Normally artist/band gets a set percentage or rate per cd/album. In a lot of cases they may not make a penny on a single or ep. Theres not many labels who can afford to give an upfront. And theres no real money in this scene as a musician. The dollars worth fuck all in britain so even if you sold a few 1000 in america you'd still need a day job. Theres probaly 10 acts who make a living form this scene.

Your big ion this scene if you can sell a 1000 in UK big indie acts have 1000 promos cds sent out per release and sell millions... This scene is tiny in sales and punters sadly..And the labels have tiny marketing budgets very few can afford to give their artists a single/promo video...

musicians make money by having regular jobs outside of music (at least for most of this scene's music)

ive been doing bs call center jobs for 2 years now :)

1 and 2 are pretty accurate. 3 Genererally is thought to be true, but generally doesn't actually work that way (tours often don't even break even etc) so, yes, the main source of income for most musicians is: the day job. Not just in this 'scene' but across the board.

Only the largest acts ever make enough from the combination of music sales, merch sales and tour revenue not to need anothee principal source of income.

some major label deals split profits 50% - 50% ...& all expenses come out of the artists 50% ...& guess who decides how those expenses are spent? not the artist.
so usually they get handed a bill when all is said & done.

Q:How do musicians make money?

A: by having day jobs.

Only with a day job.Otherwise you can't record your music and buy new equipment,especially if you play dark electro

Q: How do musicians make money?

A: By being a bounty hunter! When i go to a club, im typically looking for a man, to sell him to another man.

-eddie
]

@viktim187: Dude... that has to win Side-Line 242 Pun of the Year... :P

The most current and correct version would be:

1. Musicians bust their asses trying to make really good music, for themselves and fans of such music and get paid jack'n'shit because lots of people feel art should be free.

The bands/musicians are in most cases the last ones who usually scrap up the remains of any leftover $ from promotions and all that stuff.

It takes time to build up a doable thing

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@Moonitor: Other options are:

1. Musician stops making own music and makes money by recording other people's music, probably from genres that actually pay. ie Hip-Hop or House (in South Africa, House music is big business)

2. Musician starts label and uses all the dirty label tricks used on him to make smashing profits off other musicians.

3. Musician gives up the dream and turns into a corporate zombie... :-/ (The most common option, I think)

OR more realistically,

1. Musician works fulltime in soun theatre business and as soel underground producer/mixer/masterer in his country.

2. Musician becomes local distro representative for foreign labels which he has an interest in and don't have distro in his area.

3. Musician uses his hard-learned lessons in the music business to bring up another promising musician from his area, and changes role from musician to manager.

4. Musician works as DJ for local clubs.

And one of the most common ones (so it's been rumoured)

5. Musician works by day as computer programmer for Bill Gates.

dayjobs suck :) just got to find a nightjob that pays as well :)

Egad! The typos! They invade!

1. ...sound theatre business and sole underground...

*note to self: Hit preview before submit!*

*waits for the flame wars to start*

This is how it works with majors:

1. Get signed.
2. Get given an interest free loan from the label to record and produce your album. And press it. And get the artwork done. Advertise it. And tour. and just about everything else you can think of relating to the album.
3. You earn nothing from album sales until your album until your loan is paid back to the label.
4. You only earn money from touring and merchandise.
5. Remember labels will still charge you for breakages, which dates back to the vinyl days, even though your release is on CD. I forget the percentage on this. Something like 15%.

A good record deal will give you 2 to 3% of the profit from CD sales.

As you can see even with major labels it's pretty hard. Harder still if the label decide once you've recorded your album they think it's shit so they refuse to release it leaving you with nothing but debt to repay for a loooooonnng time. Of course they've tied you into a contract so you can't release it anywhere else.

Small labels (i.e. scene labels) will pretty much pay for the mastering, pressing, advertising and distribution of your product. However, like the majors you won't see any money until the above costs are covered.

Again a good deal will give you anything from 2 to 5% depending on the label.

I forgot to add. The above means that most small artists have day jobs that pay enough to fund a rather expensive hobby.

Well, looks like the artists are screwed in any case.

@Toadflakz

"1. Musician stops making own music and makes money by recording other people's music, probably from genres that actually pay. ie Hip-Hop or House (in South Africa, House music is big business)"

Yeah...that can work. I wonder how much FLA make from Delerium and how much from FLA?

"2. Musician starts label and uses all the dirty label tricks used on him to make smashing profits off other musicians."

