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http://www.mosesavalon.com/why...

Because the same companies that own the radio own the TV

Then get your story on NPR.

Go look up the rules on Clear channel play, I'm sure you'll find them posted, no big secret. you have to be signed with an affiliated label to get on the lists.

I couldn't find such on ClearChannel.com nor on Google rules on clear channel play. Nor does Wikipedia's article about Clear Channel Communications contain the word "label". Google clear channel affiliated label pulls up an article about Clear Channel's allegedly having ended payola four years ago.

Moses Avalon is a record company insider who has written some very funny books about the industry:
                Million Dollar Mistakes
                Confessions of a Record Producer
                Secrets of Negotiating a Record Contract (maybe not funny, have not read it)

On his web site he as a royalty calculator that allows you to plug in numbers for a recording contact and see how much the band will make:
                http://www.mosesavalon.com/calculate.shtml
It includes standard things in record contracts such as 10% record (CD) breakage and 23% production costs. He gives hints how to maximize the return to the band. At standard record industry contract terms with no advance to the band you have to sell over 3/4 of a million records in order to break even. This assumes the band has already recorded the album. Need an advance to do that, then you have to sell more albums in order to break even. It is fun to play with and the hints are funny and eye-opening. His basic point is that the only money the band is likely to see is the advance. So get as large an advance as possible and spend as little of it as you can.

At one time he had an article about the economics of a record contract and touring to support it and the end result is that for the hours the band worked, they would make the same money flipping burgers at MacDonald's. And this is for a band with a million selling record.

Now I do not know how this translates to itunes sales but I would not be surprised if itunes sales still have a 10% breakage allowance.

Moses is a very funny author to read.

RLH

If record companies stop releasing albums for new bands, what is going to happen to the live performance business? Would you shell out $25-$50 to see a new band based on only hearing one or two singles. Oh, I forgot, the ring tone is going to get you hopping in the isles. I know personally that I am much more likely to go see a band if I have heard their album. I know what to expect and I can look forward hearing more than one song I like.

A big issue with loosing the live performances and the band going out on tour is that they do not get a chance to work their skills. To be a good musician you have to play a lot. It is called "getting your chops". Practicing by yourself is find for the physical aspects of playing an instrument. Ya, s/he can play the notes. Rehearsing with a band makes you better a playing with other musicians. But performing in front of a live audience puts you under the gun to perform well. Not just play the instrument well, but to reach past that and put some magic into the music. Playing in front of a live audience 5 days a week, allows get comfortable with playing so that it becomes natural. Hard to do that with a click track and a MIDI band.

Finally what about the money. A lot of bands make more money from live performances than from music sales. For a good read on why you are likely to make more money per hour flipping burgers than from making a gold record try reading Moses Avalon's "Secrets of Negotiating a Record Contract" or try his Moses Avalon Royalty Calculator at http://www.mosesavalon.com/cgi-bin/calculatecopy.p l. On the other hand when they perform live the either get a fixed fee or a percentage of ticket sales. So the lack of an album may mean that you have no fans willing to shell out the cash to see you live, so there is little point in touring to support the single. And because you are not performing regularly you do not get the practice and experience to be an excellent musician. So you single may be your only single. Oh ya, I forgot, that ring tone is going to make every one want to download your next single.

Just hoping to hear the album so that I might want to see the band.
RLH

This sounds like a great opportunity to go there and ask them some hard questions. Then the college newspaper editors will have something interesting to report on, not just propaganda. Some questions you could ask them:

1) If you are protecting artists like you claim you are, then how come million-selling performers like TLC and Toni Braxton had to file for bankruptcy in order to get out the financial troubles your loans put them in? (source: Courtney Love's speech in salon.com)

2) How much money does an artist get from each sold CD (tip: 8-12 percent) and what does a breakdown look like (manufacturing costs, band cut, transportation and distribution...)

3) How many CDs does an average artist have to sell to BREAK EVEN on an average RIAA contract (hint: 250 000)

4) If I were to spend 45$ on three CDs of my favourite artist (15$ per CD), how much money would he/she get (about 4.5$). If I downloaded those albums on Kazaa and went instead to a concert (30$) and bought a T-Shirt (15$), how much money would the artist get (my guess is over 20$ cash).

5) If file-swapping is hurting the industry, then how come CD sales are up this year in some parts of the world? What does RIAA do for promotion of 95% of the artists who don't hit MTV anyway?

