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The RIAA Doesn't Like Paying Lyricists
baptiste writes "I came across a story in Wired News that on first glance had to be a joke. The scary part is, its not. The RIAA is looking to start their own MP3 streaming services, but they are also trying to stiff the song writers who hold copyrights on the lyrics. The RIAA doesn't want to pay the songwriters royalties on streamed copies of songs and has petitioned the U.S. Copyright Office to settle the matter. I highly recommend you read the petition - if you didn't know better, you'd think it was from Napster or MP3.com. The irony is almost too much."
It states that they would like the panel to convene in order to determine what the applicable royalty rates are. They are not trying to get out of paying the rates, they are stating that they believe no rate has been established for this type of distribution.
I agree with you when you state all the reasons that the RIAA is obsolete, except the section about promotion.
In my opinion, promotion is just another way of being exposed to new music. But word of mouth from friends, opening acts at live shows, and Napster hotlists work just as well as record companies putting up adverts and sending free copies to radio stations. In fact, they work better because they are targeted towards the correct market segment much better.
Folks, if the record companies stopped all promotion, what would happen? Would there be no top 40 artists? No, maybe just a different set of top 40 artists--ones that made their way to the top the old fashioned way, not through the record companies opening the collective mouth of society and shoving the Backstreet Boys down it. Would you suddenly have less music to listen to? I know I wouldn't, since virtually nothing I listen to is really promoted at all by the record companies. Almost everything I listen to I discovered by one of the ways above.
Look at the huge pool of musicians who do their music just for the fun of it, and possibly make it big enough to make a living out of it even with no promotion. Sure they may not make the millions that a Dave Matthews makes today, but I PROMISE you that Dave Matthews would still be jamming with his buddies in bars if he had never been discovered-even if he made no money. And if an artist amasses a good sized following, they can easily make a decent living from their music--maybe not 100 million a year, but enough. My point is that the music WILL always be there because there is no shortage of musicians, even if the pay sucks. And all promotion is is a tool for the record companies to turn an underground favorite into a larger than life superstar for their own monetary gain. But if that artist is going to do the same music for $100 or $100million per year, then tell me why promotion is needed (it's not)
LOTS of bands pay for their own studio time and cd pressings, and do so even though they may make no money or even LOSE money doing it. With the RIAA running the show, the laws of economics & supply vs. demand are being totally subverted.
Read the note. The RIAA will pay copyright holders, it's asking which versions of copyright law apply to digital music downloads and broadcasts. Apparently, there are several subversions of copyright laws, including ones that deal with performances, recordings, recordings sent by electronic means, etc etc. The problem is, that under some of them, if interpreted strictly, they'd have to pay the copyright holders money for even incidental copies that never reach a consumer, such as copies cached in multiple servers that are there to facilitate downloads and broadcasting, but not necessarily meant to be a product in and of themselves. For such 'incidental' copies, the RIAA is asking the US Copyright Office to issue a ruling to either develop a new area for copyright, or determine under what area that digital broadcasts and DLs fall. It is the current legal grey area WRT to royalties that is holding up music delivery by the industry. Lord knows, if you assume one thing, and then it's later ruled to be different, you face lawsuits. So the RIAA is not moving forward with digital broadcast plans over the internet till the USPTO rules. Geez, READ people.
The RIAA is guilty of making money off someone else's work, then stiffing them for it. That's even worse than Napster users listening the music for free. At least most of them aren't reselling this music.
The RIAA just doesn't want any competing "pirates".
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Correction: *pop* songs don't make it because they are good, they make it because of promotion. A good song will still swirl its way up on underground fandom alone. Hell, you don't see anyone but a bunch of geeks saying "All your base are belong to us" but suddenly it's on the damned news. Now.. oooh.. it's not popular anymore, gotta move on to something nerdishly cool again. ;-)
Exactly. Musicians will regret ever signing up with the RIAA members. I can see the class action lawsuit coming now... "The RIAA is stifiling our (the RIAA member artists) ability to get exposure in recently very important XYZ online music video stream/audio stream/forum. We are asking for 123 dollars in compensation."
That will make me smile. :p Heed this warning, independent artists. Don't Do It! Don't sign that RIAA member contract. You Will Be Screwed, and in the cold. It's your stuff, Don't sign away exclusive rights.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
It is actually. Organized and widespread civil disobedience has a long history. It is an excellent method when the people you're dealing with are not utter barbarians or ruthless despots, or are at least restrained from being so by some outside authority.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
The computation of the Pop Charts boggles the mind - it's supposedly based on singles sales (can you even buy singles anymore?) and radio airplay. Problem is that the classic 'top 40' format bases their airplay rotation on the pop charts. So we get a situation where it's easy to "make" a popular song just by seeding the system appropriately.
