‘American Idol’ winner under contract
The “American Idol” winner, and probably the runner-up too, most likely have buckets of cash in their futures. They just have to play their cards right.
The catch is, Forbes reports that the contracts that the show’s creator locks contestants into are not ideal, and the company takes a much bigger cut than a company giving a quick payday loan.
Money problems
Anyone who competes to be the “American Idol” winner on the show, regardless of how far along they get, must sign a contract saying that Simon Fuller’s company, 19 entertainment, has “first dibs on signing them to recording contracts, which though famously secretive are widely regarded as the stingiest in the music industry,” according to Forbes.
Fuller also gets a cut of every CD, endorsement, TV, movie or T-shirt bearing the likeness of his Idol charges. (Fuller’s 19 Entertainment was bought out in 2005 by CKX for $174 million in cash and stock.) While managers traditionally enjoy a 15% or so cut of a performer’s contract, 19 Entertainment reportedly takes as much as 50%.
Breaking away
Many previous “American Idol” winners have discovered that their record contracts were, indeed, not to their liking. One contestant, Mario Vazquez, even bailed on the show after becoming a finalist because he thought he’d be better off without the “American Idol” machine.
After Kelly Clarkson’s first album,” Breakaway,” went mutiplatinum she severed her contract with 19 Entertainment. Clarkson would still be rolling in the dough if she’d kept her contract, what with her endorsement deals with Ford, Proactiv, Vitamin Water and Candie’s.
Plenty of cash to go around
Luckily for the show’s judges and Fox television network, “American Idol” has been a huge moneymaker. From a 2007 article in Forbes:
Fox’s annual populist extravaganza, American Idol, currently in its sixth season, is arguably the most lucrative show on the air, boasting some of the highest advertising and product placement rates on television. Fox purportedly pays snarky judge Simon Cowell at least $30 million a year for his presence on the show.
Since season six, the show has only grown more popular, and this year season eight has garnered its fair share of attention. As long as the “American Idol” winner follows in the footsteps of Clarkson and Clay Aiken by figuring a way out of their 19 Entertainment contracts, he’ll be a rich, rich man.
Not the “American Idol” winner
The runner-up has a good chance at fame and fortune, too. Aiken has sold nearly 5 million records, putting him in third place for albums sold among Idol contestants, including the “American Idol” winners.
Chris Daughtry has also beaten out all of the “American Idol” winners, aside from Clarkson and Carrie Underwood, by selling 4.5 million albums. Daughtry wasn’t even a runner-up. He came in fourth place on season five.
No need to worry
Despite Forbes’ concerns regarding the 19 Entertainment contracts, I am sure the “American Idol” winner will have plenty of money to play with. If the contract is, in fact, unfair, previous Idols have shown that they can be terminated.
It’s a great show for a great cause. These people are given an opportunity to shine just by doing what they love doing the most. It really doesn’t matter if they were not given a choice as to which recording company they can sign up with. They are given a chance, a once in a lifetime opportunity, to take their lives and careers to a whole ‘nother level. The only real choice they have is to either take it or leave it.
Recording contracts aren’t a guarantee of enormous fortune, and in a lot of cases, record labels end up making more than the artist off of the what the artist produced. Ritchie Blackmore, the former Deep Purple guitarist said that a musician should “Learn three chords, then find a bloody good lawyer!” and there’s an element of real truth to it. For instance, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s back catalog is nearly entirely owned by their record label, Fantasy, and their owner, Saul Zaentz. After he left the label, he got sued in the 80s for writing a song that sounded too much like CCR – in other words, he got sued for sounding like HIMSELF. (Can’t make this stuff up.) Aerosmith only owns a small stake in their songs from the 70s and 80s, Black Sabbath’s songs from the 70s with Ozzy have a similar arrangement with their former manager Don Arden, etc, and these are all from songs that the record label did not write, play, or take into the studio. And that’s just rock ‘n’ roll – country is a whole other can of worms. Waylon Jennings had to fight tooth and nail to pick what songs he got to record and the band that played on his records with his label boss, Chet Atkins; Willie Nelson went without a label for years for the same reason, even though he’d already written top 10 hits for Patsy Cline, Roger Miller, and Ray Price. Artists get screwed – and they are the people who CREATE the thing that makes them successful and famous. It’s like the novel The Fountainhead, in which the creator gets robbed by the parasitic collective.