Working Conditions Part 2

So at the start of the year I started working in the studio, and I had an agreement with my boss that all the jobs we did, I would get a small percentage of the profits [like 15%] while on work I brought in I would get a larger percentage of profits [say 60%], so all was well.

We immediately started working on a large project, doing a major album with a country band. Now to be fair, country is probably one of my least favorite genres of music, but I powered through the pain because I knew that I would learn from the experience as well as earn some decent cash.

There were however a few problems:

The band doesn’t have a drummer.
While this isn’t really a major problem, it did mean we had to program drums. I now know that I will never do that again. It is awful, really awful. Anyway, I hated it but decided to power through the pain…

The band didn’t have any cash.
The band didn’t have any cash, and hadn’t yet signed a record deal so they agreement was that they would pay the studio when they had finished the record. As a result we decided to work on the record for 3 days a week, so as to be able to do other work and earn cash on the other days. For a while this was how it worked, until we decided we needed to finish up, and then started working on the record every day.

The band is super undecided.
Wow, these guys just can’t make a decision. There are three of them in the band, and they spend so much time fighting it is unreal. As a result they end up doing work for a day, and then coming back the next day, saying “Dump everything. We need to do it all again.” That’ll get your blood boiling…

The project took much longer than expected.
The average album takes between two and three months. This album took us from beginning of January to the beginning of September. Bloody hell! As a result we didn’t do anywhere near as much as we would have wanted, which wasn’t great.


So there were a few problems with the project, but things got much worse recently. In the record business, what happens is a record company buys the album from you, and then you pay the studio. The record company prints a whole bunch of albums and starts selling them in the shops and you get a small cut of the profits. [Usually around 5-8 percent] Then you go on tour and make most of your money off of ticket sales on tour.

Now we usually charge between R100k and R200k per album, depending on the amount of work. My boss chooses to charge per song rather than time because he feels people are less relaxed and you get a better product at the end of the day, which is fair enough, but in this case it was a problem. you see they had taken more than double the time we had initially expected them to, but had still only done the same number of songs, so much less cash than expected, but that wasn’t the worst.

I’m not sure how it happened, and I’m not sure if I want to know, but what’s happened now is that the band have made a deal with my boss, and instead of paying him the expected R150k, he’s getting an equal cut in the profits, which sucks. They’ve sold the album for something stupid like R20k and are instead getting a larger cut of profits [14% or so].

Now this is bad for me because I still haven’t been paid for 8 months of work, and it doesn’t look like I’m going to be paid, because the album still hasn’t been released.

All in all, this was a rant because I’m unhappy at work, and still haven’t been paid, and it doesn’t look like I’m going to. I seriously need a job that’s going to pay me. I hate this!