Every now and then, a "good" song will swirl up through luck and something-or-other. One example is Nirvana kicking Michael Jackson out of the #1 spot in the early 90s, with very little top 40 airplay and promotion. But it doesn't happen very often.
Another datapoint - Apparently whoever computes the charts excludes most rap singles sales (many of which are on indy labels in mom+pop record stores). If they were included, the Top 40 would be almost entirely rap.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
. . . ah, here it is.
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Contact the RIAA
I sent them:
"
I read your petition to the Copyright office requesting that streaming music not require royalty payments to the artists.
I find this unfathomably hypocritical, after your lawsuits against MP3.com and Napster, Inc.
I will never buy another CD from an RIAA-associated artist or label for myself or as a gift until such time as the RIAA mends its ways, supports its artists and embraces the advantages of digital distribution with proceeds from tours.
Learn from history. Read Jack Valenti's arguments against Betamax, and notice the Blockbuster video rental store(s) on your commute home. I don't think the video industry was ruined.
"
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
There is an anology with french fries. McDonalds has done a huge job of getting their french fries everywhere. What is interesting is for folks who've grown up eating those french fries, eating real fresh cut french fries tastes weird, because for them, a french fry tastes like a McDonalds french fry.
Music is more than simply the song, it is the way we connect to it, and good promotional work I think is usually successfull in driving that connection. With DJ's on the radio getting Payola, dj's in clubs are a bit more limited in what they can play. People like to hear what they have already heard.
Songs don't make it big because they are good, the make it because they are promoted. Technology has addressed everything else the RIAA does, with the promotion piece solved they'd go the way of the Dodo.
Unfortunatly, so far it has been other commercial companies that want to come in and replace them (Napster) which I'm not convinced gains us huge amounts. The infrastructure of music should be free, just as the infrastructure of a computer (OS). What's the next step to make it so?
The RIAA and ASCAP/BMI - the songwriters' organizations, have had this strange relationship forever. A lot of what we know as the concept of intellectual property came from them dealing with each other and with broadcasters and such. Each has a sort of domain over which it has near-caveat authority to set prices and pay artists: When you buy a record at the store, the money goes back to whoever made the record, but not the songwriter or lyricist (unless they performed on the album and are owed a piece of the retail net). In the case of the recording artist/company, the important intellectual property is the performance placed on the album, that's the copyright that they sell to make money.
For ASCAP/BMI/(I forget the third), the important copyright is the sheet music and lyrics. They gained power in the early 1900s with the advent of radio, since songwriters wanted to be paid per broadcast. Anyway, they didn't have computers then, so they just have a flat fee for each radio station, bar w/jukebox, nightclub, elevator, etc. They just listen to a station for 6 hours, then multiply that over a year, and that's how they determine how much to pay an artist. So the little bands you liked in college never make a dime, but Britney's songwriters a rolling in it.
It gets real dicey in nightclubs: who owns the performance? ASCAP charges the nightclub a flat fee and then pays the bands using the same proportional setup they use for radio broadcasts. Again, no computers, and no exact counts of who gets played how much. It's all statistics, and the low end gets cut out consistently. The bands at a little club like the Middle East probably never see a dime from the songwriter's fee. They get paid for the performance, though, which belongs to them (any record made from it is their copyright).
This streaming media stuff is a real problem for us as webmasters/computer filesharing types as well as for the courts. If you stream the music, you're broadcasting a written song, but if you transmit it for HD storage, you're distributing a copyrighted recording. Thus you are going to get billed twice, and the RIAA and ASCAP/BMI are going to try to bill each other.
Like Clay said in his interview here the other day, the likely long-term outcome is that bands that write their own music will hire engineers to produce their records and then just let ASCAP deal with the licensing, cutting the RIAA out of the licensing business altogether (ASCAP would manage both copyrights, the song as written and performed).
In the short, term, though, these record companies (who are the RIAA) aren't going to give up so easily, and this is just them starting to open their eyes to the internet's potential re: their products. They'll probably lose this case because of the quasi-broadcasting nature of music file distribution, but ASCAP's fee isn't so high, and the RIAA will certainly find a way to leverage what they have while they still have it.
