Get Offset Episode 132: Are Rockstars Rich?

Episode Transcript

Note: a machine made this, so it’s not perfect, but if you’re hearing impaired and have any questions about what we said, please feel free to ask us in the comments or send us an email with the form below. 

Emily: Well, it repeats.

[00:00:13] Welcome

[00:00:13] Andrew: to the get offset podcast. My name is.

[00:00:16] Emily: And my name is Emily and I turned up the volume on that intro. At the very end

[00:00:21] Andrew: you did, uh, which kind of spoils our, our starting show. Uh, uh, is Andrew drinking coffee or is Andrew drinking whiskey at, but with the volume spike, we know it’s just coffee because it didn’t really affect me much.

[00:00:36] Emily: Okay.

[00:00:39] Andrew: I’m

[00:00:39] Emily: trying. I, I don’t, I don’t even know what I, okay. Let’s just move on from it. It didn’t land. Let’s just keep moving. Let’s just keep, keep, keep moving. So just keep, just keep swinging. Uh, yeah, I’ve heard, I’ve heard of that. Um, damn. I don’t, I don’t know what to start with this week, honestly.

[00:01:03] Andrew: Uh, that is.

[00:01:05] Man. I feel like I’m slowly climbing out from underneath the rock after like a couple of months of being under a rock. There’s not, there’s not a different way to say that that’s any more attendant, but yeah.

[00:01:19] Emily: Yes. We felt like a month, so much happen this week, both like in the world and in my, my life. So

[00:01:29] Andrew: I, stress dreams are

[00:01:30] returning.

[00:01:31] Emily: So that’s interesting. Dude, even when I like, so, I mean, I’ve, I’m I take Zoloft, so I don’t have like big panic attacks anymore. I still like have dreams where I’m having a panic attack in the dream. It’s weird.

[00:01:48] Andrew: That is strange. Now, like the last couple months have just been so stressful. I feel like, Hey, I haven’t really dreamt a whole lot.

[00:01:55] Yeah. Um, which maybe my body’s just like, Nope, you’re good. You’re too stressed to deal with it. We’ll just let you sleep. And now my body’s like, cool. So you’re finally starting to settle in. You’re finding a little bit of what is that a routine like yeah, we’re going to have to play with that. And so I ended up snoozing a whole bunch of this morning.

[00:02:12] Like I had the most insane, like it started off as like a really happy, like, exciting dream, like the CEO of Microsoft. Decided to be like, here’s a promotion it’ll kick in tomorrow. As long as you don’t tell anybody in the next 24 hours. And of course I did, my dream was like tell someone, but then tell them not to tell anyone.

[00:02:32] And then it just ended up like this anxiety, anxious loop of like trying to damage control the, uh, the don’t tell anyone loop. So keep my job. We’re also would just get fired. Okay.

[00:02:43] Emily: Has this been, since we released the episode title, Andrew has a secret,

[00:02:51] Andrew: um, num I mean, it has been since then, but I don’t think it’s related, but it is funny. Maybe I’m predicting my first. I predict a pandemic and I’m predicting my own dreams.

[00:03:05] Emily: Yeah. Just stop making predictions.

[00:03:07] Andrew: Um, it’s like a, it’s like a reversal. Straight. You’re supposed to be like, interpret your dreams, right?

[00:03:14] That’s

[00:03:18] Emily: not, well, I’ve, I’ve had dreams that seem to predict the future. I try not to read into that too much, but, uh, no, there, there are definitely people who believe there are definitely people who think that you should interpret your dreams because they’re like little windows into your soul and it might be your subconscious trying to tell you something, but I’m not sure that’s real science.

[00:03:41] It’s fun. Definitely fun like astrology, but if it brings people joy and it’s not harmful. Cool.

[00:03:50] Andrew: Yeah, but a straw, I can’t do astrology. It’s not Christian. We’ll just ignore the fact that, you know, the, the Wiseman found Jesus based on reading the stars and they happened to be from a completely non-G day.

[00:04:01] Um, like, you know, probably from like Ethiopia. And so we just kind of ignore that part anyways.

[00:04:08] Emily: Yeah. Astrology is interesting because it’s something that, uh, to stereotype a little bit due to, especially like to shit on. And it’s one of those things that’s like, okay, this is something that’s clearly like predominantly enjoyed by women and astrology.

[00:04:27] It’s, they’re definitely men who dig it, but it’s pretty pretty female fan base there.

[00:04:37] Andrew: I had the realization the other night that Molson, I don’t don’t like, I don’t know what Melissa is. I, um, astrology sign is, or I don’t know what to call it. I’m a Taurus. And she’s like, I don’t know yours either. What are you?

[00:04:49] I’m like calm Scorpio, I think. And she says, she’s like, okay. Yeah. Um, I really talking about mine cause you know, people. You don’t get the wrong, wrong idea and whatnot. Um, so I’m like, well, are you going to talk about it? She’s like, yeah, I’ll talk about it. Uh, I’m a Gemini. I’m like, oh, that’s rather to face to view.

[00:05:10] Emily: That’s a

[00:05:10] Andrew: real, I’m not making this up. That’s not a bit, that’s a real conversation we had while we were doing dishes at like 9:00 PM.

[00:05:18] Emily: I’m sure it was very cute and funny.

[00:05:25] So I’ve got, uh, I’ve got these new, any ears from ultimate ears. And I gotta say, like, having a nice seal makes a, makes a huge difference. Then I was using, I was using these, um, these little fender boys, which were fine for a while, but. They didn’t quite hold up. Like I’ve lost the plastic tip of this one.

[00:05:52] I’ve been using these in my demos for a long time and it, uh, sucked. Uh, so it sucked.

[00:06:00] Andrew: I’ve ever had seal. Imagine it’s a little blubbery, but

[00:06:05] Emily: okay. That’s enough. We’re done.

[00:06:10] Yeah. Yeah, no, that’s enough. That’s really enough. It’s too early for this. It’s too early.