I'm sure you can come up with some other good ones. Moses Avalon Calculator is a great resource for some more facts. Remember, don't be an ass, ask your questions politely, and wait until he's babbled some bullshit for best impact. Good luck.

I'm not rejoicing until they stop giving loads of money to the RIAA and start giving it to the artists that need it. Try this calculator and see how much you're paying to the artists.

I want to see a big company take the chance and deal directly with the artists instead of the RIAA. "Hey, I'll pay you 25%, instead of the RIAA's 2%. That sound good with you?"

Listen, if I'm sitting in the catbird's seat at a major label, I wouldn't be punking these kids out about how filesharing hurts artists, I'd be showing them how the pros do it - legally.

Vanishing royalties, recoupable expenses, double-standard accounting, ball-gripper contracts, long-term litigation - by the time these kids are finished with the class, they'll be dying to work in the industry instead of in front of it as performers. Screw the multiplication table, show 'em how to do math using the Royalty Calculator. Those proficiency tests will get hammered, at least mathematically.

Anyways, your mileage may vary.

Peace.

Actually, most bands (IAN in the music industry) get less for CD sales, because of "Breakage." I quote from Moses Avalon:

Breakage is a left over scam from the old days when vinyl records were fragile and crumbled while shipping. The label would not pay the artist for broken records and so they estimated the "breakage" at 10% and deducted it from the amount of records sold. They still deduct this 10%, even though CDs are made of an almost indestructible material...

SheepHead

I always found it quite interesting that the most vocal anti-napster groups were the soon to be totally washed-up has-beens from the early 90's.

By being their own publishers, they make a lot more money - I'm not going to pretend to be an expert, but publishers split royalties with whoever has song writing credit on the song. So, Dr. Dre can be the publisher of many songs (possibly every song on his label; he has a label, right?), and make 50% of the royalties on those songs, even if he didn't write them or record them personally. Thus, in this respect, Dre is closer to a music industry exec than an artist - he is financially hurt by music sharing, because his publishing royalties come directly from CD sales. A very quick search found this article for reference.

So, many of the vocal opposers were some of the very popular bands / musicians who also have a larger interest in higher CD sales than most bands. So if music is shared, while a regular band might see increased ticket or merchandise sales that could improve their bottom line (meager as it is) the publisher only loses. (OK, so more downloaded songs might mean more CD sales, but you understand the publisher's objections I'm sure.)

In this respect an artist like Dre would be very valuable to the RIAA, because while he seems to be primarily a musician, I imagine most of his money actually comes from publishing credits. So, he can appear to be a musician opposed to sharing, when he is actually a publisher/musician opposed to sharing.

sheephead

8)

Allow me to recommend perusing some of Moses Avalon's books, which spell out the whole deal in detail on how royalties are computed.

Notable details include: if it's on CD, royalties are 75% because CDs are "new media". If it sells for 80% of full retail ($18) or less, you lose 50% because it's mid-tier (if it sells in bargain bins, you get nothing per unit). If it sells over the Internet, there's a 25% levy for a wire cost.

The Royalty Calculator ...

An amazing look at the way the recording industry stiffs its artists.

Posted by Michael Fraase, 3/23/02 at 9:54:46 PM.

When elephants dance, its best to get out of the way. Thats exactly whats happening now as the entertainment industrythe recording, publishing, and motion picture industries, mainlyattempts a worldwide intellectual property power grab with two distinct targets. Think of it: a coup and a lock on all published content in the same year, amazing isnt it?

Target number 1 is the average customer: anyone who purchases software, an audio CD, an electronic book, or a movie on DVD. The entertainment industry sees customers as pirates, plain and simple. In their collective minds eye, we all have a wooden leg, eye patch, and a filthy talking parrot on our shoulder. While the Constitution grants customers certain rights with regard to copyrighted material, the entertainment industry very much wants to separate us from those rights.

Target number 2 in the sights of the entertainment industry are technology behemoths like Microsoft, Intel, IBM, and Apple. These companies, in the perverse worldview of the entertainment industry, make the toolscomputers mostlythat allow customers to practice their piracy.

