Musicians are huge celebrities.
Their music is everywhere, their faces are everywhere, and their lives are seemingly
perfect at all times.
But there's a lot more going on in a musician's life and career.
Here are some secrets musicians would rather you didn't know about them.
Phony artistic cred Most musicians want you to think they write
songs by themselves, or at least played a very heavy part in creating them.
The sad truth is, many write next to nothing, and their byline exists simply for the artist
to get paid.
Oftentimes, the singer merely contributes one or two words, which technically makes
them a co-writer.
Sometimes, they don't even bother with that much effort.
Songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk accused Avril Lavigne of writing little that she's been
credited for.
She later walked those claims back, but it's a little late for that.
Then there's Lauryn Hill, who got sued by the songwriting team that helped her put together
1998's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.
Her label credited Hill as writing most everything by herself, which the lawsuit claimed simply
was not the case.
They later settled out of court, but smoke suggests fire.
Fake personas Few things hurt a musician's reputation more
than not being perceived as real or genuine, so many stars craft a persona that makes them
seem more real, even though doing so makes them fake as can be.
This happens in all genres, from country stars pretending to be down-to-Earth regular folk
to metal bands pretending to be dark and evil.
Slayer acts like death-obsessed maniacs, when in truth their singer is a practicing Catholic.
Fake personas may be most egregious in hip-hop, a genre obsessed with realness.
Take someone like Rick Ross, a former prison guard named William Roberts, who reinvented
himself as an ex-cocaine boss.
In truth, he "borrowed" that origin story from an actual drug dealer named Rick Ross.
The real Ross sued the fake Ross for $10 million, which proved unsuccessful because apparently
impersonation of a drug dealer is not a crime.
Rapper Akon also got caught lying about his past, when The Smoking Gun revealed his backstory
of being the kingpin of a car theft ring and serving years in prison was an outright lie.
It was just another tall tale designed to sell albums and tickets.
Making ends meet If your goal is to make money from music,
here's a reality check: It's probably not gonna happen.
Thanks to downloading and streaming, virtually no musicians make money simply from writing,
recording, and releasing music.
Instead, be prepared to make your fortune through many other routes, some of which aren't
glamorous in the least.
Plenty of musicians make their money by touring, but for many that simply isn't enough.
That's why you see so many pop stars shilling their own lines of perfume and cologne, clothing
lines, or anything else beyond a simple T-shirt with the artist's picture on it.
They don't really care if you smell good - they just want to pay their bills.
Songwriters vs streaming The rise of streaming, and the decline of
people willing to pay anything for music, has affected musicians greatly.
But what they're going through is nothing compared to those who've been most devastated
by the lack of funds: the song writers.
If your only job is to write songs for other people to sing, you might as well do that
for free at this point.
According to Pacific Standard, songwriters are among the only people in the industry
who've never formed a legitimate union, so the internet age has hit them the hardest.
They can expect to make, if they're lucky, about half a penny per stream of a song they
wrote.
Songwriter Andre Lindal, who wrote Justin Bieber's smash hit "As Long As You Love Me,"
made a mere $218 off 34 million YouTube hits in the song's first year of release.
Over on Pandora, despite 38 million streams of the song, he pocketed a paltry $278.
Fake beefs Most musician "feuds" are about as genuine
as pro wrestling feuds, cooked up to sell albums or simply to remind everyone the musicians
exist.
50 Cent and Kanye West had a long-running beef, but to hear fellow hip-hopper Reverend
Run tell it, they were acting from the start.
The two often released music around the same time so, according to Run, their squabbling
existed entirely to promote their work.
Remember Beyonce's sister Solange Knowles confronting Jay-Z in an elevator, perhaps
as revenge for Jay cheating on Bey?
Well, according to the ladies' father, Matthew Knowles, that was staged melodrama from the
start.
There was a tour coming up, so the clan staged what the elder Knowles called a "Jedi mind
trick," which got everybody in the news, boosted tour exposure, and increased Solange's album
sales by over 200 percent.
Fake feuds can also introduce us to new people.
In the '90s, teen R&B sensations Brandy and Monica were known for their feud.
Years later, Monica admitted to a radio station that the drama was a label-authored storyline,
cooked to launch them into the spotlight.
Apparently, it wasn't enough to pretend-feud over a boy in a duet - they had to actually
feud to truly sell the song.
Deeply indebted Not only is it hard to make a living as a
musician as is, being a rock star often means being deeply in debt to your label almost
literally from the start.
Courtney Love penned an essay for Salon in 2000, outlining how inevitable it is for a
musician to fall into debt.
Basically, the label gives an artist an advance, spending a certain amount to record an album,
then the rest goes to management, lawyers, taxes, and finally themselves.
It's possible to be advanced a million dollars and see under 50 grand of it.
Not to mention, you'll need to pay back that advance.
Not the reason most artists want to go on tour.
It's not just Love - in 2008, EMI sued 30 Seconds To Mars for $30 million.
But according to the band, EMI never paid them any royalties.
Meanwhile, country star Lyle Lovett told Billboard in 2008 he's earned no money from selling
4.6 million albums in his career.
If you want to make money in music, actually creating and playing the music clearly isn't
the route to take.