Honestly that video is one of the most impressive and creative guitar videos I have seen in years. I wonder if he will perform it live…
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I’m going to see him in Dublin in a few week, it would be cool to see this live.
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Vai’s a bit of an outlier, as I recall, though.
Details are a little fuzzy, but I think it was Frank Zappa (could have been Roth, but I’m pretty sure it was Zappa) who gave him a crash course on the business side of this industry, and in particular publishing rights and contract negotiation. If I remember right, when working on Passion and Warfare, he did manage to hold onto the publishing rights to the songs, and he managed to get something like $1 a copy for the publishing rights, an unheard of amount for an artist at the time, but something the label was ok to chance because no one there expected an instrumental album to go anywhere… Something like a million album sales later, Vai didn’t have to worry about any more.
Which was nice. You know. One less thing.
Flex-Able was self published and sold something like 400,000 copies after he joined DLR.
He’s the owner of his own label. He also earns royalties on every JEM and RG sold.
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That very might have been the one I was thinking of, like I said this is pretty fuzzy.
I understand this was also a large part of why he started Favored Nations, to give artists he believed in a (somewhat - let’s be honest) more equitable shot under a record contract.
Vai has always been like this. Instrumental excess, showoff virtuosity, crazy sound shaping, weird taste and quirky unique ideas.
Everyone can have a different opinion on musical taste and style, but Vai’s been at a consistent super high level with pretty much all aspects of his playing throughout his career: technique, productivity, creativity, performance, enthusiasm.
He’s suffered a pretty debilitating injury in his picking hand and can’t speed pick like he used to in the 80’s-90’s, but has adapted his technique to use more legato, and still sounds great. Compared to Yngwie, Vai has evolved his style and adapted to changing styles while still being himself- and his technique is cleaner and more polished.
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I saw him in Dublin in 2000 on the Ultra Zone tour. It was pretty amazing hearing him live and he put on a very entertaining show. He had the Heart guitar with him for Fever Dream - really cool seeing that in the flesh.
I saw him in 2005 for the Real Illusions tour. He had Billy Sheehan and Tony MacAlpine in that tour. It was awesome.
I’ve always wondered how much an artist makes per unit for a album sale. I used to think probably they get half so like $5 per unit but it’s probably more like $1.
Of course this will differ per artist and contract etc.
I always think of Kurt who got a couple of million from Nevermind and that sold like 9 million units at the time. And he was the writer of the songs too so would of got more than the other members.
Does anyone know what an average contract looks like, or what it looked like back in the 90s maybe.
Breaking it down to performing, writing, publishing.
I guess there are bonuses involved as well if the album goes Gold or Platinum maybe.
Honestly, I’m pretty sure we’re talking pennies on the dollar. Tough to find good sources on line, and most have an agenda (alternate distribution channels, recording royalty groups, etc) but this one seems pretty neutral:
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It’s reasons like this that I have the utmost respect for ANYONE who can make a living in the music industry as a performing artist. It is really hard. My band and I dedicated about 7 years in the early 2000’s (right when the industry was upended). We formed an LLC, bought a van, recruited friends to help us with roadie and promo stuff, paid consultants to help market us, took out ads in music mags, played shows every weekend and whatever weeknight we could, did regional tours, paid for several really pro sounding studio albums and EP’s. We never even broke even, and certainly got nowhere near the point we could quit our day jobs and just do music (even though it was a near full time job on its own for all of us). I fully realize our story is not unique and we are in good company among the tens of thousands lol!
Whether it’s a band a lot of us might say is mediocre (hopefully under our breath, because we’re all nice, right??? 
) , or an amazing virtuoso like Vai, if an artist can do it full time for decades and make a living doing just music, they have worked their ass off. Even if they got a lucky break or new someone to get their foot in the door. It’s a really hard life. So they get my respect. I’ll never accuse anyone of selling out
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After seeing the pain he had to go through doing the transcription work for Frank Zappa I would say I don’t know he didn’t go bald like Joe Satriani. 
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Sounds a lot like my band’s experience in the mid 2000s. Although we did a ton of gigs locally we hardly got paid at all and it was hard work but fun, an expensive hobby at the end of the day.
