Screwed by the Network/Music

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Music that mentions being Screwed by the Network include:

I am the entertainer; I come to do my show
You've heard my latest record, it's been on the radio
Ah, it took me years to write it, they were the best years of my life
It was a beautiful song, but it ran too long
If you're gonna have a hit you gotta make it fit
So they cut it down to 3:05.

Examples of Music that was Screwed by the Network include:

  • They Might Be Giants had the full support of the executives for their first three albums on Elektra Records (Flood, Apollo 18, and John Henry). But while they were recording Factory Showroom, Elektra's parent company fired all the executives and the replacements didn't care for TMBG. As a result, Factory Showroom received almost no promotion when it was released, and the band asked to be released from their contract shortly after that.
  • This happens a great deal with many recording artists who find that, either because of cost-cutting measures or a perception of the general public's lost interest in them by the higher-ups, their new releases aren't being promoted, then the albums aren't being distributed properly, then they're cut from their recording contract. EMI Records sent a huge percentage of their talent roster packing in the late 1990s - early 2000s because it was hemorrhaging money at the time, so a lot of artists who before found a lot of support from EMI ended up signing with considerably less supportive record companies, who screwed them over.
  • One of the most notorious and tragic musical examples was Big Star. They might have actually been big stars if their albums hadn't been distributed by the crumbling Stax label.
  • After Splashdown's first album Redshift rapidly sold out, the band made a new album called Blueshift. For reasons that remain mysterious, Capitol Records refused to release the album, but also retained copyright so that Splashdown could not release the album with another record company. Years later, the only way to hear those songs is through illegal downloading thanks to an internal leak. Splashdown split up due to fears that Capitol Records would retain copyright of any of their future songs.
  • Country Music artist Darryl Worley has been screwed over by having not one, not two, but three different labels close unexpectedly on him. First DreamWorks Records in 2005 (the abrupt closure of which also killed off several other artists, some of whom were brand-new); then independent 903 Music in 2007; then another independent, Stroudavarious, in 2010.
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