Slashdot Mirror
Recording Artists File Brief Against RIAA
Matthew Skala writes: "The Recording Artists' Coalition, which includes such luminaries as Bruce Springsteen, Don Henley, and Sheryl Crow, is still annoyed about the "Work for Hire" legislation we heard about in August 2000. They've filed a brief in the Napster cases, urging the court not to accept the RIAA's copyright registration documents as proof of ownership, because accepting the documents would allow the music cartel to sneakily destroy artists' claims to the music they recorded. They don't take a stand on other issues we might be interested in, but it's still worth thinking about. If the artists are against the RIAA, then whom exactly does the RIAA represent? Some quotes and info are on Siliconvalley.com."
All along the RIAA has been able to do what they did against mp3.com, Napster, and others because they claimed those services took money away from those poor, starving artists.
Most of us knew all along that they were really protecting the interests of the companies at the artists' expense; now we have firm confirmation.
Most people are willing to support their favorite artists. They buy concert tickets, help with word-of-mouth, buy and wear t-shirts, etc. It's going to be harder now for the RIAA to claim that the consumers are greedy and just want free stuff without giving the artist due compensation.
Hopefully, the government won't fall for it anymore.
The RIAA is starting to resemble that other paragon of virtue - The Business Software Alliance.
Of course, the BSA thinks they have the authority to search private property looking for license violations.
I could never see the RIAA or the MPAA doing that.
It looks like what the Coalition are arguing about is not that the Recording Company own the copyright to the recorded music, but that the Artists should retain the right to be recognised as the Author, and owner of the intellectual rights to the work. This simply means they get to choose who to transfer the copyright to, should the Work appear to have much greater value than the Recording Company initially compensated for.
/. would say, Offtopic.
Basically, if "Tuesday Night Music Club" becomes a much bigger selling album due to some massive increase in demand, Sheryl Crow retains the intellectual rights to the songs, meaning she has a position to renegotiate with A&M from. A&M still own the rights to the recording of the Album, but the Artist can re-record the songs for a different company.
The RIAA's position, which the coalition is attempting to undermine, is that artists who signed work-for-hire contracts have no claim to intellectual property.
I know various instances of the work-for-hire contract from the Comics industry and, basically, the Company own every damn thing.
Unfortunately, I can't see how a bunch of artists, famous or not, can, by telling the court how-it-is-for-an-artist is going to overturn those contracts, as, while not necessarily presented in good faith by the Recording Companies, are legally binding and accepted by the Artist. Citing previous legislation which is relevant to a different contract type, is, as
I wish them luck because I want to see some draconian money-grabbing bunch of RIAA protected scumbags get thier comeuppance for bad faith business practice. Alas I think this particular battle tactic is a lost cause.
Chris.
I think they need to take the I in their name and give it a font size about twice the rest of the letters.
I still have one giant conceptual problem with their "work for hire" clause: If making a record is truely a "work for hire" then why does the artist have to pay back all the costs of creating it? It's like I'll hire you to maintain my house, and it'll only cost you $400 a month to do it. And oh yeah, bring all your tools over and when you're done, they're mine.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
2) Set up a company (cheap)
3) Set up a bank account
4) Set up a merchant account
5) Sell music online
6) PC with CD burner and CD label printer
You just need $5000 up front to set this up, maybe you could do it for a few bands. Sell entire albums for $5 (a percentage goes to the merchant bank).
Marketing is the problem. Use Napster and the other music distribution mechanisms to put out low-quality snippets and encourage people to visit your site. If the music is naff, then people will not buy, obviously!
Insert all the standard slashdot oriented comments here:
music should be owned by the artists
if they didn't put out crap we'd buy their CD's
CD's are too expensive
i should be able to make a back up copy of anything i own
I bought a CD and its scratched, so i had to buy it twice
the labels are screwing the artists
I only have one thing new to bring to this: yesterday, on CNN, in between terrorism and more terrorism, on the ticker at the bottom, i saw something that said "RIAA reports loss of $5B last year, says mostly attributed to CD burning piracy". I've been all over the RIAA and CNN's websites and can find nothing about it. If you find something, please post below.
And now for some quasi-related links!
Courtney Love speaks out against major labels at
The RIAA discusses cost of a CD at
~z
On a side note, its really hard to find news about anything "else" these days. I swear to god, with the 24 hour afghan channels, i have no idea what else is going down in my own country. And its only 5% news. Like jon stewart said, its like they report everything they know, and then they speculate to fill the time, like "what if they had a nuclear weapon, the size of a.... um... doughnut. yeah. and it was shaped like a doughnut... lets talk to the experts... get me dunkin doughnuts!"
sig?
The Recording industry is just being a little slow here, a little stupid. They'll see eventually that they must learn to make their money in ways other than selling records, for example: corporate sponsership of concerts, selling advertising on label-owned artist web sites, stuff like that.
