Mick, music, money

On the heels of the Exile on Main St.’s reissue, Mick Jagger basically tells BBC news that he doesn’t expect to make a fortune off royalties anymore. And he has one of the best perspectives on the post-material media market I’ve heard. This from an old timer.

But I have a take on that — people only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn’t make any money out of records because record companies wouldn’t pay you! They didn’t pay anyone!

Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone.

So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there was a 25 year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the time they didn’t.