[00:06:15] Andrew: This is new with you. And it’s not even as early as we’re going to record our next episode.

[00:06:21] Emily: Special

[00:06:22] Andrew: guests from the east coast.

[00:06:25] Emily: I have, um, a new friend. Whoa. I cannot be stopped.

[00:06:35] Andrew: You cannot be stopped.

[00:06:38] Emily: Can’t stop little stuff.

[00:06:39] It is the road horns and Tierra Telecaster. So you see some Ventura. Sure. Whatever. I don’t care. Got some buckle rash, really tasteful, I think for the most part.

[00:06:58] I don’t care as dude. Um, and then there’s just like the weird, the weirdest, where is there’s these little like holes right there. It look like someone took a screwdriver, just went back and I don’t really know what that’s supposed to be like recreating. And as far as natural, where it goes, can you explain, can you elucidate,

[00:07:21] Andrew: uh, would that not be like from like on your, on your Levi’s you’ve got like little button here.

[00:07:28] Emily: Yeah. I mean, that’s a buckle rash, and that makes sense, but this is where little like pop, pop, pop, pop, pop holes.

[00:07:35] Andrew: Um,

[00:07:40] yeah, I mean, I I’ve seen that in guitars before. I’ve never really questioned it a whole lot. Uh, probably just stuff like rattling around in the case Fulton tour. I don’t know.

[00:07:52] Emily: It feels very specific. And very intentional and there are very many, no, that’s like, I don’t know. It’s just a, I’m curious. So if you’re listening and you would know why there would be little indentations on the back of a Telecaster near the string through bridge, uh, let me know.

[00:08:15] Actually I haven’t plugged it in yet because I just really just got it. Um, let’s get the wide range pickups. I need to get a little bit of Gugan on the scratch plate there. I think.

[00:08:29] Okay. You gotta stop. I’m tired. This is not funny. This is not fun for me.

[00:08:38] It’s a S I’m just trying to be serious about my guitar is a serious. It’s very serious. I think the wear is very tasteful. What I’m trying to say, I’m excited to plug it in. It has nines. I’m not used to like nines, but they have, they kind of make life a little bit easier.

[00:08:59] Andrew: I personally played with nines.

[00:09:01] Emily: I know you do.

[00:09:06] I’m not saying anything bad about nines. I like I’m enjoying playing. No, I agree. Yeah. So that’s, what’s new with me. What’s new with you?

[00:09:19] Andrew: Well, I ordered some of the first parts for the parts Castro, so that’s starting to come together.

[00:09:27] Emily: Sorry. Those are, these are the parts that I’m already aware of. They are

[00:09:30] Andrew: the parts you’re already aware

[00:09:31] Emily: of. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Andrew and I, um, we, we saved ourselves, uh, two shipping fees by getting a lot of stuff shipped, uh, to my place.

[00:09:42] Andrew: So, uh, when I think probably the next couple of weeks they’ll arrive and all have a chance to swing over and grab them. I can show them off. I’m very excited though. Um, I think, I think when I hold the first, like chunk of the parts gastro in my hands, it’s going to feel a lot more real and it’s going to give me that move to like, let’s go.

[00:10:01] Um, so yeah. That’s new, um, almost new outside of that.

[00:10:08] Emily: And that should, that should be here really soon. So I hope it’s not just sitting in my house for a couple of weeks,

[00:10:14] Andrew: right? Yeah. Hopefully in the next week, the wall behind me is getting painted, uh, after some deliberation and some very helpful flats from the, um, from the patrons.

[00:10:28] Kind of settled in the direction of going towards a gray. So I’m waiting. I went to the hardware store like, oh, sorry, we can’t mix any pain because we’re out of the base

[00:10:40] Emily: for like,

[00:10:41] Andrew: oh man. So going to have to go back the next couple of days. I’m going to be out of the house a bunch later this week. So I’ve asked Melissa pretty, pretty pleased if she would help paint the wall.

[00:10:56] Cause she’s really good at painting.

[00:11:01] Emily: Nice. And he sneezes or coughs into his arm. Dear listeners.

[00:11:08] Andrew: Uh, at least I, I had the awareness to meet that time.

[00:11:12] Emily: Yeah, that’s always nice. I do appreciate that. Cause I. I ended the podcast. I’m like, damn, we sniffle a lot.

[00:11:20] Andrew: Um, as far as gear goes, like, I’m just, I feel like I’m finally starting to settle in the space a little bit.

[00:11:26] My desk is set up now. Um, everything’s networked. Um, I’ve got some of my Fox Cairo equipment over there is plugged in for production. I’ve actually been able to make a handful of toppers this week and get those out the door. Um, Yeah. And kind of just doing the whole, doing the concert, like, okay, well what’s next?

[00:11:47] And I think the, the what’s next for me is trying to sort out what to do with the, the wall behind me, aside from painting it. So here’s what he knows. I want to hang guitars on the wall. What the wall will be gray. Cause like all the other walls in this room are white. And so that’ll reflect light nicely.

[00:12:06] But if I do any camera stuff on the back wall, it’d be helpful for like, especially if it guitars with white binding for that to really pop with the gray. Um, but yeah, we’ve got like an, a couch that we’re thinking about putting there. Not sure if that’s the play. Not sure if we want it. What I really want to have is like, maybe not so like junky looking, but you know, like the pedal stations at guitar center, they got like the ISO five at the back, and I’m kind of plugged in with a couple of patch, cables and amp underneath.

[00:12:36] I kind of want to sort something like that out. Um, I don’t, that’s probably, well, again, it’d be something that I’d have to make, so I can’t imagine that’s going to be something I’m to find it like a Goodwill or something.

[00:12:52] Emily: Probably not, you can get like a little, you have to be able to find like a little like tabletop, lectern kind of thing.

[00:13:00] It wasn’t

[00:13:00] Andrew: like that, like a little bit of an angle, so it’s not like, oh, what am I doing here? I don’t know. I don’t know if I want that to be like the coffee table in the middle of the room. I don’t know if I want to just put that against the wall and just the chair I’m sitting in as the chair for the room.