-jpowers
-jpowers
Actually its ASCAP thats one of the biggest companies that pays monies to lyricists, composers, etc., so RIAA would have to deal with them before anything is even created.
ASCAP doesn't license mechanical rights -- those are obtained directly from Harry Fox Agency, or via compulsory licenses, or both. ASCAP/BMI licenses performance rights, another thing entirely.
One can argue all day and night over the ethics of RIAA's actions, but most will fail when it all comes down to rights. RIAA has the rights to their controlled assets (music) and can do as they wish with it.
Nope. There's an important subtlety about intellectual property -- ownership of a copyright grants no right to do anything, just the right to exclude others from doing certain things. The exercise of these exclusive rights, either by a promise not to sue (a license grant) or filing an action for infringement are all that the owner can do, apart from outright assigning fo the asset interest .
In the case of a musical recording (termed in the law a "phonorecord"), there is always (unless in public domain) another, underlying copyright, owned not by the record industry, but by the composer, the right to the musical work. The former copyright is represented by the P-in-circle symbol, the latter by the C-in-circle symbol. RIAA gets from the C-in-circle owner a mechanical right, via the harry fox industry, to make a phonorecord from the original work. And RIAA's rights to exploit its P-in-circle rights are limited by its licenses from the C-in-circle owner.
Is to encourage your favorite artists to sign with record labels that aren't among the RIAA.
The only way to battle the RIAA, speaking in terms of business, is to draw the money of the music market to other outlets that offer better service to the bands and that are more friendly to the consumer. A really viable alternative to the RIAA system has to be found, and I'm not talking about virtual tip jars or the odd t-shirt sale.
Somehow I don't see that happening in the short term though if the RIAA, as flawed as it is, remains a more attractive business model to a lot of bands.
So, all this time, whilst we all knew they were talking crap for other reasons, when the RIAA were claiming that Napster et al had to be shutdown because otherwise the starving artists wouldn't be able to eat, they weren't /even/ trying to protect the value of recording contracts. We all know that many musicians sign away almost all their rights and are paid in a lump contract sum, but now it turns out that the RIAA really doesn't care in the least about their rights.
Can they really not be done for perjury for talking crap in court all this time? (Answer - nope, they have expensive always!)...
No, but may be "it's not going to the artists anyway but only to the greedy RIAA who'll just use the money to do more damage to consumers and artists rights" is. Obviously we need a way to cut the RIAA out of the loop and get the money to the artists on a more direct way. That can only work if the artists retain enough rights over their music that they are allowed to market it themselves. At the moment the RIAA plays both sides against the middle and is happily reaping the profit, establishing the old record labels as the only ones who may make a profit from music.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
When I was in Chicago, the underground use this thing called DJ to promote music. The story goes like this:
Each week, the DJs will go to record stores to listen to whatever new record that comes in. Then they decide which one they will play and play them to us, evaluate the reaction from the crowd and decide whether to play it in the future.
So that means ther DJs replace the power of RIAA? Not really. Remember that the key to monopoly is that high cost of entrance. It costs a lot of money to start a huge record label and shoot MTVs, build studios. But it takes only a man with a pair of ears to be a DJ. The consumer decides which DJ they will follow by thier own opinion. If they don't like this DJ, they go to another club. If they like the songs, they will ask the DJs where the song come from and buy them. (This is how I am introduced to music from Wubble-U, Suicide commando, etc.)
One may argue that the record shops control what the DJ listens to. Well. not really. the DJs usually goes to stores with one thing in mind - get better quality music to keep thier own job. The bazzaar style evolution again works in this case.
Also I'd like to mention that, on Napster, the ability to browse other people's entire collection also helps promote music. For example, when I searched for "Cuban" "Latin" music and accidentally ran into some flamenco music. i liked it much so I searched for the word "flamenco." What returned was some guy who had quite a few flamenco music. So I took a look at his entire collection, all of which are classical guitar and flamenco music. So that is how I found Christopher Parkening's guitar work.
The key is, as long as there is an easy entrance to music promotion, RIAA will no longer control what we hear.
No. In this case they are talking about narrowcasting, similar to what MP3.com wanted to do. THey want to do things like stream albums, stream custom playlists, etc. All the stuff that they sued MP3.com for doing. However, you raise a good point - for some reason they are making online radio stations have a bunch of restrictions that offline ones do not, like increased licensing, disability to publish playlists in advance, not allowed to play more than 3 songs from one album in a certain period (4 hrs?). So yeah, basically evil. this time, however, someone is fighting back - the songwriters! Yeah!
