Record Labels and How They Function And Farewell to the X-Files 5/22/02

How do record labels exactly work? In the last Consider This, we looked at what watermarking is and if it may be implemented onto Filter's new album as some other albums had in the past.(Word is Filter will NOT watermark the Amalgamut for the public consumer). Now that we know what that is, the next logical question is how do record companies actually work. An anonymous reader explained it to me to clarify the whole record company issue.

While it is true that record companies do make music off the albums sold to the public that have been made by an artist(such as Filter), the artist gets the money as well. Though most of us do not understand how this works(and I didn't until it was explained to me), it is in the songs themselves that determine who gets the money, at least for the artists. Songs have points assigned to them that determine their worth to different people. The record company recieves a number of points from a song, and the writer and producer of the song do as well. So essentially, since Richard has a hand in every song, he can get points from that song, especially as the writer.

For radio airplay, the writer of a song gets so many pennies and nickles for each playing. Doesn't sound like much, but once the entire airplay across the country is added up, the pennies and nickles add up to quite a bit. So, when a song is a hit, the writer gets paid an awful lot of money for the playing of the song in a quaterly payment. Basically, that means groups that don't write their own music make nothing off of the airplay, but their writers do!(finally Dion doesn't make some stupid cash because she didn't write Heart Will Go On. Damn annoying song if you ask me).

Same as radio, each time a song is used for a soundtrack, a television show song or anything else, it is the writer who makes the money back. So when the X-files used "Hey Man, Nice Shot" in the episode D.P.O. Richard made the money on that small clip in the show. Or most recently, Behind Enemy Line's use of the same song on their soundtrack and in television ads that promoted the movie. Essentially, record companies invest and make money from an artist, but if a contract is drawn up correctly, the author of a song and producer of a song make money on it as well.

Now, I'm not going to sing a tune praising how wonderful record companies are, but hopefully this helps explain some of the ways that these economics work and allow us to understand some of the happenings with not only the shut down of Napster, the shut down of Internet Radio(they have put a stay of 30 days to decide the royalty situation), and most recently the possibility of copy-proofing CDs.

Photo One: Fox Mulder and Dana Scully Photo Two: John Doggett

For nine years, the X-files has come into our homes once a week and told us some of the most intriguing stories of the 90s. A dark, spooky, often confusing show, the X-files never ceased to ask questions about as many topics as: government, the possibilites of life on other planets, what fate is and if it exists and many more topics that television had never seen portrayed as it was in the X-files.

Though several shows before it had similiar themes,(Twilight Zone, Kolchak, the Night Stalker), none have shown us these themes in the same way. No other show took the government itself and made it the full focus of the plot, with the good guys actually being a part of the government itself. Agents Fox Mulder and Agents Dana Scully were F.B.I. agents that captivated the minds of the viewers with their strange cases and dynamic of skeptic vs believer. No show until it had such a dynamic in it and perhaps never will have one nearly as successful again.

Although in this post September 11th world governmental conspiracies aren't as popular as they were in 1993, many of the X-files fan base(X-Philes) still believe that there many be reasons to continue to ask questions of not just what is out there, but of what our government is doing as well. These inquires were seen in the show through investigations into a governmental conspiracy to hide the existance of extraterrestials from the American public. A group was believed to be a part of this(The Syndicate) and one man lie at the heart of it's power(Cigarette Smoking Man).

Though through out the years, many changes have come and gone to the show, X-Philes still ask the questions about what exactly "truth" is out there. Season 7 showed the age of the X-files as well as the drain it was placing on star David Duchovny(Fox Mulder). Season 8 had many changes with the addition of Robert Patrick, Richard's older brother, as John Doggett. He was to find the abducted Fox Mulder.

Though the show was on its last legs and several story lines broke much of the previous story lines in past years, the show was still asking questions and was still making viewers think, though several nitpickers can say that at some point 1013(the production company) simply ran out of ideas and were trying to get by on weak plots. Regardless, the X-files is a program that will carry on into classic television that will captivate new viewers and old viewers alike for years to come!