[00:13:14] I don’t know. Yeah.

[00:13:17] Emily: Lots of things. And you’ll probably go through lots of iterations of my experience with staging a video set.

[00:13:26] Andrew: And then of course I’m getting, I’m getting more inspiration in the mail. I don’t even remember signing up for this. I think I haven’t changed yet. That is Joan Jett. She is. So, um, maybe I’ll just flip through here for some inspiration.

[00:13:42] Speaking of guitar center.

[00:13:45] Emily: Yeah, the, I got a big Sweetwater catalog or something, and I started to piece through and I’m like, this goes in garbage now, recycling. I don’t have a hamster. So, or

[00:13:57] Andrew: bird, I put mine some also gotta be something for my birthday last year. And so now she gets them to, with her name on them.

[00:14:06] Now we get to, and we’ve got two bathrooms. So now we’ve just got one in the magazine rack at each toilet.

[00:14:15] Emily: Oh nuts. That’s weird. Um, I mean, yeah. Yeah. Hey, for those listening, do you shop@sweetwaterorreverb.com? Check out the links in the video description or the show notes of this podcast. When you’re shopping and you help support this podcast, it costs you zero extra dollars and it helps us a lot.

[00:14:38] Thank you for everyone who has used those links. Agreed. Who re it pays for the hosting, the website and the podcast, which I’m a fan of. Yeah. Yeah. I like not going out of pocket for, for this beautiful hobby.

[00:15:00] Andrew: It was fine when we were getting started. So that’s, you know, the, the joy of getting

[00:15:04] Emily: started, but it makes it feel even better though.

[00:15:07] Now that that’s. The necessary necessity. I agree. Yeah. Cool. Um, yeah. Can I show you something? I suppose. So I’ve been, um, I spent a lot of yesterday with the Yvette young signature guitar and I actually, I tuned it even more out of it. Standard tuning. So I could learn some of her songs.

[00:15:38] I’m not very good at it, but I’ve been practicing a lot and it was very hard to play at that angle. And I just gotta say, I’m so lucky to have a partner who does not get upset when I just sit in the TV room and just play guitar riffs.

[00:15:58] Andrew: I’ve been thinking about putting my acoustic out in the living room. We’ll see. We’ll see. I stayed up late last night, trying to play plan out with the living room. It’s going to be like,

[00:16:08] it sounds really good by the way.

[00:16:11] Emily: Thank you. Rick listened to that for like literally three hours last night.

[00:16:20] You put on, put on some like shark tank put on some, what else we were watching last night, play it didn’t have like a lot of music in the soundtrack. Like it’s hard with lifetime or MTV shows because there’s all, they have so much background music happening, but,

[00:16:37] Andrew: uh, it’s great improv practice. He got a vamp over the TV.

[00:16:42] Emily: Sometimes it’s okay. But sometimes it’s so distracting lifetime shows and especially we’ll go from like, they, they lean so heavily into like, soundscaping the tell otherwise really boring stories sometimes. And so like, they’re like, people need to know what emotion to feel. So now that we’re going to play some really tech and sometimes what makes it worse is that with lifetime shows, it’s like distractingly bad stock music.

[00:17:10] And there’s not, there’s a lot of good stuff, music. So I don’t know why they’re like fussing with the worst stock music I’ve ever heard, but that seems to be the case.

[00:17:19] Andrew: Yeah. I mean, it’s a directorial, what’s the word I’m looking for? Their director’s

[00:17:26] Emily: choice, decision, directorial, decision, creative decision,

[00:17:30] Andrew: creative decisions.

[00:17:31] Sounds that sounds less clunky. I like

[00:17:34] Emily: that. Yeah. It’s a creative choice storytelling, but, uh, every, but Rick and I like watching married at first sight. Uh, that’s just one of our, you know, guilty pleasures. And, uh, he actually really likes it too. And he will get sad if I watch it without him. Uh, Sometimes like the stock music.

[00:17:56] It’s like, okay, this is very obviously trying to sound like Bonnie bear, or this is very obviously trying to sell in Bruno Mars. And that’s always pretty funny, like, oh, someone typed in Bonnie there to their stuck stuck photo, a stock music website of choice, and they found something that sounded similar enough.

[00:18:18] Andrew: I mean, music makes such a big difference, uh, w with, with tracks. One of my favorite examples of that is there’s the scene where Darth Vader is coming off the Imperial show. Uh, and there’s the, the Admiral they’re waiting for them. And if you swap out the music from the Imperial March, like some like RNB, like nineties, like let’s get her done suddenly, like you start like little things, like the guys, like standing there waiting, and he like starts to clear his throat and it completely changes the way you interpret that body language.

[00:18:46] Um,

[00:18:48] Emily: yeah. And sometimes in like scary movies, they’ll use like really sweet sounding music to just make it seem even more psychotic. Sure.

[00:18:58] Andrew: So the, the toy piano, the fact,

[00:19:01] Emily: yeah, a little toy piano, maybe put it through some reverb to make it sound like it’s being played in an abandoned mall. Remember when that was like the big thing on YouTube, people would take like Toto songs and then just EEQ them and put weird plugins on them to make them sound like they were in abandoned malls.

[00:19:20] And people really liked that for about two weeks.

[00:19:23] Andrew: Look, you got to do something when you’re showing your phone at 3:00 AM and that’s prime entertainment, uh, between that and the guy that makes a pools with a, with a shovel. Like all by himself. Okay. Maybe I’ve just spent more time. Late night, sprawling Medicare to him.

[00:19:41] There’s like this random Facebook video, like series.

[00:19:48] Emily: I know what you’re

[00:19:48] Andrew: talking about uses like a stick or something and creates like a, like a little pool Oasis situation. Like.

[00:19:55] Emily: It’s it’s not even just like a pool. It is like he’s um, uh, oh gosh, what’s it called? Terra forming. He’s like terraforming, these little like intricate, like shockingly intricate, um, like vignettes almost.