Like bands, most labels are not full time! Even big scene labels like Alfa Matrix.

"3. Musician gives up the dream and turns into a corporate zombie... :-/ (The most common option, I think)"

Why give up the dream? My dream isn't to get a major deal and become a 'rawk star'...it's to play some shows, hopefully see some of the world, sell a few records. The people who make enough money to live the life and become a big star are a tiny fraction of those you probably hear on the radio/see on MTV.



OR more realistically,

"1. Musician works fulltime in soun theatre business and as soel underground producer/mixer/masterer in his country."

There isn't much money in that either. If you get a job as a sound engineer you are lucky, I know a lot of out of work sound engineers these days! I'm trying to break into TV audio post production...it's hard.

"2. Musician becomes local distro representative for foreign labels which he has an interest in and don't have distro in his area."

Again, you aren't selling that many records. If a label is selling that many records to make a living from they probably won't be dealing with some random guy. But yeah, you can live off running a record shop. Shops might put 100% markup on the wholesale price (what they pay the label) so they tend to get the best deal out of it.

"3. Musician uses his hard-learned lessons in the music business to bring up another promising musician from his area, and changes role from musician to manager."

Most musicians ARE their own manager! If the artist can't make a living, chances are they can't afford a manager.

"4. Musician works as DJ for local clubs."

Again. Unless you are very lucky there isn't much money in it. To make a living you need to be playing 3-4 nights a week in big clubs.

And one of the most common ones (so it's been rumoured)

"5. Musician works by day as computer programmer for Bill Gates."

Yup. I think that is how most people do it. Band = serious hobby. Great if you can live off it, but the chances are you can't so you need a day job.

@Bug16

"This is how it works with majors:"

Hence most industrial bands are not with majors!

5. Remember labels will still charge you for breakages, which dates back to the vinyl days, even though your release is on CD. I forget the percentage on this. Something like 15%.

I've even heard of some labels trying to scam breakages on MP3 sales! The devil is in the detail. You don't HAVE to sign a deal like that. Chances are being an industrial band, you won't have the option anyway.

"A good record deal will give you 2 to 3% of the profit from CD sales."

O_O Profit or Gross? Even on a major that is bad! On a small label you can expect a lot better than that.

"As you can see even with major labels it's pretty hard. Harder still if the label decide once you've recorded your album they think it's shit so they refuse to release it leaving you with nothing but debt to repay for a loooooonnng time. Of course they've tied you into a contract so you can't release it anywhere else."

So don't go to a major! And again, who does? Most of the bands that have gone to majors from this scene seem to have had little success with them and gone back to smaller labels, Covenant etc. VNV have (apparently) turned down major labels several times.

"Again a good deal will give you anything from 2 to 5% depending on the label."

I don't know where you are getting that figure from!


I think in this day and age, most artists have a day job. The upper strata of scene artists can make a living full time, but most can't. Even Feindflug have day jobs. Most labels are part time. Serious, professional, but part time. Having a shop helps, but again, some are part time.

Industrial music is a niche. It is a tiny niche compared to most genres and it doesn't have a massive cross over potential, so an album that sells 10k copies has done really well.

With a rough breakdown, £12 CD from a seller. £6 wholesale which goes to the label. Then maybe 30-40% of that goes to the artist. So off 10k sales the artist, assuming they are a solo artist, might make £25k from it.

That isn't bad, but then you have to have that success every year. Most people are better off with a day job and doing it part time.

@modulate - The 2-5% depends on the label. The figure comes from my own experience, those who worked for major labels, friends at MCPS, other people I know who are signed, etc etc. I didn't just pull it out of thin air. 3% is deemed the "normal" figure.

Your costings for how much artists get from CDs is a great idea but it's just not how it works in the real world. You get the small percentage of the profit.

The label earn their money selling your CDs. You earn your money gigging and via merchandise.

That's just the way the industry works!

Industrial bands don't work with majors because majors don't think there's a market for Industrial. If there was they'd be all over it.

An album that sells 1k is doing very well, let alone 10k! It ain't 1992 anymore!

id rather keep my day job as a programmer than rely on income from music and be a poor bitch.

@imfactured - There's a saying that goes along the lines of "You'll never make any money as a musician and you'll make even less money running a label.".

For every success there are thousands of broke musicians living on a friend's couch.