Let me point out that I am a copyright owner, as is everyone else who has ever created a work in tangible form. Thats all authors, for short. Authors are almost never members of the entertainment industry club. The entertainment industry hates authors almost as much as they hate customers. Sometimes, especially when authors get uppity, the entertainment industry hates authors much more than customers. Until recently, authors have always been seen to be at least a marginal threat while customers were seen as merely necessary annoyances.

To complicate matters by at least an order of magnitude, the consumer electronics manufacturersthe companies that make stereos, VCRs, and DVD playershave aligned with the entertainment industry. At least some of them, and at least to some extent.

Unfortunately for usboth authors and customerswere likely to get squished as these elephants dance. The intent of the entertainment industry, believe it or not, is to outlaw personal computers. As security and cryptography expert Bruce Schneier explains it to Mike Godwin: If you think about it, the entertainment industry does not want people to have computers; theyre too powerful, too flexible, and too extensible. They want people to have Internet Entertainment Platforms: televisions, VCRs, game consoles, etc.

Copy-protected CDs

The recording industry is selling shiny plastic discs that contain music that cant be copied to or even played on some customers equipment. Philips, the owner of the CD format says these discs cannot be called CDs because they do not meet the standard of what a CD is. Sony, one of those weird hybrid companies that, as a member in good standing of both the technology and entertainment industries, finds itself on both sides of this issue says it cant guarantee the audio quality of these discs. The technology used to protect these discs sometimes prevents the discs from playing on computer CD-ROM drives, DVD players, and other devices specifically designed to play standard audio CDs.

Sales of recorded music are down 10% in the United States over the last year. The recording industry blames this downturn not on the economic recession, not on the crappy music that theyve released in the past few years, but on Internet piracy.

And its only going to get worse. Hilary B. Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) told Congress on 28 February 2001 that the practice of copy-protecting audio CDs would expand in the United States. If technology can be used to pirate copyrighted content, Rosen wrote in her response to a Congressional query, shouldnt technology likewise be used to protect copyrighted content? Surely, no one can expect copyright owners to ignore what is happening in the marketplace and fail to protect their creative works because some people engage in copying just for their personal use. Her pal, Michael Eisner, head of Disney, said he was tired of being finessed by the technology industry, whatever that means.

Unfortunately for Eisner, Rosen, Disney, and the RIAA, personal useand more importantly the rights associated with that use of copyrighted materialis exactly why copying of copyrighted material is not just allowed, but mandated by the Constitution. That some individuals illegally sell copied CDs or distribute copies of the music on the Internet is immaterial. In fact, fairly casual observation indicates that if customers are treated like criminals they will indeed begin to behave like criminals.

It has become common practice for music-loving computer owners to legally transfer audio CDs they purchase to .mp3 format files on their computers. The copy protection technology employed by the recording industry prevents such transfers by adding distortions to the music of the recordings. The industry insists that these distortions are inaudible when the disc is played on a standard CD player but result in pops when the music is transferred to a computer. In any case, its usually impossible to tell whether or not a disc includes the copy protection technology; in general, the copy-protected discs are not labeled.

Ironically, or probably not, .mp3 player manufacturers could easily defeat the copy protection technology, but they fear doing so would risk prosecution under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which prohibits the bypassing of copy protection systems. In 1999, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that .mp3 players did not violate copyright law because customers have the right to space shift music they have purchased.

Moral rights

Interestingly, the act of using the copy protection technology is much more prevalent in Europe. Most European countries, unlike the United States, recognize an artists moral rights in the work they create.

Moral rights are a package of intellectual property rights granted to the original creator of a work, and include:

• The right of integrity;
• The right of attribution;
• The right of disclosure;
• The right to withdraw or retract; and
• The right to reply to criticism.

These moral rights are separate from the economic copyright that these days generally transfers from an author to a publisher and they can survive the author. The idea originated with the French, who believe that any creative work, by definition, includes the personality and character of the author. Where copyright is a property right that can be transferred, moral rights are part of the authors personality and character and non-transferable.

The first two moral rightsthe right of integrity and the right of attributionare especially important because they are codified as international law in the Berne Convention. The United States claims its intellectual property law complies with the Berne Convention, but this is just two instances where it doesnt.

The most important of these rights is the first, the right of integrity. Basically it prohibits an authors work from being distorted in any way that would harm the authors reputation and dates to the 1957 French law of droit au respect de l'oeuvre. Its a safe bet that a cross-reference over which the author had no control would be seen as a distortion of the work.