[00:20:13] It’s wow. And just seems precarious. Now last night I was trying to fall asleep and I was in bed and I was watching this video on Reddit. And it was this truck, like you haul, pulling into a parking garage and immediately like two seconds in the video, you see it hit like a big hanging sign that obviously says, if you hit the sign, do not enter this garage or something like that.

[00:20:40] And then they pull forward and they hit a water pipe. It just kind of scrapes up at the top. So I’m thinking this is the end of the video. Like this is the embarrassing part of the video. And instead is backing up straight. They S they, they like back up turning and then this dude just guns at forward.

[00:21:01] The water pipe. Isn’t even the lowest structure in that area. There’s a lot of low hanging, like structural things. So like they can’t even turn around. They’re trying to do like a 42 point turns. It’s like, and at one point, one of the guys gets out of the cab and he looked. And he never looks above the tires.

[00:21:21] He’s like, what are we hitting? And he never looks up. And this video, Andrew is two minutes long. Eventually they break the water pipe and it starts spewing that black water that comes out of a sprinkler system. Uh, when it hasn’t been used since it was installed. And uh, oh my God, it was two minutes long.

[00:21:41] And I just heard dying at one point another car interests the garage and drives around them. Sucks to suck

[00:21:51] Andrew: filmed on the 20th of April. Oh my

[00:21:54] Emily: God. I sent it to Rick cause I’m just like cackling in bed. I can’t, I can’t help it. And then I’m just like sitting there cry, laughing while he’s watching this video.

[00:22:04] And for some reason, the funniest part to me is it’s the end of the, I can’t even describe it. It’s just, it’s one of the best it’s it was art. It was, it brought me so much joy. Oh my God. Now, we’re just talking about videos. We watched on Reddit, but

[00:22:20] Andrew: you don’t want to talk about Russian dash cams.

[00:22:23] Emily: Oh, those are fun.

[00:22:25] I want to get a dash cam just to see what if I would ever pick up anything bananas.

[00:22:32] Andrew: Well, speaking of shark tank, you want to talk about rich people?

[00:22:40] Emily: Uh, yes. And would you like to sponsor a podcast listeners? Uh, Uh, we have a contact form of get us@podcast.com you can fill out. Um, and we would love to hear from you. We have very affordable and reasonable rates. Also, you can support this podcast at patrion.com/get offset for. As little as a dollar a month, you can support the show at $5.

[00:23:04] You get access to our super secret Patrion discord is a wonderful place with wonderful humans, and I’m just so happy to be in there as much as I am. We also have merchant get us at podcast.com/merch that you can check out and, uh, you can rate and review this podcast on iTunes. That really helps us out tremendously.

[00:23:26] We haven’t had a fun rating or review in a while, so please leave. A review that will make us laugh. We would appreciate that the Andrew was talking about rich people. So this is something that I’ve been like thinking about a lot, not because of my own finances, but just like thinking about like things I can talk about that I might know a little bit about.

[00:23:52] And, um, this is so stupid that Phoebe Bridgers guitar smash video really brought to light. That there are a lot of misconceptions people have about musicians. And, uh, I kind of want to talk about, cause I remember one comment said something like, uh, it implied that she would be flying back to LA on a private plane while drinking champagne or something like that.

[00:24:18] And I’m like, Hmm. Phoebe Bridgers ate that level of rich, like private planes are expensive, like even renting one or. Not commission is a commissioning one, like hiring one,

[00:24:35] people share them, or you can just like hire a random private plane or you can own, and I would be shocked if that didn’t exist for rich people. Great song. Uber for Learjets. Um, so I just kinda wanna talk about like the economics of being, being a rock star or being a well-known musician. And I think one of my first, under one of the first times, I really understood that rockstars weren’t necessarily wretched.

[00:25:08] I read a book, um, written by someone who a big fan of the band pavement. Do you know that band Andrew? They were, they were big indeed in the nineties and they put a lot of great stuff on like Matador records. I’m a big fan. And this guy was a super fan. And one day he met, like, he loved Pavan, his favorite band.

[00:25:26] One day he met the drummer in a bar and he said something like, oh dude, like he was wasted obviously to ask this guy, he was like, oh, you must be rich man. And the guy goes, I mean, I had, I got a mate of mine to buy a house. And it kind of hit him that just because he loves this music, like there’s, there is like working musician, like surviving musician, like working actor, then there’s really, really rich and not a lot of people get to the really, really, really rich part.

[00:25:57] Um, so do you, what do you know about how musicians make money

[00:26:05] Andrew: musicians make money by selling concert tickets? Um, they make more money by selling merch and they make some money by actual record sales and streams.

[00:26:18] Emily: Yeah. So there are lots of different revenue streams for musicians. Um, like you said, there, their live shows there are, and that’s, uh, so their live shows their mechanicals and that’s from selling like copies of records, downloads of songs.

[00:26:36] We’re not gonna talk about FCS because yeah, it would fall under mechanicals merchandising. Synchronization licenses. So like your music getting moved used on TV shows and commercials and movies that come on podcasts, um, songwriting royalties from like your, your stuff. Getting played on the music on, on the radio terrestrial radio and live, um, bands.

[00:27:04] Uh, the only the songwriter gets terrestrial, um, royalties, uh, for a terrestrial radio royalties in the United States, uh, for satellite in the rest of the world, the actual performer gets some of that money as well. So let’s talk about just like overall, let’s start with just overall for everything that a musician makes.

[00:27:27] If they have a manager and an agent. They pay a percentage of what they make to their manager and agent of everything right off the bat. So right away, probably let’s just say 15% of all of the gross revenue you make gone, gone to people who help you make more money, but still gone. So right away, you’re getting less money.

[00:27:58] Do you know constant revenue work?

[00:28:02] Andrew: All

[00:28:03] Emily: right. So depending on the band, you either get a door dealer or you get a guarantee, a guarantee means they’re just probably assuming you sell out the place. They’re just paying you a flat fee. They’re not going to screw with any other math stuff. Um, and then the venue is going to make their money from like drink sales, et cetera.