It bears repeating that whil in theory bands make money from tours and merch, usually most don't come home with enough to even pay their rent without some supplemental income (day job).
The "industry" is also set up so that these tours and merch (t-shirts are wearable ads, after all) help promote music sales as well. A two-way street. Ideally, the band makes its money from all of the above, after the advance is recouped. Not an easy task, admittedly, especially with a lot of the crap majors basically demand in their contracts. Better at the indie level, but still...

I speak not only from my experience but the hundreds of artists I've worked with over the years. Seriously, only a handful ever got to the point where they didn't have to have a day job. And fewer still are able to maintain that status over the long term (i.e. as a true career.)

Lucky for me while we were on tour I could work my day job while on the road, and keep my health insurance! :)

lure in a girlfriend/wife with money.

man, I'm sick of watching mtv's "Cribs" with the rap guys flaunting their benz, yachts and 7500 sq. foot homes...do the rap groups really tour that much?

@Dan1boy - All of that is owned by the labels. Ditto most of their bling (god I hate that term).

it's all loaner crap. theyre actors in a bling bling commercial.
ever see 'the 3 amigos'? theres that scene at the beginning where they get fired from the studio & they get kicked out of the mansions, stripped of their wardrobe, ect. i'd say 90% of it is being leased by the label.

yeah its a shame that only Rappers make tons of cash for music
these days and all the poor white guys making good electronic/industrial/ metal are.... well, ...poor..its like the reverse of what it used to be which sucks for a whitey's like us...

but hey..as long as America keeps glorifying crappy rap and trends it will never change...just gotta keep working hard and play shows and do lots of networking and get your bands and labels knows as much as possible and hope this game/charade or joke of a music industry and sheeple audience dies out soon...cause its really annoying at this point...

@tommyt
I'm almost scared of the racist overtones in your comment.

But, to take your lemon and try and make something worth reading of it...
The key to raps success (rap, mind you, not hip-hop, that's a different monkey), is in the consumer model. They espouse spending money on status symbols and products which carry a reputation. Said companies have embraced this as a canvas for advertising their product to a demographic (particularly suburban kids in upper middle class income areas). The side effect is seeing Bentley's parked in Jersey Manor (section 8 housing project near where I grew up). If Industrial or Electro or Goth or any of these other categories you wish to throw out were to have the same kind of glitter, glitter to sell brand names with, you'd see men in suits at your door right this very second asking you to take their money (for the rights to use your image).
The sad thing is that this is how a lot of things work. Even sadder is that is manages to continue to work (for them) while sidelining actual talent. The key is in finding financing. For example. The big major labels, they didn't always have huge gobs of cash to throw at bands for signing. They had to get loans from banks or find rich fuckers willing to drop a ton of cash upfront and then deliver a return on that investment. And they certainly don't make their current gobs of cash from simply selling records. There are secondary contracts that they get the rights to create when they sign a band. Ever wonder how a lot of music gets into commercials? Secondary contracts from the record labels. And who gets the majority of those royalty checks? The record company first, the artist last. The artist most likely didn't broker the deal for the contract anyway. You know for a fact that Bennie Benassi didn't sit down with the Burger King (or was it Wendy's) executives and vice presidents of marketing for the use of his "Satisfaction" track in their burger commercial. The only artist I've ever heard of who manages his own music in any manner like that is Moby, and even then he's doing it to makes gobs of money for himself (or his pet charities, which ever, same difference).

Reality dictates that without capitol to start, no capitol can be gained. This is why many underground labels usually start out at front companies for drug dealers, then create sublabels to work as the cover company and then leave the drug dealing behind (of sorts). Your profits from the drug dealing are used to finance your record label, and are investments from shell companies, which launders your earnings to allow you to continue operating like a legitimate company. And after a few years, you are a legitimate company, and you "buy out" your original investors. Once that's done, you use additional shell companies to further separate your businesses. Or, you know, that's how I would have done it or something.

And with everything being a commodity, talent, artistic merit, and good old fashioned dancefloor groove are all easily available for the right price. Just because it creates a world of mediocrity and lowest common denomination holdings does not mean it does not work.

And the proper response to all these ramblings is "I find your ideas very interesting and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter."

Subscribe to this newsletter.

-eddie

product endorsements & sponsorships.
there guys get paid to wear adidas & shit.
high visibility brand association.

"Hi we're Snog & when we take the stage to mock consumerism the elite power that rules the planet under a totalitarian government that uses the media in order to keep people stupid, we use use MAC Laptops!! they're the greatest"

if a ton of expensive shit is part of your performing charachter's persona couldn't you theoretically write all that crap off as business expenses? assuming you have access to moving that much money.

