Friday 29 July 2016

Quote of the day - how much do rock stars make?


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From Ben Reeve Lewis on the Landlord Law Blog (his Friday Newsround is worth following - always witty and interesting):

Many moons ago, in a previous life as a professional musician my band were managed by Jim Beech, whose other clients were Chris Rea and Queen.

Back then money from records basically came in two forms, mechanicals and royalties. Mechanicals is for records sold and royalties for stuff played on radio and TV.

Royalties by far outstrip mechanicals by a country mile. Both were paid quarterly per territory and there were 84 territories in total.

I once saw a mechanicals cheque on the office desk for just one Queen album, one quarter, in one territory, Argentina, which was for £224,000.

Multiply that by 84 territories 4 times a year, add the quarterly royalty cheques to that and then times it by the number of albums you have out, not including merchandise.

My calculator just blew up.

And remember this is (I'm sure Ben won't mind me mentioning) about 40 years ago when £224,000 really was £224,000!

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