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http://hyperion-records.co.uk/ http://www.theclassicalshop.net/ http://linnrecords.com/ http://www.dacapo-records.dk/ and http://www.analekta.com/ http://www.classicsonline.com/ absolutely deserves mention, but has little on flac http://www.passionato.com/ and http://www.deutschegrammophon.com/ are good, but don't provide booklets

Or compare this sort of idiocy in the area of intellectual property.

From http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/

HYPERION RECORDS FAILS AT APPEAL

Hyperion Records is very sorry to announce that it has lost its defence of the copyright case brought against it by Dr Lionel Sawkins.

Dr Sawkins claimed musical copyright in four editions of the musical works of Lalande. He lost at first instance in relation to the recording of one of the pieces of music but won on the other three. Hyperion appealed with the leave of the trial judge.

Hyperion's principal objection to the claim made by Dr Sawkins was its contention that a performing edition does not amount to a new and substantive musical work in its own right unless the performing edition is original, in the sense that it amounts to a new musical work. Thus, Hyperion contended that if an edition is an arrangement or interpretation of an existing musical work then it may obtain copyright as an original musical work. Dr Sawkins expressly made clear that he was not contending that his editions were arrangements of Lalande's music.

Instead, Dr Sawkins made it clear that his intention was to faithfully produce the music of Lalande in a modern performing edition. Hyperion argued that an edition of Lalande's music that is a faithful reproduction of Lalande's music cannot itself be an original musical work.

Hyperion contended that Dr Sawkins had produced a modern performing edition and that the skill and labour that he had exerted in doing so gave him a literary copyright in the text. It did not give Dr Sawkins a musical copyright, as the sound was Lalande's.

In the lead judgment of the Court of Appeal, Lord Justice Mummery held that: In my judgment, on the application of Walter -v- Lane to this case, the effort, skill and time which the judge found Dr Sawkins spent in making the 3 performing editions were sufficient to satisfy the requirement that they should be "original" works in the copyright sense. This is so even though a) Dr Sawkins worked on the scores of existing musical works composed by another person (Lalande); b) Lalande's works are out of copyright; and c) Dr Sawkins had no intention of adding any new notes of music of his own (Para 36)

Lord Justice Mummery decided that "A work need only be 'original' in the limited sense that the author originated it by his efforts rather than slavishly copying it from the work produced by the efforts of another person" (Para 31).

In relying on the decision in Walter -v- Lane, the Court of Appeal rejected Hyperion's reliance on the House of Lords authority of Interlego -v- Tyco. This case (which concerned a claim to copyright in a new technical drawing for the lego brick) made it clear that even though a lot of skill was required to copy the original technical drawing that did not mean that the new drawing was original. By analogy, Hyperion contended that even though Dr Sawkins had exercised a lot of skill in copying the music of Lalande into the modern form (a textual process) that did not mean the resultant edition was an original musical work.

Jacob J recognised the dichotomy between Walter -v- Lane and Interlego in his judgment. His judgment recorded as follows:

I begin by recording the following cross examination of Dr Sawkins (in relation to one of the editions):

Q: Can I just be clear this is not one of the pieces that you actually claimed to have recomposed anything - there is no new music in Venite?

A: No, there is no new music. There are corrections to the musical text, which you could argue are the same thing, but they are individual notes.

It is that answer - no new music - which lies at the heart of Hyperion's objection... It was that answer which also caused me to pause.

He then held that Interlego could be resolved in the Court assessing the "extent to which the 'copyist' is a mere copyist - merely performing an

You are an ignorant fucktard. Bach didn't copy his symphonies from some other musician/composer and rearrange them himself, to his liking. He wrote them by learning the techniques of those before him.

Showing our extensive knowledge and refined taste in the arts now, are we, to complement our gentlemanly demeanor? Well...

All through his life, Bach learned by copying out works of other composers, among them Vivaldi, Albinoni, Corelli and Marcello.

Oh, but your're not done yet...

Michaelaneglo didn't paint by numbers when he painted the Sistine Chapel. He learned the techniques of painting then expressed himself through this medium. While the concepts in teh Sistine Chapel might not be completely original, his work most certtainly was.

Ahem:

The thirteen-year-old Michelangelo joined the studio as an apprentice, and there he learned fresco painting and began to draw compulsively, copying works by Early Renaissance masters Giotto, Masaccio, and Schongauer.

