had a big hit, and I can't remember who it was now. So in a statement to Billboard on Monday, durst lawyers sharply refuted the arguments made in UMG's motion to dismiss the case. Attorney Mark Fabiani said quote. When someone has caught red handed, their first response is often to hire very expensive outside law firms who first, as a matter of course, try anything to dismiss the suit when they are in trouble with the facts.

21:59 Speaker 2: In this case, we believe UMG is using a typical, formulaic, well trodden strategy of reaching for any escape route by desperately grasping at technicalities unquote. Durst and Lymbiscuits sued UMG in October, claiming that the band had quote never received any royalties from UMG unquote despite its huge success over the years. Quote, the band had still not been paid a single cent by UMG in any royalties until taking action unquote.

22:30 Speaker 4: So interestingly, Dearth is the sole owner of Flawless Records.

22:37 Speaker 1: Interestingly, I think I may have.

22:44 Speaker 2: When I was talking about how an imprint works, I may have misspoken. It's not like it's a part of the label, but it's so because there were a number of artists who who did this. This was a thing in the nineties and into the two thousands, Like I think jay Z had an imprint and some others.

23:03 Speaker 1: So it's it's like.

23:05 Speaker 2: A separate record label, but the major label that the imprint is associated with handles all the distribution. So even though the imprint kind of is kind of is an independent label, in a sense, the major label that's associated with does well. The imprint gets used the major label's entire distribution pipeline and whatever other promotional resources are available.

23:38 Speaker 1: So that makes sense.

23:39 Speaker 2: And I think Gene Simmons, by you know, I mentioned Kiss earlier, Gene Simmons had an imprint label. Actually before it was even really a thing in the eighties, he had an as I think I think it was, it was just called Simmons Records.

23:54 Speaker 1: I think it was. It was before imprints were really a thing.

23:57 Speaker 3: But did he did he ever break anybody?

24:00 Speaker 1: No, it didn't last.

24:02 Speaker 2: Jane tried a lot of things in the eighties that didn't last, Like he tried producing other artists and you know, and of course he had a short lived acting career, and.

24:11 Speaker 3: You would think that would have made more money than Lunchbox.

24:14 Speaker 1: But no, oh no, well, oh no.

24:17 Speaker 2: No, no, no, it says here The claim was something of a stunner. How had one of the biggest bands of its era, which sold millions of records during the music industry's MTV fueled turn of the century glory days. Because remember we're talking late nineties into the early two thousands. How did they still never have been paid any royalties nearly three decades later. According to Durst, the answer was an appalling and unsettling scheme to conceal royalties from artists and keep those profits for itself.

24:50 Speaker 2: He claimed the company essentially kept Limpiscit in the red with shady bookkeeping, allowing it to falsely claim the band remained unrecouped, meaning its royalties still had not surpassed the amount the group had been paid in upfront advances. In other words, the advance had not been the advances because an advance for each album had not been paid back.

25:12 Speaker 1: According but the.

25:13 Speaker 4: Bulk of the main thrust of the claim was that they sold like forty five million albums and never got a dime of royalty.

25:21 Speaker 3: Yeah until they filed a lawsuit. Yeah, then they got money. But now they're still saying, no, you made that a.

25:27 Speaker 2: Well or until they well, yeah, well until they until they started making noise about it because they got that million. UMG finally gave them that million back in September, but the suit was actually filed in October.

25:38 Speaker 4: No, but the motion to dismiss they filed was November twenty second, so that just happened.

25:44 Speaker 3: You just filed the motion to dismiss.

25:47 Speaker 1: Right, they're just now responding.

25:49 Speaker 4: But quote unquote, because the complaint is based on a fallacy, how do you say that after you just handed out three million dollars?

25:56 Speaker 3: Like, I don't get that.

25:58 Speaker 4: Well, how is that a vibe elbow motion after you just hand it over three mil?