@viktim187: hehe... Funny thing is I'd rather be writing video game scores than coding for a living any day! At least its working in music! And seeing as a lot of games are sci-fi orientated, it means an industrial-electronic soundtrack is what would fit... Plus the royalty contracts/profit sharing deals in video games are not like the music industry where the creator of the product gets fucked over. The 4 guys who wrote (as an example) Need For Speed Underground are all multi-millionaires now thanks to the sales of that game...

@Toadflakz - Becoming a millionaire through writing videogame soundtracks is a complete fluke. Most computer game companies no longer do percentage based royalty payments for soundtracks anymore. You just get a flat fee.

Why is this happening? Because most software houses feel that they deserve that potential extra money and not the musician.

video game soundtracks are not the path to riches. no major publisher gives out royalties anymore. if you are lucky you will make $1000 per recorded min but that's not going to buy you a bentley anytime soon. the coders that do actual 80 hour work weeks for months on end don't get royalties, so they aren't exactly eager to give them out to audio contractors

@Bug16: Well, I actually meant the programmers, as the soundtrack from NFSU was the first to feature proper commercial music featuring bands like The Lost Prophets, Rob Zombie and others, rather than custom-made compositions... ;-) It's the way the royalties were split up that made them rich. It also lead to the first of the EA Trax compilations, as the tracks they used were unique to the games, but people bombarded them for CDs of the game's music.

surprised nobody mentioned playing on street corners and tube station as a source of income..
i mean look at old Einsurzende Neubauten gig/performances.
the original Industrial Baskers

Musicians usually don't make a living off their royalties. It's simply pocket money or a bit to invest in new equipment and software. The real money is made with performing & merch sales, but even that often isn't enough to cover all your costs in this scene. Basically comes down to keeping the day job and striving to slowly minimise that as much as possible. Only a few, doing this style of music, who can truly make ends meet at the end of the day. And even that takes careful financial planning.

But who knows.. Maybe some day we'll be blingin' it up and Cristal poppin' in our pimped out SUV with our bikini hoes.

@PresMedi: ...but they'll all be pierced and wearing camo an' stuff, right?

Or it'll look like something out of Mad Max...

But..

Isn't that the music video from that one hip-hop band? The semi-Thunder-Dome ripoff thing? The track who's main hook in the chorus had vocoded vox going something like "In the city - city of *something or other* - We keep it rockin' *or some other BS*"...

@ Toadflakz: Tupac & Dr. Dre used to be all up in da club on da industrial tip, yo. Since then it's gone from klang klang to bling bling. (or bang bang in Tupac's case)

@Presmedi: Did you write that comment a real long time ago?

@ Marc: I wrote that a long tiiime ago. It's the dopest comment I ever wrote... In '94! ;)

Thug life!!

Fo real!

Thuggin', Flowin', Blingin', Drinkin' 'sall good in da hood!!

yeah

i was wondering if they paid a flat fee or royalties on video games. i just recently found out that you dont get royalties on Ring Tones, even if you create an original. you just get the flat fee that you were paid. even if you are in ascap or bmi you still dont get royalties cuz they dont collect for anything under, damn, i forget, i think it was 30 seconds in length.

-eddie

@ Viktim187 :: You just gotta beat em up, Tupac style :: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hFsS_tcrXQ . Bitch better have ya money, know whaddamsayin'?

also when a song gets played at a club, they dont get paid for that either.

Now that is a very good question actually .. if you are a member of ascap etc you should be paid a certain amount when it gets played at a club.. the club owner should be paying a set amount to the ascap for royalties.. (thats what someone else in an older thread said .. that was typically how it was done) i dont know how it is doled out to you guys.. but radio stations have to keep track of each song that is played to keep track of royalty payments.. how do clubs work? I am pretty sure legally clubs are public performances and require royalty payments...

Legally clubs, radio stations etc. are supposed to pay royalties. In reality this never or rarely happens though. But no harm done: Those are the biggest promoting/marketing places for music, so it comes back to the artist & label in the form of sales eventually. As a musician I have never seen any pay coming from radio, tv or clubs/venues, however sales have risen dramatically after it's caught on in the clubs.