It seems to me that promotion is the only thing that affects a song's popularity. A number of the "underground" bands I listen to (Enchant, Spock's Beard, Vanden Plas, Tiles, and Transatlantic all come to mind)</PLUG> could easily be played on the radio (to the best of my ability to judge, anyway) yet virtually no one has ever heard of them. The music is there, but they're not getting the publicity from their labels.
And here we see exactly why the anarchists will win. Civilization breeds hypocrites that specialize in taking over the organs of civilization. Any attempt to suppress the hypocrite is countered with religious indoctrination that teaches anyone with an ounce of moral integrity to tolerate the existence of hypocrites while the hypocrites themselves are able to hollow out civilization's primary organs.
This wouldn't be so bad if civilization didn't chew up so many resources in the process of doing itself in.
Seastead this.
Those are your so-called "anarchists". I'm not speaking of ideological anarchists -- I'm talking about people who are literally ungovernable -- people like Bill Clinton. You're kiddies who dress up in black and go to riots with their single moms from the Pacific Northwest are nothing compared to the hypocrites in Washington, D.C. or the guys in Hollywood who provide us relgious indoctrination. They may be dependent on government and want others to be governable, but that doesn't mean they, themselves, are governable.
Seastead this.
And then I read the RIAA's reason for wanting to 'pirate' the same music - doing it the right way (the lawful way) would cost to much.
Well folks, that about raps it up for me. I'm going to continue to pirate music for one simple reason - it costs less. And that's all I'm gonna say.
For those of you who feel I'm stomping on the rights of artists - tough. If they're dumb enough to sign up with this two faced laughing pile of dogshit called the RIAA then they deserve it.
The problem is the only folks the RIAA believe are entitled to the royalties is the RIAA.
-HobophobE
-HobophobE
Nothing laughs forever.
First good post this whole thread. You could practically write a script to reverse-troll arbitrary sets of troll posts.
I happen to think it's laughable when organizations like this become highly-publicized hypocrites.
People shape laws. Not the other way around.
Offshore hosting is a sham, unless you live in a copyright/lawsuit-free country, in which case you don't need offshore hosting to begin with.
Why should lyrics and sheet music (such as used for performances, etc.) enjoy copyright protection? This activity only squashes the free flow of culture and puts a financial burden on those who shouldn't have it. For example, back in high school, our marching band, choir, and orchestra had to pay lots of royalties for the music we performed. Because the school inadequately funded its arts program, there were sometimes limitations on what music could be performed. Here's a second example: Remember lyrics.ch? (That is before it ran into trouble) Any song you could think of had the lyrics available. It was a wonderful source for hobby musicians who wanted to learn the words of songs they were trying to figure out by ear. Of course, you can still find all those lyrics / guitar tabs out there somewhere if you need them, but now its a hastle compared to relying on one site with everything. Consider also the fact that stores, clubs, etc. must pay royalties for simply having a radio on for background music. (And this has included even "mom and pop" shops if they're caught by ASCAP). So what are we gaining by paying songwriters a few cents in royalties? Its certainly not making no-name composers rich, whose music is rarely featured. But it IS making crappy pop-music songwriters wealthy, because statistically their stuff is played the most so they get the biggest share of the ASCAP royalties pie. I think for once I agree with the RIAA..
They say that if you love something, you should set it free.
I guess alot of modern artists really hate their work..
Oh wait, it's not April, the RIAA really is just dumb.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Well, this sort of cuts another leg out from under the IP argument, doesn't it? But only sort of. I nevertheless think this whole thing is hilariously ironic. The RIAA has apparently just painted itself into a no-win situation -- if they go forward, they risk getting shot down with their own arguments on the one hand or alienating their own constituency and thereby rendering themselves obsolete. I'd come up with a half-baked solution, but I can't think of one at the moment... /Brian
This is just business as usual for the organizations that the RIAA represents. They've been ripping off musicians and lyricists for years. Unfortunately, up until the advent of things like streaming media, the only way that artists could get well-marketed outside their home base was to play ball with these parasites.
Streaming media conceivably can allow musicians to market their product without RIAA member involvement. This is what really scares them.
You want to help fight the RIAA? Set up streaming servers and use them to help your local musicians market their work.
I've said from the begining that the RIAA wouldn't go through the trouble of fighting napster if it was just a matter of CD sales. They know just as well as we do that the people who download a song off napster wouldn't necessarily buy the CD if napster were not availible. The whole thing is that they want to compete with napster. They think that since they are the RIAA they can sue their competition into the ground, then get off clean and clear, because the artists side with them.