Seemingly, in Europe at least, an artist could make an argument against the production of a copy-protected version of her work on the sole basis of moral rights. Especially in the case of an audio CD to which distortion is intentionally added by the publisher.

In the United States, Representative Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) appears to be taking the point position in questioning the behavior of the entertainment industry. He believes that instead of using copyright to obtain fair compensation for the works theyve licensed, the copyright owner industryincluding the recording industryis attempting to exercise complete dominance and total control of the copyrighted work.

And just how much money does an artist receive in the form of royalties? Use Moses Avalons royalty calculator to figure it out.

A DMCA rewrite?

Representative Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) plans to introduce legislation that would regulateand maybe outright bancopy-protected compact discs. Boucher reportedly has concerns about customers buying copy-protected discs without knowing it and the compatibility problems inherent with the copy protection mechanism. In an interview with Wired News, Boucher said, The big problem initially is that consumers have no information that is complete and reliable about the disabilities which attend copy-protected CDs. These CDs will not play in DVD players, not play on personal computers (and) not even play on all CD players.

Boucher isnt talking about what kind of legislation he might introduce to accomplish his goal of protecting audio CD customers, and the possibilities are intriguing. At the simplest level, legislation may require copy-protected CDs to carry a warning label. At a more interesting level, Boucher may try to rewrite the DMCA. In fact, Boucher announced that he would introduce such legislation last July and reiterated his commitment to that approach in early March of this year.

Internet radio

Under the U.S. Copyright Offices interpretation of the DMCA, Internet radio may be a thing of the past. KFJC, KPIG, and RadioParadise may all be goners. Why is this tragic? Because any of these stations are orders of magnitude better than the sorry excuse for radio available on the traditional dial.

Internet radio is routing around an obsolete and unaccountable industrys safely padded environs and making a difference. Corporate radio sounds exactly the same from coast to coast because it is exactly the same. Sit and watch that website for a few minutes; if it doesnt nauseate you, itll damn sure hypnotize you.

Adding to the arsenal of tools deployed by big media is the Copyright Arbitration and Royalty Panel (CARP). CARP met secretly for the past several months and issued the CARP Report in late February. The keystone of this report is steep licensing fees for webcast music. Lets be clear: compulsory licensing is a good idea, consistent with the intent of copyright law. Usury licensing fees for small webcasters is not.

KPIG responded almost immediately with a plea to save the Pig from the digital slaughterhouse:

Independent webcasters such as KPIG are facing a grave threat to our existence. It may be an evil conspiracy on the part of the big record companies and corporate webcasters, ormore likelyits just a dumb mistake. In either case, KPIG could soon be liable for huge music usage fees ($5,000 - $10,000 per month) that would make it impossible for us to stay online. For background on the issue, see The Death of Web Radio? below and the SaveInternetRadio.org website.

Doc Searls, in his article Bizarre vs. Bazaar, eloquently sums up the combination of DMCA and CARP as the destruction of the Net as a commons and its replacement with a plumbing system for the distribution of content (a word hardly used in a shipping context before Big Media got all drooly over The Promise of The Net).

A brief history of copyright

Copyright, until this recent entertainment industry power-grab, has always been a delicatemaybe even precariousbalance between the rights of the author to benefit from his or her work for a short period of time and the rights of the rest of us to innovate and benefit from those works when they fall into the public domain.

The Constitution granted Congress the power to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. Originally, the Copyright Act of 1790 established the limited times of copyright protection of 14 years with an option for the author to renew the copyright for an additional 14 years if he or she were still alive. That copyright term was good enough for the first 100 years of intellectual property in the United States. During the next 100 years, Congress extended the copyright term 11 times.

Certain uses of a protected work that would ordinarily be seen as infringing are specifically allowed for education, criticism, etc. These uses are allowed under the fair use provision. The core concept of fair use is that, in general, any use that does not exploit the commercial value of the original is permissible.

The fair use statute recognizes four criteria by which a use can be determined to be fair or unfair:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. The nature of the copyrighted work;
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted wok as a whole; and
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

William S. Strong, in The Copyright Book: A Practical Guide , provides an interpretation for working writers:

As a general rule a critic or reporter should not quote at any one point more than two or three paragraphs of a book or journal article, a stanza of a poem, or a solitary chart or graph from a technical treatise.

