Regardless of a decades-long profession that has generated quite a few multi-platinum and gold-certified albums, Staind guitarist Mike Mushok claims he’s but to obtain a royalty from the gross sales and streams of the band’s catalog. That revelation was made throughout a current dialogue the profession musician had with The KiddChris Present. The dialog steered that approach after the royalty woes of other metallic band Chevelle have been introduced up.
Again in 2021, Chevelle‘s Pete Loeffler revealed that regardless of promoting some six million albums amid their tenure with Epic Data, the band had but to obtain any cash straight from file gross sales. His bandmate and brother Sam later provided a proof as to how that got here to move, citing clauses of their file contract and different intricacies in relation to coping with a serious label.
On this new interview, Mushok himself relayed an identical expertise, providing [transcribed by Blabbermouth.net]:
“Hear, I’ve bought I don’t know what number of hundreds of thousands of data, and I’ve by no means as soon as acquired a royalty from the file firm after — no matter — 20, no matter, 25 years. We nonetheless owe them cash. We haven’t been on the label since — I don’t know — 2011 was the final file we put out on Atlantic, and we nonetheless owe them cash.
And hear, I’m not gonna lie — they gave us giant advances, and that’s why [we still owe them money]. However significantly, they should be paid off. However in any case, I believe it’s estimated, I believe we’re saying, like, one other three years it’ll be paid off and I’ll truly begin making royalties on our data.”
When requested if the band ever anticipate to get the rights again to their masters from the label, Mushok responded:
“Yeah. So supposedly after 35 years, the masters are imagined to revert again to you. However I used to be speaking to our lawyer about that, and he mentioned that no label ever permits you to try this. They attempt to purchase you out and offer you cash to allow them to proceed to personal the masters — except you battle them.”
The advances that Mushok speaks above are usually giant sums of cash supplied to the band/recording artist up entrance throughout the creation of an album and through an album cycle. These advances exist in a way as a loans and are anticipated to ultimately be paid again to the label by way of proceeds generated from gross sales and streams of the band’s recorded works.
In what was a commonplace association, a label would thus retain rights to the band’s masters for a prolonged time frame and never be required to pay the artist till the label had recouped on the varied investments they made within the band, be it advances, promotional budgets and extra.
Nonetheless, that’s to not say the artists don’t generate any cash from their recorded works per se, as they typically retain a share of their publishing royalties, which are inclined to fall underneath a special umbrella.
That mentioned, Staind‘s state of affairs might presumably be a bit extra nuanced than defined above by Mushok. The band have been taken underneath the wing of Limp Bizkit‘s Fred Durst early on of their profession, with Durst being instrumental in getting them signed to Flip Data.
If you happen to’ve been following the information recently, Limp Bizkit themselves have been additionally signed to Flip Data together with the likes of Chilly, Dope and extra. Flip Data are presently tied into a $200 million lawsuit filed towards Common Music Group by Limp Bizkit vocalist Fred Durst.
That go well with has discovered Durst accusing Flip Data of manipulation and fraud, with Durst searching for a recession of Limp Bizkit‘s recording contract with Flip, together with different associated label preparations in flip.
Do observe, that Staind themselves should not straight part of these authorized proceedings and don’t seem to have commented on the matter. It ought to at the least be identified nonetheless, that each one of Staind‘s studio albums from 1999’s “Dysfunction” by way of to their 2011 self-titled opus have been issued partially underneath the Flip banner as a part of preparations that label had struck with a number of different giant labels, together with Elektra and Atlantic Data.