Thing is that legally artists *should* be getting far more than they get. Yet sad fact is that because nobody really complies to many of the rules, there's nothing you can really do about it. Only way to see anything significant back from your music being used publicly, is when it's used by a big corporation in their TV commercial. Moby, Sting and Fat Boy Slim (to name only a few) have played their cards right and are recieving a very nice sum for this. But the chances of this happening are so unlikely. In general what it comes down to is CD sales, royalties etc. mean peanuts eventually, unless you're selling 10.000+ to 15.000+ in the first weeks/month or going silver/platinum.

you ain't getting rich off ASCAP anytime soon unless you have a lot of tracks being licensed at any given time. 15 seconds of a track used in the background of an MTV show pays about $20 per airing. you're not exactly gonna buy a bentley with that kinda money. the largest amount i've seen so far was around $1000 for a track which found it's way onto the in-store playlist of a major US mall retailer for a few months. (not exactly sure how it got there, but at least i got paid)

also, a hint to americans who are licensing their tracks to german record labels: you can actually get money from GEMA! it is very very slow, and somewhat painful, but basically you can affiliate (for free) with the Harry Fox agency and they will pursue mechanicals on your behalf. it took two years (!) for them to complete the processing on the last request i submitted, but they eventually got me around $1200 USD. and this was a record on a "scene" label, not even a major.

@ Dr Chop

What band are you in?

Just wondering.

Ron1n

@drchop: Was just about to mention GEMA and their uber-strictness with applying the rules... They insist on playlists from clubs, if not, you get blacklisted. They also help regulate club gigging fees and portions of door takes, etc. (Biggest paying gig we ever had was playing in Frankfurt). Again, if you don't comply you get blacklisted... Where GEMA has gone wrong has been in going overboard on things like pursuing their own artists for royalties for MP3s of registered tracks they've released on the internet (for promotional use) or hounding their artists who have more than 30s of sample MP3 on their websites... Dummies. :-/

Equipment endorsements pay... If you can get one... I think Access and Korg probably gets bombarded with requests... ;-)

I'll have to check up on GEMA, ASCAP, MCPS etc.

In the UK the PRS/MCPS conduct surveys of clubs and then pay royalties out based on that. It's a complete scam to be honest. In 10 years of DJ'ing I've been sampled 3 times...and they stayed for 2 hours peak set. I think you can guess where this leads? While every club needs a music license, only a few get sampled, so underground artists aren't getting on the sample lists, and aren't getting any money. Where does that money go? To the artists who are getting played peak set in mainstream clubs.

I can see the GEMA idea of setlists being a hassle, and that is going to take a lot of time, hours and money to compile. I don't know if in the end it would be much better, simply because the administration costs of doing that for every licensed venue must be horrendous.

"I am pretty sure legally clubs are public performances and require royalty payments..."

technically clubs are private performances. hence the cover charge where you pay your club member dues.

the whole industry is built on not paying artists.

Is that the loophole that clubs use to not pay? Yuck.

I, for years, was alwyas under the (informed, I thought, by folks who would know) impression that clubs pay a generic fee to ascap, bmi and the like, and that money goes into a 'pool' that is disseminated based on things like record/cd sales and airplay numbers. Which still isn't truely equitable, but at least maybe sometimes some deserving artists get some money for club play. Same, apparently goes for covers, when a band does one that's what that fee is supposed to contribute to. The band sure isn't paying the mechanicals when they perform another artist's song live, like they have to if they release a recording of it.

Hmmm... gotta talk to my lawyer about these issues sometime, if for nothing but curiosity.

It's quite interesting to hear that clubs *should* pay a royalty fee for playing artists' work (something I was unaware of before). Does this mean that clubs can charge a (posisbly equal) amount to the bands for advertising and promotion?

Heres something else really weird, about mp3s. I buy all those dance music magazines from the uk and apparently a 'big name Dj' they didnt say who, but someone from the UK equivilant of ASCAP rolled up on him in the DJ booth, and he got fined for playing burns of cds at a club.

really weird, this was a couple years ago, its in an old issue i have. anybody know if that is still something that could happen in todays itunes age? can a dj get in trouble for burned cds? or how about the ipod djs?

-eddie

At this point, it would be pretty stupid to give any DJ troubles for having burned CDs. I mean, sure these CDR doesn't look as nice, but who knows that I either get the songs from iTunes or the band themselves. Those 9.90 Euro albums happen to be quite cool when you have to buy a few dozens.

Back on the topic, do bands get as much money from the sales of a full album over iTunes compared to the cd being sold in a retail store?

for radio/tv/etc play, ASCAP is actually a big pool... all the money goes into a pot and then there is a formula that determines how much you get. each play turns into X "credits" and the value of a credit consantly changes depending on how much total money is in the pool

mathieu: depends on their contract. if they are dealing with itunes directly (or through their own 3rd party), around 60%. if they're on a label which owns their digital rights, they're at the mercy of their label...