We really needed to move to London or somewhere big because we live in the “country” so that was against us from the start.
Working 9 to 5 then after work driving en mass to play in a town 50 miles away to support a shitty emo band or do a battle of the bands and not being paid, started to feel like too much hard work after a few years.
So yeh I respect all artists and wonder how they do it. Requires a lot of commitment and work and support from friends and family I think.
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I find it really sad that art, the main thing that enriches our existence, is viewed so flippantly. Once you are fed and housed… then what? Just keep working for food like an animal?
It’s ridiculous to me, art is food for our soul so to speak, something that makes life worth living, and it’s just raped of all it’s energy.
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Making money as a musician is very interesting to me and tons of other folks who would love to do that - my life path led to stepping away from music pretty much entirely for a good chunk of time and working in software - and I am well compensated, I like the problem solving aspects, but it’s not like my life’s greatest passion.
I also have a fair amount of downtime working from home, and I write, practice and think about possible plans to launch a (maybe if I’m lucky) modestly lucrative social media presence along with some teaching if I go about it right.
I see a random set of guitarists get a few hundred thousand subs on youtube etc. - they probably do alright, but it’s obviously a constant hustle on multiple fronts getting there and maintaining an audience, thinking of ways to grow it like a business.
On the flip side, like you’re saying - I’ve seen that being moderately popular early on and performing isn’t going to cut it at all. One of my best friends is the lead guitarist for a metal/metalcore band (go check them out, they’re still somewhat active) that still gets 20k monthly listens on spotify, and another buddy of mine was in another metalcore band that was on Vans Warped Tour and gets 35k listeners on spotify monthly. Neither of them are making money on that right now AFAIK. Not sure what album sales looked like back in the day.
I probably won’t ever tour at this point, maybe I would have had a shot if I hand’t jumped ship from music and focused on career shit, but I still really would like to build a partial income and online presence from music, and maybe someday be able to transition to working part time in each. But I think it requires a lot of planning and luck, and a lot of thinking about approaches to draw an audience (and their money) beyond just performance.
I look at someone like @Troy as an example of outside the box approach, and I know for a fact it took him a long time to build up because I remember his youtube channel from when I was in high school and it was just him in front of a camera with long hair.
Same here. When the music career tanked I went to the library and got some books out about good careers. Software was in the top 5 in each book I read so I thought “ah, I’ll do that”. Problem is…I’m not very smart and had no prior software experience so I had to work really hard to get into the industry. Great move though, I have zero regrets The little bit of touring I did was all I needed to know it wasn’t for me lol!
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It’s a good gig! I’ve been trying to get my friend to follow the same route since he asked me about IT, he’s currently in sales and hates it and is a smart guy and sufficiently neurotic to think of what might go wrong, sufficiently personable to understand how people might use something, and smart enough to learn music theory/composition in college (for a while anyway) so I figure he’s a pretty good abstract thinker - and day to day I’m pretty sure those components are all you need to do well in it. Plus I’m willing to, and enjoy teaching friends.
Not surprising a lot of forum members are in tech since from what I can tell since it’s a technically involved guitar forum - so kind of a magnet for nerds on the internet with enough disposable time and income to invest time in practicing and money in gear.
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Eh, devil’s advocate, I’d rather have art made by people doing it for love than art made by people doing it because they think it’ll make them rich.
I’m not an artist that anyone should give the slightest insert-favorite-obscenity-here about, but I find it pretty liberating to be able to write the music I want to listen to, without having to worry about whether it’ll sell or get on the radio or get me a contract extension or an endorsement deal or anything, because I have a day job that allows me to do this for the sheer fact it makes me happy.
Maybe that isn’t the worst thing, you know?
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I agree with you, tho I would say if you commission a painting you’ll get a much better one if you pay well vs asking for it for free, no matter how much the person loves painting.
Seems to be a lot of software guys on here and in general I have come across lots of guitarists in my software career I wonder why that is.
Of course most of them are broken men, after giving up their guitar playing dreams to write code 9 to 5 but hey that’s life !
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