Band members threatened to walk out after discovering that all they were earning from a promotional deal with British Telecom (BT) was a free mobile phone each. Even BT's generous gift of 30 minutes of free talk time wasn't enough to placate them. Already exhausted from a punishing round of European promotion - in which the distressed group had been forced to slum it by flying in economy class - the Clubbers had to be mollified with a Christmas present of US$150,000 apiece.
"as the global music market has opened up, so has the desire by record companies to exploit it. So you'll get situations where a teen star might not be doing great business in the UK but is very popular in the Far East. This means they're doing long-haul flights two or three times a week to cram in as many TV appearances in those markets as possible. Often they're not even travelling in business class - even Britney Spears travelled economy until recently - so sleep isn't really an option."
Please keep comments on topic and to the point. Inappropriate comments may be deleted.
Note that markup is stripped from comments; URLs will be automatically converted into links.