Listen, my friend, it's time to stop spouting and start thinking about just where you and your opinions fit in the grand scheme of things, and how you might go about improving that situation. Bye now.

Recording costs have therefore gone up a great deal in the CD age, and this is reflected in their price. If the CD playing-time limit was the same as that of an LP then it seems likely that they would cost appreciably less in the shops. As it is, the cost of a modern recording of a large choral/orchestral single CD can easily run up to GBP 50,000, especially if soloists are involved. Clearly it is necessary to sell a large quantity to recoup such a sum.

Anyway, the RIAA site does give that 90% non-profitable figure, but what does that mean? How much does the average "non-profitable" recording actually lose? $1? $1,000? $100,000? How does that balance against the huge amounts that something like a Brittney Spears CD rakes in?

Now, when I "pirate" an mp3 off of Napster, the only resource I'm using is bandwidth, and I already pay for all the bandwidth I can get by my monthly ISP fee (or college tuition fee, as the case may be).

A very cliched and fashionable - but very wrong - assertion. Since you are not knowledgeable about how the industry operates, and since you do not understand the difference between the physical media and the content, I'll inform you. Records are produced under a certain expectation of profits. Suppose it costs $500,000 to record an album (a typical symphonic recording). I am counting costs of professional musicians, recording studio costs, the conductor, royalties, and the like. Now this record may be cut on the expectation of selling 50,000 copies of the record (an outrageously high number for a symphonic record, but bear with me). So that is $10 to record, $1 to phyiscally reproduce, and $4 mark-up for the retailer (a typical scenario: see this site for all of the numbers.

So now when you go to pirate the MP3 of the record, the value you are stealing is $10 which is your share of the professional services which contributed to making the record. You are not stealing the $1 which it costs to physically produce, obviously. But you _are_ stealing recording resources, professional musician's services, and royalties. See, since the record had an expectation of a certain number of buyers, the costs were allocated to cover them.

Since you stole the content on the record, you have stolen the services which went into producing the music. This is not a tangible thing, but a semi-abstract thing - which is why it is difficult for you and so many other slashdot readers to comprehend, but it is every bit as much legitimate theft as stealing a physical artifact. You are affecting people just the same way: if the companies sell fewer records because people steal them, they will produce fewer new records, and then the professional musicians and recording engineers will have fewer gigs and will suffer all the same.

And advertising policy has exactly what do with production cost? Since you're really new to this, you may want to check out this site documenting the cost of CD production.

They were only a superstar act _because_ the industry picked them to be, and the industry only picks a few acts each decade to do that with (Michael Jackson, Springsteen around 'Born in the USA + the live set, Madonna etc), but they had what it took to be marketed that heavily- and that almost certainly means a GnR business team who on the one hand got the band a cut of the money, and on the other hand were ready to _guarantee_ product.

This is an _extremely_ cliched view and very false. The industry cannot PICK who is going to succeed - only the listeners can. Yes, the industry can pick who the listeners will hear (to some extent) but it is still up to the listeners to decide. There have been albums which have been EXTREMELY heavily promoted, which have failed miserably. Remember Michael Jackson's HIStory?

Guns 'n Roses _in_particular_ was not chosen to succeed. They are a real band - not assembled by a record company. They released an EP before getting the major label contract. But my main point is that Appetite for Destruction was released much earlier than the point at where it succeeded. It was released in 1987, but Guns n Roses didn't become mega-pop superstars until a year or two later. They say that it was word of mouth and such which made the band big. Clearly if they were "chosen to be big", they would have succeeded immediately.

Talk to any Guns 'n Roses fan, and you will get some major arguments to your claim. You can't judge taste, but compare GnR to the other acts of the time - Poison, Warrant, etc. GnR's songs were catchy, energetic, and much more radio friendly in comparison. It was good music, and a lot of people agreed. In fact, just thinking about this, I think I'll go pull my copy of Appetite for Destruction off the shelf.

There is absolutely no such thing as a guarantee in this business. The music business is much riskier than most other businesses, because trends come and go and nobody can predict them. New artists are especially risky, because nobody can predict how they will appeal.