Being a musician is a give and take situation really.

I belive in good Karma; Give all you got and if you have talent, enough desire and some luck, good stuff will happen.

I've found this thread really interesting. Not being a musician myself - i don't have the personal experience you guys do, but i have friends in the local music scene, and listen to plenty of bands in the electro/industrial genre. I do however spin lots of music on my college radio show. I was told that we paid a certain fee/royalty to GEMA or BMI or other organization to cover it b/c we were a small station. Even then i assumed none of the bands i was playing would see a dime b/c it was based on playlists. So. if Fall Out Boy (remember its a college station) was played 15 times ne week - they would get something - but if i played Einsturzende/Lexincrypt/wumpscut/Ambassador 21/etc. i know they'll get jack
- but that doesn't mean i feel i owe them - i wish they could make $ - and i support any gig that comes near me - but i hope they wouldn't mind me playing their tracks on air - i'm helping them out.

it's would take many armies to enforce all the copyright laws. you'd need a trained media lawyer to follow around every person on the planet all day to track all the infringements. it's completely unrealistic. i'm sure if a club is big enough & consistantly makes a shitload of money then it's gonna attract some attention from the people in control of licensing & maybe get a visit from a lawyer wanting a cut. but most clubs lose money so it's not worth someone who could be billing hundreds of $ an hour to even look into them.
even then the way the laws are written are shakey, arguable & the ability to enforce them varies across the planet.

@Mathieu;

I agree, but if you see it from the other side, being the artist and being asked to sign a CD-R and stuff like that. It is a sore toe situation. I am aware people buy tunes legally on iTunes and all that, which is cool, but then you have the dark side of it, so it is hard to know whether this DJ got it legally or not, thats really not the point though, it is a matter of trust and respect.

@Dj.Kraut;

Radioplay is a two side story. As an artist I really appreciate any radio station or person with his online radio, collage radio etc to play any of my music.
But it is your responsibility to write down playlists and send them to places like ASCAP and other mechanical royalty companies.
Then again, depending on what type of radio you are doing, you may or may not have to pay to play. But as long as you have playlists and all that whether they get paid or not is then not your consern really, then it becomes the bands collecting companies/ publishers to do their job.
If you are not sure the best thing would be to either contact the bands label or publisher or somewhere in that line to get info.

@Stevil;

Yeah it is pretty much "impossible" to keep track of it all, then again you dont want to over control.
Bigger clubs, radiostations etc, should know better than trying to sneak away from a few bucks here and there.
Then it all becomes just a bad circle in which nobody takes the blame for.

I dont think labels should attack people more informing the fans and customers and work on the ethics and morality, although in some cases good luck.

I reflects the world as it is today.

@Moonitor: If police in SA see you have burned CDs on you as a DJ, they ask for the original CD cover OR the iTunes receipt. If you don't have it you get fined R200 (about 20 Euro) per CD, but you can insist that they follow you back to your house to show them the covers/receipts.

I know with the more commercial bands, labels pay radio stations to play their bands more often for the exposure it generates. By law here in SA, every public place of business that plays music is supposed to have a music license and pay their fees. However, due to lack of enforcement, this doesn't happen.

Not to be obvious but what about all the kidz using a hard drive and traktor .. if using cd-rs is illegal shouldn't using traktor be illegal, since the hard drive is basically just a giant cd-r of music in the even worse mp3 format?

Next to cars i can't think of a better legal rationale for having cd-rs than djing at a club.. in a club environment they can get scratched, stolen, spilled beer on.. how much better is it to use a copy that you can haul from place to place but keep the original pristine at home?

Before someone says .. well you should use the real cd in public and the backup copy as an actual backup copy.. let me point out the other obvious fact that no one likes to talk about. The *backup copy* cd-r is not a proper backup copy as if the original is stolen it is automatically assumed that the cd-r is a illegal copy. The cd-r *can not* function as a backup. i.e. if your cd collection is knicked, and so you break out your backups from the basement, if you ever get busted, they will assume those cd-rs are copies since there are no originals anywhere. Its *much* better to keep the originals as backups and haul cd-rs around, because if those get stolen, broken, scratched, you can always make another cd-r of the original and you are back to where you started, w/ proof you have the original cds.