Sir Mick on music profits

Jerry Brito
May 14th, 2010
Culture, Economics

Via Gruber, here is a new BBC interview with Mick Jagger. He makes a very interesting point about music sales:

But I have a take on that – people only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn’t make any money out of records because record companies wouldn’t pay you! They didn’t pay anyone!

Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone.

So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there was a 25 year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the time they didn’t.

Don’t stop at 1900, though. If you think of the entire history of the world, the notion that you could make an outsized return on making music is a complete aberration.

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Tags: copyright, mick jagger, music, piracy