26:03 Speaker 2: Well, but I think they're saying that's all. That's all they were owed, you know, the million, the million to uh Limp Biscuit, that's all.

26:10 Speaker 3: Then the two million to the record to the label.

26:12 Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's kind of a separate thing the sub label.

26:15 Speaker 4: Yeah it is, but it isn't because there's is a son owner, so technically he's the dude on both ends.

26:21 Speaker 3: Yeah, he's getting the three mil. It's just under two different names.

26:25 Speaker 2: Yeah, it is strange that his imprint label would have more money coming to it than you know, the band he's in that sold for forty five million records, right yeah.

26:36 Speaker 4: Yeah, Well it because goes to back up everything we've been talking about. Yeah, how these companies really have ripped off artists for a really long time.

26:44 Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean what do.

26:45 Speaker 3: They artists get? What's an artist get these days?

26:47 Speaker 4: If they're streaming like less than a quarter of a penny or something like that, Like they there's no they have to have a ridiculous number of plays before they can even make an enough money to pay for a meal.

27:01 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's barely anything. Spotify doesn't a lot of art.

27:04 Speaker 4: Yeah, they won't put their stuff on Spotify because it is a big rip off for them.

27:09 Speaker 3: Yeah, they don't get anything out of it.

27:10 Speaker 4: But on the other hand, if everybody's using Spotify and you don't put your music on there, you know, it's a catch twenty two for an artist.

27:18 Speaker 3: You want to be heard, but you also want to get paid, you know. It's kind of the part of the point.

27:24 Speaker 4: Yes, sharing music is wonderful, but it's also about getting paid as an artist.

27:28 Speaker 3: To everything you bring to the table.

27:32 Speaker 1: There is there is this.

27:37 Speaker 2: There is a certain truth though. So another thing people probably don't know who aren't in the industry is that it's really always been the case to some degree that artists don't make that much in simple royalties in the sense that like I remember I remember meat Loaf talking in an interview once about how you know, like like when Bad out of Hell, which I have no idea at this point, how many millions of uh? I mean, it's probably surpassed one hundred million albums sold by now. But I remember early in his career he was talking about how little money he got, you know, like like pennies per units sold The Bad out of Hell.

28:23 Speaker 2: But the truth is the real money for a very long time, the real money has been in touring.

28:34 Speaker 1: You know, you can.

28:34 Speaker 2: You can make a lot of money on tour, a lot more money on tour than actual than actual sales albums, right, which is why some artists tour so much. For example, when Jerry Garcia died. I remember I was never a big dead head, so I didn't I didn't even realize this.

28:56 Speaker 1: But when when.

28:58 Speaker 2: Jerry Garcia died, I was reading out how because people wondered why why did he keep touring so much? Because apparently toward the end of his life there were people close to him who wanted him to stop because his health was failing, and people wanted him to take a break. They wanted him to stop touring, whether it was with The Grateful Dead or the Jerry Garcia band, and he just kept going because you sometimes these artists get to a point where they can't afford to stop, because you stop and then the money stops.

29:29 Speaker 2: And if you have an entire organization to pay for, you're not just supporting yourself, but you've got managers and lawyers and got any jobs.

29:41 Speaker 3: There many people, you.

29:41 Speaker 2: Know, the these organizations become bloated, and you know, you might have touring staff who you want to keep on retainer even when you're not touring, so that they don't go off and work for somebody else when you're not touring, and then you can't get them back for your tour.

29:57 Speaker 1: So you might be paying them all year round, even when you're not active.

30:00 Speaker 3: So I have a thought about that way.

30:02 Speaker 2: Yeah, So a lot of artists, you know, they tour so much because it becomes a situation where they cannot afford not to like, they can't get off of the road because it ends up costing more to be off the road than on the road.

30:18 Speaker 4: That makes sense, It certainly doesn't make sense because that's where you're gonna make your money, not just ticket sales, but march you know.

30:27 Speaker 2: And now touring has become more expensive and so it's kind of become a situation now.

