Is turnover the barometer of “Worth”?

Rich Huxley has an insightful post on the music business, Is turnover the barometer of “Worth”?

"Less than 10% of signed artists recoup. Take Maximo Park for example. They have by their own admission never made a penny from record sales and make their money from DJ sets in the main. An example I have first hand knowledge of, Embrace, have sold millions of albums, they were a genuinely massive band; they performed from Glastonbury main-stage to Top Of The Pops and everywhere in-between. When they split from Virgin, they owed their label three quarters of a million pounds. I guess my point is that if we promote the Trad Music Biz’s model as “The model” then the message we’d be sending is:

• less than one percent of musical artists are part of the music business
• only a tenth of those will recoup and make money from their record sales, and that’s good
• an artist should be saddled with debt, the rate at which they pay that back is equivalent to a credit card with a 900% interest rate

I can’t promote that, I can’t encourage it, and it’s not representative of the vast swathe of music makers interests to do so."