German Top 100 Album Charts

[I'm Late]

Thank you, Sagalady. Points well taken.

Someone still needs to be held accountable for these actions. Otherwise, how is the band to know where their weak point is located?

[sagalady]

Thank you, Sagalady. Points well taken.

Someone still needs to be held accountable for these actions. Otherwise, how is the band to know where their weak point is located?

No one person can do everything. Many bands try these days but will soon realize how much work there is to do to coordinate a release or a tour. That's why bands hire a manager. Him or her then hires various people like accountant, booking agent, publicist, business manager (handles the financial growth and sometimes also acts as accountant), tourmanager and so on.

The manager and the booking agent work on commission so if they don't do their job well (i.e. keep the band working and touring) then they won't make any money. Accountants and lawyers work on set fees.

The manager is the one who finds the band the label. The label pays an advance for the recording of the album and are responsible for the manufacturing distribution and marketing of the album. (oh - I'm repeating myself but at least now it's not in the middle of the night so I'm slightly more lucid now.)

A good manager is 1part lawyer 1 part accountant 1 part marketeer 1 part technician 2 parts scam artist and 10 parts psychologist. A manager works for the band to make decissions on the band's behalf. Sometimes the manager has to make decissions the band may not like but they should always be made in the best interest of furthering their career. If the band doesn't have a career and is not out working then the manager has no income.

(It's when the manager is 10 parts scam artist a band should worry.)

If the marketing of the CD is not done properly all the band (read manager) can do is to discuss it with the label and voice his/her concern. It's then up to the label to act on it or ignore it. Finding a label willing to sign a band and pay advances is harder than finding a needle in a haystack.

Now - say the label does not act when the manager voices his/her concern, what can be done? Change label? Remember the needle and the haystack. The only thing the band and manager can do is to decide to handle the marketing themselves. If the manager is good he might be able to squeeze money out of the label for it. If not they have to chat with the accountant and see how the financial status of the band is and from there decide if they can take on the financial cost of hiring pluggers (those who speak with stations and get the station to play the new album), hire graphic artists and art-directors (or appoint and pay a company) to create the artwork needed, pay for the adverts in the magazines (there are thousands and thousands of music magazines in the world and adverts don't come cheap), pay for printing of posters and for the placements (posters in tube stations, bus stops etc are not cheap either), distribute posters to record shops and hope the record shop will be putting the poster in a prominently visible place and not hide it in the back.

Suddenly that $1.50 per sold CD in marketing budget is way more than $1.50 due to volume. A label has a larger volume of CDs/Artists to market then one band. The bigger the volume the smaller the cost per item. You could be up in $3-$4 or more per sold item and only if you are lucky will you actually get a return on the investment.

The other thing to consider is that bands that we like (I'm presuming that most of us here are in the mid 30's and up. I was 18 when I first saw Saga and am closer to the mid 40's then the mid 30's these days.) have a fan base that now have families and kids. Say you're a guy with a wife, 2-4 teenage kids, average income, a car, a house, and other liabilities. Then your kids want the latest Xbox/Playstation game, you want the new Die Hard 4 DVD, the wife wants Jonny Depp on demand (read DVD collection) and so on. Are you really going to tend to your own happiness before your family's? Our bands have a MUCH bigger market competition to fight their way through than they did back in the early 80's before the internet and the playstations and the widely available CDs, DVD's and the complete overload of entertainment out there. Add to the fact when all your kids want to go see Tokio Hotel somewhere abroad and as you know what it meant for you when you were their age to go see your favorite band you won't really deny them that pleasure, would you?

I'm sorry I stepped on a couple of sore toes in the thread about North American dates. I still stand by what I said, I could just have said it differently. All I can do is blame it on being frustrated to the point of no return because I KNOW that if a fan just stops and thinks and even try to imagine the big picture it will sink in. The music business is driven by money and money alone. Today it is run by lawyers and accountants. (Geesh! I'm starting to sound like I hate this business but that could not be further from the truth. I totally love it and wake up every morning looking forward to get to work. I'm not rich but having a job I enjoy is as good as.) It's less about the music and more about the money. We are so lucky that there are labels out there like IO, Frontiers, SPV, Netwerk, Edel who will sign bands that we used to listen to when we were young. And they do it because they are fans themselves.

Ok, I have to run but if anyone has any questions or feel I need to clarify anything, feel free to PM me. I feel like an ass for hijacking Suzi's thread here. Not my intention at all. Sorry!

Sagalady

[I'm Late]

Thanks again, Sagalady

Points well taken! No sore toes here. I worked for one of the Fortune 500 top 50 companies, ran the biggest market. I can stand on my own pretty well!

I'm with you 100%.So, call your local stations! Let them know SAGA is still around, putting out wonderful music! As far as buying the cds, I will always buy cds, (I'm old school), boycot the record stores! 50%+ of the sales go to them.(According RollingStone).
As long as the label makes money from iTunes or zune, that's all that matters. Or buy from the label direct from the internet. I haven't bought a cd from a local store for over 5 years.
Maybe this will help to drop prices?
So, again, Sagalady, Thank you for enlighting our lives with your wisdom!

And now you know the rest of the story................Good day!

[sagalady]

I worked for one of the Fortune 500 top 50 companies, ran the biggest market.

Then you know exactly what I'm on about. Marketing is all about prospected return on investment. After a while you figure out if the investment is worth it or not.

On a side line: Britney Spears new CD (incidentally very good - ) sold 124.000 copies in it's first day in US. (Would be interesting to see what it did globaly on it's first day.) With that kind of sales figures you can afford putting down a pretty hefty marketing budget. Then again, the tabloids and gossip columns are doing a lot of it for free buy just racking up the miles and miles of columns about her behaviour/divorce/custody hearings/life/rehab.

There is nothing like free advertising.

[alexander]

According to CD universe Saga ranks s 8 concerning Music Top Future Releases. Maybe this is something we can be happy with.

Alex