30:35 Speaker 1: Where it's it's hard to tour. It's harder to tour.

30:40 Speaker 2: So look a look at now the money's made more with merch than anything.

30:44 Speaker 4: Look at the guests we had recently, Green and Yellow, right, they're constantly touring. And not only are they constantly touring, they try to keep their expenses down, Like they have actual school buses that have beds in them so they can actually sleep on the road, and there's other vans and then equipment that goes along so they can keep their costs down.

31:05 Speaker 3: But they're like constantly touring.

31:07 Speaker 4: They might get to take a small break of maybe a few days or you know, but you go check them out and they're constantly going all around the country Canada. They're constantly on the move, and you know, you can imagine it's it would be hard for them to stop because then the money stops.

31:25 Speaker 3: How do you put gas in the.

31:26 Speaker 4: Car if you're not touring, you know, you can't afford to have the money stop, So it is it's a vicious circle. You have to really love what you're doing, that's for sure, which obviously those guys do. I mean, if you've never seen Green Jello. When they come back around, you have to see them. They're amazing in person. They just freaking amazing and so much fun. If you want to go to a show that's joy, go see Green Jello. It's just joy.

31:51 Speaker 3: I know you can't help but feel good with walking away from one of their shows.

31:55 Speaker 4: But they're constantly in motion, and that constant motion comes with a lot of expenses because I'll see, Oh, what was it? There was something that went recently. It was like their their starter and one of the buses went. So they were fundraising to get the starter repaired because.

32:13 Speaker 3: They're in the middle of a tour.

32:15 Speaker 1: You know.

32:16 Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a vicious circle.

32:17 Speaker 4: And these guys, especially nowadays, you don't make You're not making the money off of streaming. Certainly right now, there is something to be said for physical media.

32:26 Speaker 3: You know, there can be some money these days. Records are coming back CD.

32:31 Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's.

32:33 Speaker 4: Not gonna be It's never gonna be like it was when we were younger, no where. The only way you got the music was to go find it in a store in a record store and bring it home, or sit in front of the radio with your fingers ready on record so you could try to record the song off the radio.

32:52 Speaker 1: Oh yeah didn't.

32:53 Speaker 4: Yeah, we all did, right, That was that was how you got to hear your song, or you had to wait for it to come back around.

32:59 Speaker 3: Now we have instant.

33:00 Speaker 4: Gratification music through streaming. It's just not it's never going to be that again. It's instant gratification. So really the artists are limited on where they're going to make their money. It really is in those live venues, in selling merch at the live venues, and that's really the only way they're going to sustain themselves off their art.

33:21 Speaker 2: That's why a lot of artists get into podcasting too, although you see it more with stand up comics than you do with musicians necessarily, but there's you know, if you're that's the thing, if you're even a tiny bit famous, you can start a YouTube channel and monetize it, get monetized quickly and create content that way. Justin Hawkins is a great example of that from the band The Darkness. You know, he has a very popular podcast called Justin Hawkins Rides Again and and it's it's really good. It's a lot of fun, and it's also very informative because he delves into a lot of these music industry issues as well.

33:58 Speaker 2: So that's another one I would recommend it if you're interested in this stuff. Justin Hawkins Rides again. But yeah, so a lot of people in the industry have had to seek other revenue streams.

34:10 Speaker 4: And it's and that really these days, it's in that live concert. It's in moving those bodies into a venue that you're going to make the most money.

34:20 Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, yes, indeed, and that and that's harder.

34:23 Speaker 4: It's harder on artists, and it certainly benefits people like UMG, yeah obviously, but.

34:31 Speaker 3: I really it just kills.

34:32 Speaker 4: Me that they pay it all out and then they suddenly, oh, this is made up.

34:40 Speaker 3: How do you do that? I don't know. Is it just me that I find that flabby?

34:46 Speaker 4: It's awful to see what these lengths companies will go to to rip off the artists that they're making their money off.