[00:28:23] And adore deal means you just get. Portion of every ticket sold that you have to split with the other performers on the bill after, um, the venue rental fee minimum has had, for example, a small, small venues might charge 125 bucks so that the sound person gets paid after that you get either the whole ticket or a portion of the ticket.

[00:28:47] So that’s how that’s, that’s vaguely how that works. Does that

[00:28:51] Andrew: make sense? Makes sense. I want to say, I remember I went to a show at house of blues in anime when I was in college and the bandos there SI was selling their own, their own tickets. Like it, like the singer mailed me the tickets from his place.

[00:29:09] Yeah. And my understanding at that point in time was that like the venue said, Hey, if you want to play here, that’s fine. You have to buy the tickets upfront and then you can resell them.

[00:29:18] Emily: That’s pretty. It’s called. Yeah. That’s called pay to play. Gotcha. Yeah. So that’s, that’s, um, a terrible practice that still exists that should not exist.

[00:29:27] And I would inform those

[00:29:29] Andrew: fans.

[00:29:32] Emily: It’s not just Disney that does that do there’s like a ton of venues. I think the rainbow room where river Phoenix died does that. Cause I had a friend who played there and she had to pay money to play. So yeah, there are instances too, especially this is a lot more common with small bands, uh, is that, um, to get into these venues, you need to buy a certain number of tickets upfront and then maybe you’ll make money.

[00:29:58] It’s. It’s terrible. And there’s, there are a lot of ways for bands to get screwed in this regard. So I don’t recommend it, but it’s, it’s something that happens a lot. Um, another thing that venues do that they shouldn’t do is, uh, they often take 20% of the merge at a show. So your band is there. You’re selling your merge that, you know, you’re maybe making like.

[00:30:26] 50% on it. Like you selling a shirt, you, you, you, you paid 10 bucks for the shirt. You sell it for 20. Sure. Then the venue comes in and they take 20% of that. Right. Cause you’re selling it there. And then your agent and manager come in and they take another cut. Right. And so then let’s say you, then you’re maybe making.

[00:30:51] What’s what’s the math workout like 15% on your own

[00:30:55] Andrew: shirts. Is that 50% of the gross or the profit profit. Then you’re looking at two, $3 and 50 cents cut out of the $10 profit. So you’re not six 50,

[00:31:06] Emily: something like that. So it’s very little money. It turns into very little money buried very, very quickly.

[00:31:13] And it’s not just small bands who get screwed out of money. It’s Al it’s like all of them, it’s very, very common and it sucks. Um, and it stinks because the band’s not getting a portion of the drink sake. What is the revenue share? Not work both ways.

[00:31:33] Andrew: It’s a power play from the venue.

[00:31:35] Emily: Yeah. And then sometimes your label wants a cut of that Merck as well.

[00:31:40] They want to cut. So, I mean, I’m just asking all the questions. Um, so. Your label takes a cut of your other revenue streams when they used to just take the mechanicals and let’s get those now let’s talk about mechanicals. Let’s talk about record sales. What do you go about record deal?

[00:32:00] Andrew: It gets complicated very, very quickly.

[00:32:02] Emily: It does. It does. So we should just, um, pick an example for like an indie perform. Sure because weirdly as you go to bigger labels, you get a smaller cut. And part of that is because they’re like, well, we have marketing departments, publicity departments. Uh, we could help you. More connections like they can, they, the idea is they’re taking a bigger cut because they ultimately feel like they’re doing more work and can sell more records for you.

[00:32:31] So you would make more money. It doesn’t work out that way, but, um, there are still indie labels that will do a 50, 50 split after recoupable goals. Right. So that means that maybe your label fronts you $10,000 for studio time. Um, and then they’re going to spend $5,000 for your publicist and then they’re running at like a thousand dollars worth of ads.

[00:32:57] So that’s $16,000 that you had to make back and album sales and mechanicals and streaming before you even get that 50, 50 split. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So if you’re selling your record at 10 bucks a pop and you have to, and you have to sell $16,000 worth of records before you make any money, that means you have to sell how many, how many records yeah.

[00:33:24] Before you make any money. Right. And that is, uh, that’s a low estimate because not only. Are you recouping your advance? You’re recouping marketing expenses. You’re recouping the publicists. You’re a recruit. You’re recouping the dinner. You’re labeled took you out to the booze. They got you the gifts, they got you.

[00:33:47] You’re paying for that. And then on top of that, and more labels wants to do a three S well, pretty much all of them now want to do a 360 deal, which means they say, oh, we’re gonna help you with your tour. We’re going to help you with your merge. Do they have. Maybe, maybe not, but they do want to cut of that money.

[00:34:05] So now you’re looking at being a musician and everybody wants this piece of you’re already low money because people aren’t buying records anymore. People are buying merge, but like how many t-shirts can a person buy? And then it’s when people want to cut of that. So, yeah, touring is probably how you’re making a bulk of your money.

[00:34:27] You can’t tour right now. And, uh, That gets into synchronization licenses. That’s harder to get because everybody wants to get sings. I want my, I want my music in movies and TV shows. That’s where money lives like. So there’s a lot of competition for that. And it, when it happens, it just kind of happens to you and you don’t like, you can have like song pluggers, you could have a publishing company that’s like working with you and for you.

[00:35:01] A lot of, it’s still just a music supervisor either likes you or doesn’t like you,

[00:35:06] Andrew: right? Like whoever’s making the, doing the soundtrack for a film.

[00:35:09] Emily: Yeah, exactly. And then it’s cause there’s more,

[00:35:16] Andrew: you can cut a slice, a pie. It’s just whether or not that slice is worth, it is

[00:35:20] Emily: meaningful. Yeah. Yeah. But another thing is, um, for musicians, a lot of bands have that main person, that main songwriter.

