I caught wind of this from Slashdot[article] and navigated back to the horse’s mouth, aka Weird Al Yankovic. According to the “Ask Al” section of his website, he claims that he’s actually losing money when you buy his music digitally from sources such as iTunes.
Tim Sloane of Ijamsville, MD asks: Al, which of these purchasing methods should I use in order to make sure the most profit gets to you: Buying one of your albums on CD, or buying one of your albums on iTunes?
I am extremely grateful for your support, no matter which format you choose to legally obtain my music in, so you should do whatever makes the most sense for you personally. But since you ASKED… I actually do get significantly more money from CD sales, as opposed to downloads. This is the one thing about my renegotiated record contract that never made much sense to me. It costs the label NOTHING for somebody to download an album (no manufacturing costs, shipping, or really any overhead of any kind) and yet the artist (me) winds up making less from it. Go figure. [weirdal]
I’m sure this can’t be said for all recording artists out there as this comes from his renegotiated contract. I wouldn’t put it past record companies to snag artists in situations like this, so it is something to really consider when signing with a label.
When it comes down to it, staying independent is a plausable way to go if you can handle the work. If you are working for yourself instead of a label, you might be able to support yourself better rather than having profits like this being plucked away from you, while being legally binded, I might add.
Additionally, Weird Al fans might be interested to know, if you don’t already, that you can expect a new album from him soon. Apparently the album was slated to come out this month, but, you guessed it, problems with his record company has delayed the release. In situations such as these, I should say that you shouldn’t expect the new album soon but instead that you can hope to see it be released by the end of the year. The music industry can be kind of crappy like that.