In the end, music is business. And as a business model, at some point at the beginning of 2000's it became much easier to make similar figures on endless chains of one man/woman talentless embarrassingly mediocre one hit wonders than keep ever revolving band setups usually involving one or more leaders with god complex, unpredictable media behaviour and bottomless appetite for self destruction. The simple fact is, it takes five figures to "make" 5-10 consecutive no.2's out of some TV talent contest, usually easy to direct and very grateful and driven enough to scratch a hole in the doors to your auditions while it takes many cheques with six numbers to keep a bunch of photographer punching, interview hating, 'you will not tell me what to do', nightmare "stars" with a ticket to has-been growing in their wallet with each month they decide to spend finding "new sound" in caribean island resorts instead of listening to producer and making what may or may not manage to repeat their original success in a studio.
It's no secret that to modern business big artists are liability. Big artists are a problem. They will sell more, but they will eat, take and demand more. Often they will go off the rails. You pay them 80 million and they go and record Frank Sinatra songs. Or demand artistic independence and instead of another What's Up Pussy Cat re-emerge from the studio with CD full of tales how The Lord Will Trouble Me. They will demand millions to be spent on every horrible **** they select for a single. They will demand to have tour organized, at loss, to places that will never generate enough legitimate sales to cover for promotion - places like Ukraine or Mexico. They won't go on I'm A Celebrity In a Jungle to earn good, honest, long term money from faked gossip magazine "accidental" paparazzi photoshoots, instead they will do stupid things, like help Africa, organise charities or worse yet, get involves in some Greenpee movement and go block building sites of mothership sponsoring, press, TV and radio station owning energy companies or preach about debt of some non record buying third world countries to politicians. And there is nothing as a studio exec you can do about it. They put on stupid sunglasses and leather pants and go wreck your good work right in front of your eyes.
On a serious note though. Many people also don't seem to understand that contracts and distribution rights are extremely difficult to negotiate retrospectively, so it's much easier to bet few bucks on some Snoopy Shady, who's going to use 30 second sample from guaranteed Queen hit, than to spend years trying to find, grow and maintain another Queen. Any dollar from Britain's Got Idol forerunner can be earned here and now, but there is very little money in Pink Floyd selling their 1976 album in another million pieces, because that contract still operates on the back of 1969 contract, and earns the studio couple of twopences and a farthing per record, instead of 80% of dough. And that's also the reason why there is no point in pushing radios and tv stations to play anything but new cheap dross as well.