[00:35:30] And then there are a lot of singer songwriters who do their own music. They’re just singers and all the bands. So if you’re someone like Phoebe Bridgers, I’m using her as the example here, it’s, uh, she has a band that she pays before she gets paid. And that’s just how it works. Cause your, your bands. Cause sometimes you can’t afford a band and you have to do it yourself.

[00:35:51] Because if you’re, if you, if you have a band, you need to pay them, you need to pay them fairly to keep them on your side because like it’s your creed position and they’re a part of it, but still your job, you are still the boss and bosses pay everyone else before they get. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

[00:36:09] It is how it’s supposed to work. And I know that’s not, but that’s how it’s supposed to work. And that’s still how it works typically in music. So let’s get back to Phoebe Bridgers. Phoebe Bridgers, uh, as an example is actually surprisingly, uh, didn’t come from money. Like her family was not wealthy as happens quite a lot with indie bands.

[00:36:32] It is, it is not to shit on anybody for having like a good safety net. I had a really great safety net, um, and I’m really grateful for it and the opportunities it provided me, but something worth acknowledging that it’s easier to make it when you have that safety net, when you can be like, I’m not going to have to a full-time job and a part-time job, and then try to pursue music on top of that.

[00:36:57] It makes it a lot easier to create art when you’re not worried about losing your home. Right. You know? Yeah. So Phoebe bridges didn’t come from a lot of money. She released a stranger in the Alps a few years ago. And after that she could afford a car for the first 700 life and a studio apart. And that studio apartment is where she lived until months ago when Punisher became a head.

[00:37:30] So Punisher was released last year and a few months ago, she actually was able to move into a house. And that is the level of wealth we’re talking about for somebody who’s nominated for four Grammys played Saturday night, live is getting cover features in your magazine. Was it a movie?

[00:37:49] Andrew: Yeah, the, the, between two ferns movie,

[00:37:53] Emily: there was a, between two ferns movie.

[00:37:54] Andrew: Yeah. It was really bad, but it was of funny. I

[00:37:57] Emily: love

[00:37:58] Andrew: Zach elephant act. It’s funny. I think it falls into the category of like, the plot was so bad that like the individual scenes are funny. If you’re intoxicated, as long as you don’t care about like how coherent the whole situation.

[00:38:12] Emily: Yeah. Yeah,

[00:38:15] Andrew: I know she, she like played Lou.

[00:38:17] She was like playing a bar gig in the

[00:38:18] Emily: movie. Yeah. So one thing that helped Phoebe Bridgers a lot is she lucked out and got a spot in an apple commercial. And that is what kind of enabled her to, to pursue music full-time. So, I mean, that was, that was really cool for her to have, but that’s just one example of someone who’s a very successful indie artist by all intents and purposes, and she can afford a house.

[00:38:47] Like, she’s not affording a, like it’s not a private plane. Well, sure. Yeah. So that’s kind of go ahead.

[00:38:55] Andrew: The question is, is looking at the evolution of that over time though. I mean, that’s, that’s a very contemporary example, but if you’re looking at just the general cost of living in the United States of life, 20 years and how it’s really gone up at a much steeper rate than general wages have gone up.

[00:39:13] Um, I guess like with someone of that level of success, been able to afford it quite a bit more prior to that, and I’m not sure the answer to that is I know we had Kathy Valentine on the podcast about this time last year, and she talked about being able to buy a nice home and whatnot, uh, from, from her job in the Google.

[00:39:34] Emily: For her job and abandoned had a number one record back when people still bought records and toured with the police. I mean, she didn’t, she did well. And she was actually able to live off that money for a very long time. Um, and with multiple houses and kind of taking a bath on one of those houses.

[00:39:52] Andrew: Right.

[00:39:53] And so, like, I wouldn’t say that they’re necessarily, some are similar levels of success, but generally in the bulk. And it seems like money went a lot farther back then. So I wonder if that’s also part of this dynamic that we’re seeing here.

[00:40:10] Emily: Um, I mean, money, money used to go a lot farther for sure. Um, and back, especially people used to buy.

[00:40:18] Music. So there was more revenue. However, there was also a lot less savvy. There were a lot of fewer resources for up and coming musicians and songwriters who didn’t want to just get screwed. So there was always the worry about like, unless you could afford a lawyer who knew what they were talking about, which, you know, even lawyers were harder to find back then.

[00:40:44] Not, not, not back then. You look at the, I mean, the savvy is a big thing. People got screwed a lot more back then. And you look at the Beatles who, uh, like Paul McCartney and John Lennon, they didn’t have, they didn’t have the publishing. They had unknowingly signed over their, their song rights. Right? So like, it was a lot easier for musicians to get screwed.

[00:41:10] And that’s another reason musicians still are often not very wealthy. Um, you have to hit. Uh, really, really, really big time to, to start like turning in the money. And a lot of times that money, when, when you really shake it down, it’s a lot more upper-middle-class than it is rich.

[00:41:29] Andrew: Well, sure. I mean, I don’t think we’re talking like lifestyles of the rich and famous, like good

[00:41:34] Emily: Charlotte.

[00:41:35] You’re talking about John legend and Chrissy Tiegen like that kind of rich. But, uh, you know,

[00:41:42] Andrew: John also in the movie,

[00:41:46] Emily: I mean, I I’m sure Chrissy makes, you know, a lot of money, but John being an  probably makes more,

[00:41:54] Andrew: I don’t know about more.

[00:41:57] Emily: Well, she just, I think most of her revenue, she does some acting. She doesn’t really do a lot of modeling anymore.

[00:42:04] It’s her cookbooks. So it kind of depends on her.

[00:42:07] Andrew: I haven’t used one of those in my kitchen right now. There’s extra some very recipes in there.

[00:42:12] Emily: I’ve heard of that. The recipes are great.

[00:42:13] Andrew: Yeah, no, it’s legit. It’s not just like celebrity cookbook buy my cookbook. It’s all yours have put salt and pepper on chicken.

[00:42:20] Like it’s really solid.