I love how Steve Albini is suddenly getting massive link-exposure on Slashdot. You're linking to a different copy than I linked to- I used the copy on this page, which has a more detailed costs breakdown on the band's expenditures, which you might find morbidly interesting. It's here: "Some of your friends are probably already this fucked". READ THESE ARTICLES, PEOPLE! It gets... _tiresome_ listening to otherwise really sharp and clued Slashdotters saying 'Gee, we should help support the artists though, so the music industry can't be all bad' because they don't know the reality and are only guessing.

I read Albini's article and he it is based on one fundamentally flawed assertion. He is looking at the micro-music industry, not the macro-music industry. He does not understand that one single record does not exist in a vaccum. All of the major record companies support music which they lose money off of. Classical, and jazz, for example, which almost always sell less than 10,000 copies, and sometimes even less than 2,000 (and almost never make money). The money made off of successful artists who sell 250,000 copies (like in your example) are used to pay for non-profitable artists. Albini's assertions are only correct if every item in the catalog sells 250,000 copies, but this is never the case: usually an extremely small number (like 10%) sell that big, and big-time money is lost of the rest. Much of the "profits" (the $700,000 in the article) goes into failed projects and is not re-invested into new successful projects. Albini does not understand that successful projects fund failed ones. If every record sold 250,000 (or 25,000,000 copies), the record company would indeed be more profitable than it is. But the business is so risky that it is impossible to predict with any degree of accuracy how much an artists is going to appeal to the masses, so the success rate for new artists is only about 10%.

I suggest you read The Cost of CD's which persuasively argues that $20.00 is a fair price for classical CD's (and is written by an independent classical record company).

If you do not believe that 90% of projects fail, then here's an exercise for you: Get a one-year-old magazine on pop music, and look at the reviews of new artists. See how many you recognize. I have a one-year-old copy of PopStar (teeny bopper magazine) here. It has reviews of the following new top-40 artists: DollsHead, Rockell, Ultra Nate, The Murmurs, Baxter, She Moves, Tyrese, Rebekah, 4Kast, and Wild Orchid. Of those, only one "made it" (that I know of - Tyrese), and the rest failed - finished from music to find other careers. All of these were on major labels such as MCA, WB, etc., etc. If there was a "sure thing" as you claim, why would these artists be sign? If the industry can just make artists popular, why didn't they make these artists popular? Certainly they had a vested interest. This is a reality. It is always said that 90% of new artists fail, and all evidence (such as the above) demonstrate this to be true. The "massive profits" made from the one successful artist (Tyrese) are used to pay the others, before the company sees a profit. That changes the picture a quite a lot.

Have these artists gotten rich? Maybe they have, but I'm asking because I don't know, and it's certainly not a given.

I don't know if those artists in particular are rich. I seem to remember something about Roger Waters being quite rich, but I do not know for sure. Many music artists are quite rich. Herbert von Karajan's estate was worth 0.5 billion Deustchmarks when he died (in 1990). Some artists such as Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney, and others seem to have quite a lot money, but I don't know their exact values. Of course, a lot of this money has come from other sources than recording, but I would argue that the "rock star" is inherently tied to records and would not exist without records.

What I'd like to see are some stats on how much money the various mega-stars have actually come away from the deal with. As anyone who watches ``Behind the Music'' knows, the artists often end up broke, and it's often for reasons other than ``they spent it all.''

A lot of the ones on Behind the Music are new artists who got average contracts, e.g. TLC. One thing to keep in mind is that 90% of new artists fail, and that they do not get lucrative contracts because they are so risky. The few who do succeed make up for the rest. The money is not necessarily going to rich people people behind the scenes, but to pay for recording, production, promotion, etc., etc. It is very expensive to bring up a new artist, and that is largely what you are paying for.

Some of the artists who went bankrupt was just out of irresponsibility (e.g. MC Hammer). He had plenty of money during his heyday, but blew it all, and then lost his popularity. This is hardly the music industry's fault.

Most of the more established artists have far more control. Many own their own record companies.

My favorite anti-music-industry rant: `` Some of your friends are probably already this fucked'' by Steve Albini.

And while you are at it, check out The Cost of CD's which is one of the more informative breakdown of where the cost of the CD is actually going. One interesting item: by far the biggest chunk of the retail CD price goes to the music STORE, so those who think CD prices are too high should be complaining to the stores, not the record makers.