Ledger

The finance lectures they don't teach in school
Pure alpha, zero noise
DM for any business

[Ledger @ledgerlyx]

@MadCrash_X yep. the % was left blank and the other side wrote in 10. it went to 49% only after the first wave sold

[Ledger @ledgerlyx]

The Beatles' manager gave away 90% of the money made from their faces. For the first five months of Beatlemania in America, each Beatle's share came to $10,275.

In February 1964 one wig company had orders for over 300,000 Beatle wigs, at $2.98 each.

In the video below, a man from the manager's own company calls it "an extraordinary deal." Then Brian Epstein denies there is any commercial machine, and Paul McCartney explains why nobody asked for more.

Epstein's lawyer, David Jacobs, had handed merchandising to Nicky Byrne, a nightclub owner who had never sold any.

In December 1963 the contract arrived with the percentage left blank. "Oh, look, just put in 10%," Byrne said. Epstein signed.

Byrne's U.S. statement for February to June 1964 said $79,624 was owed. After taxes and Epstein's 25% commission, that left $10,275 per Beatle.

In August their share rose to 49%. In December Epstein sued. Woolworth's and J.C. Penney cancelled orders worth a reported $78 million.

It settled before Epstein died in 1967. Decades later McCartney said: "He could have asked for that. But I just don't think any of us knew about that then."

In 1962 the Beatles opened for Little Richard, the man who sold Tutti Frutti for $50. Two years later they were the bigger name with the worse deal.

Was it theft, or did nobody in 1963 know what a Beatle was worth?

Tomorrow: the star who called his record deal slavery in court.

[Ledger @ledgerlyx]

@n3r4 the us stopped making half cents in 1857, a hundred years before tutti frutti. and the problem wasn't the coin, it was the rate

[Ledger @ledgerlyx]

Little Richard sold the rights to Tutti Frutti for $50. Elvis recorded it. Pat Boone outsold him with it. Michael Jackson ended up owning it.

His own records paid him half a cent a copy.

In the video below, he walks onto the Grammy stage in 1988 to present Best New Artist and reads out his own name. Then he explains where the money went.

He signed with Specialty Records in 1955. Black artists of that era often got no royalties at all. White artists got 3 to 5%.

"Whoever heard of cutting a penny in half," he said later.

The label's owner, Art Rupe, paid him that $50. From then on, the label owned his song.

His Tutti Frutti hit No. 2 on the R&B chart, the one most white listeners never saw. Boone's version went higher on the pop chart.

In 1984 he sued for $112 million in unpaid royalties. It settled out of court. The terms were never made public.

A year later Michael Jackson bought the ATV catalog, and Little Richard's songs came with it.

He never won a competitive Grammy. In 1993 the Academy gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Forty years after Tutti Frutti, TLC sold 10 million albums and filed for bankruptcy. Same business, new decade.

Was he robbed, or was half a cent the going rate for a Black artist in 1955?

Tomorrow: a bigger name and a worse contract.

[Ledger @ledgerlyx]

@impalergeneral and the hall of fame agreed, he was in the very first class in 1986 next to elvis and chuck berry

[Ledger @ledgerlyx]

@phifer_corey heard that too. if it's true, mj did in one move what the industry wouldn't do for 30 years

[Ledger @ledgerlyx]

@ScottBratek maybe, but the man was 55 and still waiting on his first grammy. i'd read my own name too

[Ledger @ledgerlyx]

@avoidextremes 2 minutes long tho, so $50 is a great hourly rate

[Ledger @ledgerlyx]

@BKALENGA right, the beatles songs were the prize and little richard came along as a bonus. kind of poetic since paul learned that "wooo" from him in the first place

[Ledger @ledgerlyx]

@hedgemindx a trust you can't touch until 35, and a gym with your name on the door. both sound like saving for her future. neither one was money she could actually spend

[Ledger @ledgerlyx]

@brownchr014 that's the catch though. those hotels and flights weren't covered, they were charged back to TLC's share. the label fronted it and then paid itself back first

[Ledger @ledgerlyx]

TLC were so broke they couldn't afford to file for bankruptcy. They borrowed $15,000 each from the NFL star whose mansion Left Eye had burned down.

That was 1995. CrazySexyCool was on its way to 10 million copies.

In the video below, they explain it backstage at the Grammys with two awards in their hands. Then T-Boz tells what they did at Clive Davis's office.

Their 1991 contract paid about 56 cents per album, split three ways. Before they saw any of it, the label took back the cost of recording, videos, promotion, hotels and clothes.

By the Los Angeles Times' estimate, the albums brought in about $175 million. TLC got roughly 1%.

Their manager was Pebbles. Her husband, L.A. Reid, ran their label. The two sides of their contract went home to the same house.

On July 3, 1995, they filed for Chapter 11 with $3.5 million in debts. The loan came from Andre Rison, Left Eye's boyfriend, a year after the fire.

"You can sell ten million albums and be broke if you have greedy people behind you," Left Eye said at the Grammys.

Then they went to Arista, took every TLC plaque off the walls and handed them out in the neighborhood. Police didn't arrest them.

The settlement freed them from Pebbles' company. Their next album, FanMail, debuted at No. 1.

Was TLC robbed, or was that how a record deal worked in 1991?

[Ledger @ledgerlyx]

@bishopfromjewse true, but their manager was married to the head of their label. hard to read the fine print when your own side wrote it

[Ledger @ledgerlyx]

@CindyCharatan pretty much what left eye said backstage that night. "greedy people behind you." the wild part is they were in their early 20s when they signed it

[Ledger @ledgerlyx]

@PurpleKingTony yep, 56 cents per album for the whole group. split three ways that's under 19 cents each, on a CD that sold for around $15. and the label took its costs back out of that first

[Ledger @ledgerlyx]

@exastrissci and the craziest part, they still had to borrow money from andre rison just to file the bankruptcy papers

[Ledger @ledgerlyx]

@IvsEl90820 fun detail though, they didn't write No Scrubs. Kandi Burruss and Tiny did. and the scrubs in that story were the contracts, not the men

[Ledger @ledgerlyx]

@conquer3r independent all day. they basically proved it too, their 2017 album was funded by fans on kickstarter instead of a label

[Ledger @ledgerlyx]

@hedgemindx this is why the coogan law exists. california has made studios set aside 15% of a kid's pay in a blocked trust since 2000. corey was about 15 years too early for it

[Ledger @ledgerlyx]

@lucreqq and it didn't stop at the tour. three albums came after it, the last one weeks before he died. did you catch any of those shows?

[Ledger @ledgerlyx]

Leonard Cohen thought he had more than $5 million saved for retirement. In 2004 he checked. About $150,000 was left. His manager had been running his money for 17 years.

In 1994 he moved into a Zen monastery on Mount Baldy. Kelley Lynch ran the business while he was gone.

In 2001 he sold more of his song rights to Sony for $8 million. The money went into a company. On paper she owned 99.5% of it. He owned 0.5%.

He later said he never needed to sell. Those rights had been paying him about $400,000 a year.

A forensic audit estimated that about $8.4 million had disappeared. He mortgaged his house to pay the lawyers. He said he had taken "every precaution except to question the fidelity of my closest associates."

In 2006 a court ordered her to pay him $9.5 million. She never paid.

So at 73 he cancelled his retirement. He went back on tour, played more than 370 concerts, and within a year had more money than ever before.

In 2012 she got 18 months in prison for harassing him. In court he thanked her "for insisting on a jury trial."

In the video below, he walks onto a London stage in 2008. It was his first tour in 15 years.

Was he robbed, or did he hand one person the keys for 17 years and stop checking?