[00:42:23] Emily: It’s not like Trisha Yearwood sharing her Garth Brooks bowl. That’s just like, that was on Twitter the other day. And now that was weird.

[00:42:32] Andrew: Like, I, I get into it. I’m like, oh, that’s really creative. And actually like challenges me to expand, like how we think about how to use certain things in the kitchen.

[00:42:39] Emily: I just got a delivery from fender. Do you mind if I go check on that? Sure. I’m going

[00:42:43] Andrew: to step out for 30 seconds as well. Then

[00:42:45] Emily: he’s gonna step away to do a footnote. All right. We’re back. Guess what this is.

[00:42:52] Andrew: I’m going to guess that that’s the neck for my parts caster.

[00:42:55] Emily: Yeah, I think it might be, and this is a box of other parts we ordered that I would like to open doing I’m unboxing, um, with, but, uh, what else do we have to say about, so, so I guess I just kind of want to wrap up that are rock stars, rich question.

[00:43:14] Um, I think that the big takeaway there is, we don’t know what these are, these musicians, we don’t really know what their finances look like. It would be really, really. Unwise and uncool of us to make assumptions about whether or not somebody is wealthy or what their money is. It’s really none of our business.

[00:43:32] I can say you can look at musicians who have obviously made great decisions for themselves. I think Jason Isabel has made wonderful decisions for his own music as his career started to take off. Um, he was part of 30 tigers and that probably since he’s, I think he partly owns that label. That would mean that he makes and takes home a lot more money.

[00:43:58] It’s like Bonnie to Franco owned started her own record label that she really saw her music on in the nineties called righteous babe records. And when Michael Jackson was bringing home a dollar per record sold, she was bringing home $4 per record sold. Did he sell more than four times? The records of Ani DiFranco up, so fucking sure, but I went 400 times, but still, yeah.

[00:44:23] That’s how you make a living. Yeah. I mean, with,

[00:44:27] Andrew: with a lot of the things around the subject, it’s never the people that you would expect, like at first glance looking at the way that things are structured, um, the same way that like some of the people that you might know in your life that are loaded, aren’t the people you would net sincerely.

[00:44:47] Pick out of your friend group, like, oh, I had no idea. Um,

[00:44:51] Emily: yeah. There’s sometimes the people who I think sometimes the people who like obviously spend the most money on nice and fancy things. Oh

[00:45:01] Andrew: yeah. If you’re trying to keep up with the Joneses, that means you’re almost entirely running on credit. It’s like almost a guarantee.

[00:45:07] Yeah. But so as far as like breaking that down, There’s a Facebook post going around. Yeah. Couple of years ago that I remember it was like outlining how much it costs for like how much money bands make like big acts made off of, um, venues. Like if you wanted to say, Hey, come play at the arena in my town now, which they make.

[00:45:30] And so I remember like foo fighters is making like a quarter million dollars a show, but I’m also looking at me like, yeah, but how many people have their hands in there?

[00:45:38] Emily: Yeah. That’s not like them taking home because that’s, it’s that role

[00:45:42] Andrew: taking the six-figure paycheck every night.

[00:45:46] Emily: It’s it’s really not.

[00:45:48] And I think prince prince pretty famously got a $14 million track at the end of the tour. Um, he, he was playing arenas and he kind of did his own deals. So when he did take home, he took home a lot more of that than like someone who’s working with a big team. I think that’s something that a smart, a lot of musicians do is they curate these smaller teams to do the stuff for them.

[00:46:13] So they can, you know, focus on creating music. But by hiring this team, they’re not selling futures in a way. They’re not going into debt with a label and in a way, because you’re literally going into debt with some labels, if you’re accepting big advances and sometimes the big advance is worth it because it enables you to create.

[00:46:35] Stuff that’s better sounding, maybe more adventurous than you.

[00:46:39] Andrew: Otherwise you’ve got to have money to make money.

[00:46:44] Emily: Yeah. And if you get a big advance, part of that really is like the assumption that you quit your job and you just, this is your job. Now you do this. Full-time, it’s basically an advance on a salary and then you have to make that back.

[00:46:57] So if you’re able to, you know, not, not personal loan would be the way to go, but if you’re able to save up money to do your own studio time to hire your own teams, you’re always going to make more money. That being said, there are still a lot of advantages for younger bands to have labels. And that’s mostly that it’s, it’s insane to think that I shouldn’t say that it’s wild to think that you could do all that yourself, unless you have a lot of experience.

[00:47:34] You’re muted. Shall we

[00:47:36] Andrew: do some unboxing?

[00:47:37] Emily: This is some unboxing. Good, no address. I’m like, did I just flash my address? I feel like it’s the law now that whenever I do an unboxing, I have to say I have a big old box,

[00:47:52] Andrew: moderately sized box. I would say

[00:47:56] Emily: it’s a medium box. I have another box out there from fender, but I’m going to save that unboxing video for the YouTube channel.

[00:48:06] Andrew: Picking favorites. Are we?

[00:48:08] Emily: Well, no, this is for both of us and that’s just for me and I think it’ll be funny. Let’s see. What do we have? We have bubble wrap the modern bubble wrap.

[00:48:21] Andrew: Oh yeah. That’s from the Finland series.

[00:48:24] Emily: Yes, we have tuning machines. We have more tuning machines. We have back plates, obviously Andrew and I both got all a bunch of back plates. We’re building things. We are building things and stuff and things. And that’s it. That was all that was in his box was standing machines and back plates.

[00:48:48] Right. Right. That’s thought that would be more exciting. I think, I wonder if people were hoping for more exciting, but

[00:48:55] Andrew: I, I think we have no choice, but to open up the neck,

[00:48:59] Emily: this is more setting.

[00:49:01] Andrew: This is completely unplanned, but I’m also really

[00:49:04] Emily: excited. This actually is unplanned. I can imagine the seeming contrived, but this is just really good timing.

