The "cutout bin"

[TheH]

We funny Europeans also don't have these sticky seals on CDs.

[trurl]

We funny Europeans also don't have these sticky seals on CDs.

Those are directly ordained by Satan.

[GuitarGeek]

- Tax write-off -- Many cutout artists were doomed to failure because the reasons they were signed to begin with had more to do with showing a loss for the record company than earning them money

So that actually does happen (or used to anyway). I knew I had heard in various places that kind of stuff happened, but a certain indie record person who is present on this forum (who shall remain nameless) insisted it wasn't true.

[Adrian]

So that actually does happen (or used to anyway). I knew I had heard in various places that kind of stuff happened, but a certain indie record person who is present on this forum (who shall remain nameless) insisted it wasn't true.

I've heard it suggested that this is what happened to Echolyn. They got the Sony contract, but Sony did nothing to promote them and dropped them after one album, making for a nice tax write-off for Sony.

[trurl]

This was the story going around for The Producers as well. We always heard that they screwed up the record label by accidentally starting to get successful and really had to be super under-promoted. Who knows, probably not really true but in the world of labels anything's possible.

[klothos]

This was also the proposed story for Florida's Stranger in the early 80s when they were signed to Epic which is why I mentioned it.....for anybody familiar with Stranger, they became a SouthEast US Phenom after that first and only album on that label which seemed to go Directly to the CutOut Bin/ Do Not Pass "Go"/ Do not Collect $200... and, following that album, were making a very fine living for that region and releasing all sunsequent albums independently...they were offered another Major label deal with a diff label (forgot which one) almost 8 years later of which they refused, having been bitten once

[Progbear]

I'm assuming the artists didn't earn a penny from cutouts. I remember a lot of PASSPORT label albums in the local bin.

I believe Passport (and earlier, Billingsgate) royally screwed over the European artists whose albums they distributed in the States. Lucifer’s Friend were, I believe, the biggest-selling German band in the US before the release of Kraftwerk’s Autobahn. John Lawton claims that the band didn’t earn a single penny from their US record sales.

[strawberrybrick]

In the 90s CDs were not necessarily cut-out, but rather returned, from stores and distributors back to the label. This was the beginning of the death of the music industry. Many a label sunk when this happened.

[Reid]

I'm assuming the artists didn't earn a penny from cutouts. I remember a lot of PASSPORT label albums in the local bin.

That's how I discovered Brand X. Passport went belly up, and the remaining stock went to the cut out bins.

[rcarlberg]

Brand X might be he quintessential loss-leader tax-writeoff band.