The Net allows ordinary citizens to exercise their fair use rights in ways never imagined by the entertainment industry. Subsequently, the reaction is to pressure innovation by extending the copyright term for any given work. In October, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case that will likely determine the legitimacy of the most recent copyright term extension, the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. This law extends the copyright term to the life of the author plus 70 years. In the case of works made for hire in which a corporation owns the copyright, the copyright term is now 95 years.

While one side of the entertainment industry was pushing, an activity that eventually became the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, the other side was pulling. That activity eventually resulted in the DMCA. Designed specifically to control the uses that can be made of published works, the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent copyright-protection technology. The result: the entertainment industry controls not only what you see and hear but the methods and devices with which you see and hear it. Even if the copy-protection is circumvented to enable the fair use of a published work, it is prohibited and deemed to be a criminal act.

Digital TV

According to Mike Godwin, digital television is the tipping point in the war between the entertainment and technology industries. Never mind that every time the entertainment industry shoots itself in the foot, the technology industry comes to its rescue. Remember in the 1970s when the movie industry was in a deep funk and that vampire Jack Valenti said that VCRs would kill it for good? As it turns out, the VCR revived the film industry. The film industry was failing not because of customer VCR usage but because they were putting out epically craptacular films. Just like the recording industry todaywhen in doubt blame those dang customers.

Anyway, Godwin says digital television is the flashpoint because its quality (technical, not artistic) is way too good and unlike DVDs, its unencrypted and has to stay unencrypted to be useful. Oh, and the pesky FCC regulations say that broadcast television signals must be sent unencrypted.

The purveyors of digital television think they have the answer: digital watermarks. They think thats the answer for the online distribution of music, and any other digital content as well. Unfortunately for them, in order for a watermark to be used to restrict copying of digital content, consumer devices used to play the content will have to have technology included thats capable of receiving those watermarks. That would require the cooperation of the technology industry, and that cooperation has not been forthcoming.

Godwin cites the theory of Edward Felten, a computer scientist at Princeton, holding that any sort of tagging system that is undetectable by the user will likely be easy to remove.

Digital rights management

Perhaps the weirdest part of all of this is that the technology industry is just as enamored of protecting intellectual property. Theyre just going about it in a minimally different way. Digital rights management (DRM) is the battle cry of the techheads. And where they differ from their entertainment industry brethren is the question of government mandates. The technology industry wants to lock up published content just as badly as the entertainment industry; they just dont want the government (or anyone else) telling them that they have to. Remember that the entertainment and technology industries both lobbied heavily in favor of the DMCA.

And then there are the schizoids, the companieslike AOL Time Warner and Sonythat are so large that they find themselves on both sides of the fence depending which way the wind blows.

SSSCA > CBDTPA

The Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA), kept on a leash but regularly trotted out by Senator Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina), chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, can best be thought of as a sort of appendix to the DCMA. It is clearly designed to further extend legal protections for digital content owned or licensed by enormous media conglomerates.

According to the draft language of the bill, it would be illegal to create or distribute any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies approved by the Commerce Department. Even though MIT professor and RSA Data Security co-founder Ron Rivest has referred to the proposed legislation as the Digital Rectal Thermometer Security Act its really just mandatory corporate welfare for media conglomerates subsidized by the actual creators and consumers of intellectual property.

Felony penalties for distributing copyrighted material without the certified security technologies fully enabled or using a computer that circumvents those technologies are up to five years in prison and fines up to US$500,000.

Even worse, the proposed legislation calls for manufacturers of digital devices and the media conglomerates to collaboratively develop a copy protection system. If, after two years, they cant come up with a mechanism both industries can live with, the federal government will specify a standard. Hollings bill fails to include the actual creators or users of content in any of the machinations.

Should we be surprised that four of Hollings top campaign donors are media conglomerates?

Predictably, the politicians split along party lines over the SSSCA. Or, more accurately, the split is along the lines of entertainment industry campaign contributions. Democrats, who received US$24.2 million in contributions from the entertainment industry tend to support the idea of legislating the protection of copyrighted material in digital form. Republicans, who received a relatively paltry US$13.3 million in entertainment industry contributions usually oppose the SSSCA, claiming it is too interventionist.