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Crudely Drawn Games
This looks nothing like Napster. They are talking about 'on-demand streams' and 'limited downloads', where the latter becomes unusable after a set time period or number of plays.
This is exactly what we would expect from the RIAA, not surprising at all.
Also, it's old:
RIAA Petition to Copyright Office.
Re: Request for Rulemaking and to Convene Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel.
Date: November 29, 2000.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Breaking the law is a good way to make a change happen in a civilized society...
Indeed. "Good men should not follow the law too closely."
(Was it Emerson who said this? I think it was am American philosopher/author, at any rate
GPL doesn't restrict the use - only the distribution. It is only restrictive when the restriction can actually be enforced.
Yeah, man! Anarchy rules doodZ!
Shit. I think I'm going to "pirate" some GPL'd code and put it in my proprietary product!
It's not like the author was making money anyway. Now we all win!
If this is the way you feel, then you (and all of Slashdot) should be selective in what you "pirate."
For example, if you think copyright should only be good for 20 years, you should make it clear that you are only going to pirate songs pre-1980.
Otherwise, you have anarchy with no clear message. And you will lose.
This is sortof offtopic, but I'm curious: does anyone have references to the studies that say Napster increases CD sales?
It does relate, sortof. Because depending on how much they increase CD sales, the RIAA might be able to justify the cost of reimbursing the people who actually create the music.
But I'm not sure somebody didn't just pull the studies out of their butt....
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Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
I've written a fun little program that encrypts mp3 filenames in a searchable manner. Download it here and avoid being spied on by Copyright.net. I just really don't like these guys.
You may enjoy the license agreement too.
The enemy of you enemy is your friend. Wouldn't the logical conclusion of protecting lyracists right also have shut down napster?
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So RIAA is making a big case against MP3 sharing services, saying that people arn't getting the royalties they are entitled to, and now they're stiffing the people to whom the royalties are entitled to. Can we just find a Judge to review the entire RIAA vs. Napster, RIAA vs MP3.com, and just tell RIAA that enough's enough, either follow your own rules, or we're overturning these decisions
blah
Actually its ASCAP thats one of the biggest companies that pays monies to lyricists, composers, etc., so RIAA would have to deal with them before anything is even created.
One can argue all day and night over the ethics of RIAA's actions, but most will fail when it all comes down to rights. RIAA has the rights to their controlled assets (music) and can do as they wish with it. Sure its ethically wrong, but has anyone seen any business that was fair? shittt... even the Catholic religion is shaky
This may be the ultimate solution for artists and online stations to go about. Some artists should think about releasing an online version of their songs prior to committing to anyone like RIAA, ASCAP, etc., this way their songs become more popular, people enjoy their music before its been monopolized, and artists can then leverage more rights from RIAA, and the others, and if those agencies don't like it, the artist (now popular from releasing a net based song) can then press and distribute records on their own, which many successful artists have done.
L. Ron Hubbard's FBI files a la FOIA
360 degrees of Karma
As simple as you make it sound, there is a lot more to it. I happen to be in the camp that agrees with the idea of: copyright holders should paid for their work.
Now with that out of the way. Alot of people don't know how many layers of hands might be in a song. at any given time there might be 5 to 25 layers (percentage takers ) in a song. for example :
singer, producer, engineer, backup vocals, song righter, hook righter, hook musician, album producer, agent, lable, and this list can go on and on. Each one of those parties eat a certain percentage ( or $ depending on the contract ).
Now what is very freightening is that the RIAA wants to back out of their contract. And they might win.
In most record lable contracts, there are different right's. MP3's might not be covered, the only digital media covered right now is the cd and dat ( I think there might be another but I can not recall ). It's new to the industry ( mp3's) so you can imagine what it might look like.
So the record industry knowing that MP3's might not be covered can ( with some good lawyers ) back out of paying MP3 distribution. ( contract does not cover it so it belongs to the holders of the master tape, otherwise you could argue that you hold a cd and the first digital broadcast of the MP3 would belong to you )
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this time, however, someone is fighting back - the songwriters!
I just wanna see Lars Ulrich in court testifying that he wants his stuff on Napster...
--Blair
The RIAA says, "To be compelling to consumers
Duh, what do they think MP3.com was trying to do? The RIAA really is a joke. I find it quite hilarious that they themselves are being sued for exactly what they sued others for. Even the director of the KPIG online radio station called the RIAA a bunch of idiots.