I rarely hear rappers talk about how they acquired their rap riches (let me finish), specifically relating to how much do they get per album sold. We always hear rappers talk about how much crack they sold or how much they are currently selling, which is all lies and exaggerations. That’s why I find it so interesting when Fat Joe (of all people) breaking down the financial aspect of selling records like we’ve never heard before.

We all know that going independent is the better route in terms of points per album [sidebar: remember Jim Jones claiming he got $7 per album], but the drawback has always been your marketing budget is not going to be as big as on a major. Therefore, this could mean less album sales but more money per album sold. Now Joey Crack has been on a tear as of late after destroying Rap City’s booth, he continues this streak when he was asked if he would ever go on to a major label again. Here’s his response,

“Never, no way, are you kidding me?! You want me to go back to slavery? Are you nuts? It’s a long story short man; I sold two million records on a major label and turned around twice, not once, twice and never seen a royalty in my life. There’s n****s that sell four million and don’t see a royalty. It’s funny math when you f**k with the majors. It’s real funny math. They give you 18 points [but] every dollar they ever spent—marketing, whatever or their event—comes out of your 18 points. What happens to the 82 points?! So then the artists turns around he sells a million records, they made six and a half million dollars off of him. And he’s lucky if they give him a half a million as an advance towards his new album, which is really half a million off the six and a half million they just made off the n***a. Please!” Source

If your lost, let me explain. Most rappers with major label deals get about .18 cents per every dollar made of their album. Now even though albums sell for $9.99 to $19.99 that doesn’t mean the artist gets 18% of that, because the retailer will usually eat up 50% of those costs. So the record label and artist take home about $5 to $10. This means the artist gets between $.90 cents and $1.80 per album.

Now the messed up part is that Joey is claiming that the label uses an artist’s points toward their marketing budget. This would mean the more you spend on your album the less you ultimately make. Consider this, the albums that sell the most, usually have budgets of over a million dollars, if you even go platinum, then you are just going to break even. In order to really cake up of album sales, you have to at least go five times platinum! Only the really great artist are doing those numbers, so its no wonder the game has produced so many ringtone rappers in the last year, because the label can recoup costs of selling the ringtone alone.