[00:49:13] Like normally FedEx comes way late in the day and I have been. The app said that I wouldn’t, this wouldn’t be delivered until tomorrow. So

[00:49:27] I did that one wrong.

[00:49:29] Andrew: This should be if they sent the right one, the all Rosewood

[00:49:38] Stratocaster neck that I’m going to put it on jazz master body.

[00:49:42] Emily: They’re similar enough.

[00:49:46] Andrew: Strat pickups,

[00:49:51] Emily: January

[00:49:52] Andrew: fender replacement.

[00:49:54] Emily: Can you whine? Let’s see,

[00:50:06] hopefully that

[00:50:07] Andrew: wasn’t, hopefully that wasn’t the trust ride.

[00:50:11] Emily: It’s just the tape.

[00:50:17] I just got a paper cut.

[00:50:20] Andrew: That’s unfortunate. Yes. Occupational hazard, I suppose.

[00:50:28] Emily: Ooh.

[00:50:34] Oh, I can’t do it. I can’t do this out. No, I apologize.

[00:50:40] Andrew: Oh my God. You know what? I’ll put my headphones back on when it’s out.

[00:50:48] Emily: Ooh, that’s nice. Look at that. Oh, wow. Andrew it’s like in boss, it’s like actually

[00:50:59] Andrew: laser engraved

[00:51:00] Emily: in. Yeah. I think in Boston is the word at least pre slotted nut.

[00:51:08] Andrew: Yep. And I’ve got files where I can, I can take that down myself. Oh

[00:51:13] Emily: man. Yeah, that is smooth. The tall,

[00:51:18] Andrew: skinny frets on there.

[00:51:21] Emily: They’re tall. Yeah.

[00:51:22] Andrew: Which I love, I love this read so much. I’m not a fan of a medium jumbo whatsoever.

[00:51:31] Emily: Yeah. This isn’t really nice.

[00:51:35] Andrew: Like that. My fear with getting the, getting it is that. There’s there would be a lot of figuring. And I know some people really love like a heavy figuring out of Rosewood. I just love just like that deep chocolate brown.

[00:51:50] Emily: That’s not too heavily

[00:51:51] Andrew: figured out. That’s perfect. It’s like just enough definition for me to be excited about, but not so much for me. Like yeah.

[00:51:57] Emily: A little bit of red that looks great.

[00:52:05] Good job.

[00:52:06] Andrew: I’m pretty excited to quote Ariana Grande’s. Thank you next.

[00:52:15] Emily: Thank you for going so long in that episode, without having another joke after I asked

[00:52:19] Andrew: you to please stop, I figured I’d give it, you know

[00:52:22] Emily: what? I’m sorry. I just, it was too much

[00:52:26] Andrew: 40 minutes, I think is enough. Cool.

[00:52:29] Emily: That was a good, cool down period. I’m sorry. I was not feeling it.

[00:52:36] Andrew: I appreciate the apology.

[00:52:39] Emily: I think we both should apologize to each other, but

[00:52:44] sometimes we get grumpy, you know, it happens.

[00:52:47] Andrew: It does,

[00:52:49] Emily: but I don’t know what to do with this box. Now.

[00:52:54] I almost just flew a knife across the room.

[00:52:57] Andrew: That could have been hazardous.

[00:53:01] Emily: How’s it as to say, to say the least to say the least. So what do you got planned for the rest of your

[00:53:06] Andrew: day? Uh, well now it’s coming to get a neck, um, but also have seriously, we are heading up to the Northern area for a family get together.

[00:53:18] Uh, so we, I don’t know if we’ll end up driving past your neighborhood, but if we do, I might have to send you.

[00:53:25] Emily: And bring back my, yeah, I’ve gotten some buzz

[00:53:28] Andrew: it’s sitting literally right there.

[00:53:32] Emily: I have a box with a bunch of crap in it for you and DOD paddle. Um, some other cuddles.

[00:53:39] Andrew: I went, I found the set, the Benson set, the Benson fuzz aside when I was moving rooms and I went to make sure everything was inside and it was missing.

[00:53:49] The printout, the instructions like, oh no. And so I spent like 30 minutes looking for it through like all the stacks of papers and they’re random, like eight different stacks of papers I had in my office. I found it all back together. I also found my night sky, um, insert, cause they’re they’re in the same spot.

[00:54:09] So I was playing with them together,

[00:54:12] Emily: insert,

[00:54:13] Andrew: uh, the night sky, the pamphlet

[00:54:14] Emily: printout, they call that. Painful manual instructions, recommended settings.

[00:54:25] Andrew: I feel like manual sounds really complicated, but I also think that that’s fair terminology for the night

[00:54:30] Emily: sky. Yeah, I see. Yeah. Cool. Well, um, that’s all I got.

[00:54:35] Uh, I’m probably going to film a demo with the Eva young signature guitar. I don’t know yet if I will release that on Monday or later this week. Because, um, I don’t know, I’m trying to experiment with my posting schedule. Like, it just, it’s hard for me to do premiers on Mondays because I have lots of calls those days and they’re not always predictable as far as scheduling goes.

[00:55:00] So, uh, I think I might try to do more like Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday schedule also we’re on Tik TOK now, did you know? I did

[00:55:10] Andrew: notice that. Yeah. I don’t know if I could bring myself to put it on my phone.

[00:55:17] Emily: Yeah, that’s fair. It’s interesting. My first video got like a ton of traction and I’m getting a lot of followers right now, but, uh, yeah, I, oh boy,

[00:55:33] Andrew: I’m going to shut down my computer before

[00:55:37] Emily: that storm.

[00:55:38] Andrew: I didn’t even think like it drizzle a little bit last

[00:55:41] Emily: night. Maybe it’s just the lightning.

[00:55:43] Andrew: No, that was the, my power flickering.

[00:55:47] Emily: Okay. Yeah. Well, everybody out there. Thanks for watching. Thanks

[00:55:50] Andrew: for understanding. Thanks for listening. Watching under yeah,

[00:55:55] Emily: the next, yeah, until next time. My name is Emily. Bye .