Hi beechnut,

Waylon, Willy, Johnny Cash, and several others defected from Nashville, and moved their business interests to Branson, MO., back in the late 70's or early 80's after a rift with the industry and the city. Waylon and Cash went on to start their own labels, and publishing companies, and did quite well over the years, especially Cash who went on to many top billboard hits, and several music awards for his works.oh, and by the way, Branson was a huge success, and still is today, even after the passing of Cash and Jennings.

Today it's a way different environment. It's even more controlled than ever. Artists like Ricky Skaggs, and Dolly Parton have quit chasing after the Labels for a deal, and have set up their own publishing and recording Facilities, and now distribute their own music all by themselves. Skaggs had a very successful release a while back that went platinum, and garnered several CMA awards in the bluegrass category, Dolly on the other hand has not experienced the same degree of success, her latest release isn't doing quite as well, however, even with fewer numbers in sales, one would have to believe she is still making more money than she ever made with the labels.

Radiohead is another Major Rock group that defected from EMI last year, and released their own CD. They even went so far as to put the CD on their website, and offer it as a free download, while asking the listener to donate whatever they thought the CD was worth if they enjoyed it. If you didn't like it at all, you didn't have to donate anything, if you only liked 2 or 3 songs donate 2 or 3 dollars, donate a dollar, or .50 cents, whatever the listener thought was fair. Well as it turned out they didn't sell anywhere's near as many copies as they did with EMI, but from the figures I saw on the number of downloads, combined with the average size of the donation, I would say they grossed about $800,000.
Even after expenses, that's a heck of a lot more money than they ever saw while they were at EMI.

I believe as time goes on, in the very near future, we will see many more major artists not resigning once their current deal expires. Past history, combined with the fact that independent artists won a significant amount of awards at the Grammy's this year, will convince many of them they can still have their recognition, and probably make a lot more money, with fewer sales. The labels are now taking a bigger slice of the pie than ever before, and it wont be long before the artists start to realize there has to be a better way.

As a foot note I have to ad, these artists are benefiting from the millions of dollars the labels put out over the years promoting them, the same is not true for the average independent artist just starting out. They are far from achieving the numbers established artist have in the independent market.

Billy Darnell

http://www.billydarnell.com

http://www.songwriterservices.biz