In mid-March 2002, the other shoe dropped. Senator Hollings, better known as the Senator from Disney, transformed the SSSCA into the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) and ceased his tip-toeing around. The CBDTPA is real legislation, and enjoys the support of five other co-authors: Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), John Breaux (D-Louisiana), Bill Nelson (D-Florida) and Dianne Feinstein (D-California). Just think, one more author and they could have been the seven dwarves. The CBDTPA would require all digital deviceseverything from fax machines to MP3 players and computers (as well as the software that runs on them)to be equipped with embedded copy protection schemes, approved by the federal government.

Whats most disturbing about this is relatively paltry sum it took to buy this legislation. During the 2002 election cycle, only two of the dirty half-dozen were in the top 20 recipients of soft money from the entertainment industry. So far in the 2002 election cycle, Hollings has received only US$19,000 and Stevens has taken only US$39,621. To get the real story, we have to look back several election cycles:

Senator

2002

2000

1998

1996

Total

Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina)

$19,000

$32,750

$215,284

$43,300

$310,334

Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)

$39,621

$69,900

$109,521

Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii)

$49,852

$49,852

John Breaux (D-Louisiana)

$120,920

$120,920

Bill Nelson (D-Florida)

$47,550

N/A

N/A

$47,550

Dianne Feinstein (D-California)

$211,638

$211,638

$849,815

Theres no question why Fritz Hollings carried the water for this puppy, is there? But check those senatorial links in the table carefully because they tell the even bigger story of who the top contributing industries were for each politician. In every case, the entertainment industry scored big in the top 20 contributors for every Senator. And remember the 2002 campaign cycle isnt over yet. Not hardly.

So, how much does it cost to get your bill through the Senate? Looks to me like itll come in right around US$1 million.

Enter DigitalConsumer.org

The technology industry was quick to respond to the CBDTPA threat by launching DigitalConsumer.org and its attendant Consumer Technology Bill of Rights. Launched by two of the co-founders of Excite, DigitalConsumer.org is basically trying to protect the fair use rights of customers in digital media. The groups principles, outlined in the Bill of Rights are deceptively simple:

1. Users have the right to time-shift content that they have legally acquired.
2. Users have the right to space-shift content that they have legally acquired.
3. Users have the right to make backup copies of their content.
4. Users have the right to use legally acquired content on the platform of their choice.
5. Users have the right to translate legally acquired content into comparable formats.
6. Users have the right to use technology in order to achieve the rights previously mentioned.

The depth and breadth of support this lobbying group will receive remains to be seen. Some of the precepts are in direct conflict with the interests of some of the largest technology industry members. Microsoft, for example, almost certainly wants to be the digital rights management company of record and is none too keen on, say, items 2, 3, 4, and 5.

A solution

The solution is actually quite simple and requires only three steps:

1. Revert the term of copyright to 14 years, immediately and retroactive to all existing works.
2. Recognize moral rights in the works authors create, like every other civilized country on the planet. Make it immediate and retroactive to all existing works.
3. Prohibit any corporation from owning a copyright. Corporations create nothing; theyre consensual hallucinations and exist at our pleasure. I dont know about you, but Im not much pleased any more.

The basis of the problem is found in a single court ruling: Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. In this 1886 dispute, the U.S. Supreme Court found that a private corporation was a natural person under the Constitution and enjoyed the same protections as a citizen under the Bill of Rights. Corporations from that point forward were granted all of the rights and freedoms of a private citizen, yet none of the responsibilities. We made a mistake; hey, shit happens. Its not too late to fix it.

Suggested reading is Moses Avalon's "What the Reocrd Companies Don't Want You to Know" You can do a royalty calculation on his website. The Future of Music Coalition has an excellent document that analyzes the "standard contract" explaining how that 16% royalty turns into 6%. Both websites cut through the RIAA spin, and get to the underlying truths.

The truth is that the 90-95% of artists that don't recoup, don't recoup because of inflated expenses, the fact they don't get paid for "special" sales, such as overseas, and record club sales, and music taken out of the label catalog and not available for the public to purchase at any price. If the labels don't sell it, you can't make money off of it. In addition to this, you give up your copyrights to boot.

It took John Denver's Estate 5 years after his death to get a accurate total of his sales in which 19 MILLION more sales were "found". This Article on the RIAA website documents it. Talk about your "smoking gun".

I recently had a conversation with a member of a 60's group who had several top ten hits, his words explain it better than anything else I've ever heard. "If I were going to tell any group that is considering signing a major label contract any one thing it is, get as much money up front as you can, because you will never see another cent from royalties."