Short-Term Corporate Profits vs. Long-Term Music Careers?
 

“Record companies don’t see themselves as record companies anymore. They see themselves as entertainment companies.”

Record companies are concerned with developing global personalities exploitable across multiple media: through recordings, videos, films, television, magazines, books and via advertising, product endorsement and sponsorship over a range of consumer merchandise. The quest is for entertainment icons whose sound and image can be inserted into the media and communication networks which are enveloping the globe.

A look at the inner dynamics of record companies reveals some all-to-common human frailties often resulting in artists feeling constrained in their careers.

What do you think?

This is news?? Record producers have always wanted to exploit their "clients" for as much as they can and in as many ways as they can. It used to be just records and TV/radio appearances. Be sure, if DVD, the internet and multichannel 24-hour TV had been around in Berry Gordon's time, he'd have had the Jackson 5 on everything he could. And advertising/promoting/sponsoring is certainly nothing new. Who ever said the labels were genuinely interested in the artists any other way than how many records they could sell and how much money they could make for them?

Pink Floyd, "Have a cigar" (1975): "We're so happy we can hardly count! Everyone else is just green: have you seen the chart? It's a helluva start, it could be made into a monster if we all pull together as a team. And did we tell you the name of the game, boy? We call it ridin' the gravy train!"

As true today as when it was written.

Record company, synonym for greed.