I have this idea: Many, if not most artists, I think I can assume, don't produce more than one albumn or so per year. Maybe the artist's record label could set up a "club" for each artist under their wing. Maybe the club costs you, the consumer, $15-$20 per year to join.
You would enjoy benefits such as:
-one free copy of any albumns produced, and discounts on additional copies (hey, you could steal it anyway, but this way the record company can make people feel like they are getting something cool, and you already paid your 15 bucks).
-the ability to get the albumn before it hits the stores (which really doesn't cost them anything extra, but again, people would feel like they were special)
-access to a hoopty-doo "members only" web site, with exclusive content, maybe interviews, interactive chats, special downloads of music and pics, that sort of crap
-discounts on, or at the very least, advance sales of, concert tickets (which would encourage club members to buy tickets, making everybody involved MORE money)
-exclusive merchandise (which again, encourages club members who may not have bought that shirt to do so if they feel like they are getting something special)
Many other industries have had to change their methods of making profits in our new economy, and the recording industry can do the same, they just need to get their heads out or their collective butts, stop whining, realize that suing people ain't a good way to make a living, and get on with the business of business, which is making lots of money by making consumers think they need some more crap.
The Grateful Dead made lots of their money not thru record sales, but thru merchandising and concerts, why can't that work for others too?
Dave Cooley
"Computers have allowed us to make more mistakes faster than any invention in the history of mankind, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila."
Just then the floating disembodied head of Colonel Sanders started yelling Everything You Know Is Wrong!-Weird Al
At the time when artists were not so well-payed as they are today, you could be quite certain that the artist either truly loved what (s)he was doing or was exceptionally talented, thus ensuring large commisions. If you're willing to pay more, you increase the overall number of artists, but you typically also lower the standard of 'exceptional talent.' Is there an ideal level at which this rather arbitrary standard should be set? Probably. I happen to believe that at present it is far too low, since even a striking appearance and a decent voice can be mistaken for 'exceptional talent' (ala Britney Spears or 'NSync.)
This disturbingly low opinion of talent conversely indicates that musicians are being paid disturbingly well. Those of us who recognize this (most Slashdotters, it seems, and many others in intellectual circles) are unwilling to pay for what is, to us, a decided lack of talent. Unfortunately, we don't comprise a large enough portion of the market to sufficiently dent demand. So long as the media influences popular judgement of 'exceptional talent' and encourages conformity, we cannot expect this trend to change anytime soon. The recording industry will continue to churn out music of whatever quality so long as it is demanded by their market - those very people who rush to the malls every time a new CD is released, because they think that 'NSync represents 'exceptional talent' when in fact, 'NSync represents nothing more than the ability to sing lyrics written by somebody else to a tune composed by somebody else and to look pretty in the process.
In conclusion, I must say that I disagree with your assessment that the phenomenon of large royalties and licensing fees is unlikely to stand the test of time. I certainly agree that to an intellectual crowd such as Slashdot, such a change seems inevitable, but I do not foresee the drastic cultural changes necessary to affect such a collapse of the present system.
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea
The RIAA represents the interests that control PROMOTION AND DISTRIBUTION of music, and NOT the PRODUCTION OR AUTHORING of music. They don't care about music or artists that have not been proven as "mass marketable" because the payoff does not attract lawyers and middlemen.
The RIAA exists to reserve the SCARCITY of good music (keeping music OUT of the hands of consumers) until pent-up demand can generate windfall revenues. Musicians who slowly build up a following simply do not sign bad contracts that give all the windfall to the industry people. The RIAA exists to control the money of one-hit-wonders and fad music that rises quickly out of obscurity into the obsessions of conformity-minded 12-13 year olds.
If you think about Napster vs. RIAA in those terms, you see that the timeless music most heavily traded on Napster threatens the middlemen more than the artists. What would happen to Britney Spears and Puff-Daddy if junior-high aged kids started to think that their parents' old record collection was cooler than the crap being hyped on MTV and department store PA systems?
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
I absolutely agree, although I think it's also important not to lose sight of the fact that the RIAA got where it is only because artists were willing to sign up with them, under the RIAA's terms.
Sure, they're sneaky and greedy - but they didn't point a gun to the musician's head and say "hand over that song of yours or die, pal!"
People like that sax player on the corner, playing for the pure joy of it, are the exception. Most musicians have a certain amount of greed, just like the people at the RIAA do. For every musician I run into who honestly doesn't care if he/she makes a buck, I find 3 who have aspirations of "hitting the big time" and raking in mega-bucks.
I'm willing to bet that at least 75% of the people who signed on to the major record labels did so because they knew it was a ticket to much larger earnings. Sure, they don't like many of the RIAA's terms - but they could have always said "No! Won't work with you!" They didn't....
This is no different than Microsoft, folks. We collectively created the monster by *willingly* signing their agreements and purchasing their products. As most Linux fans also know, the only solution is to explore new alternatives, even though they may be the "path less traveled" and seem more risky.
Actually, the story of what happened here is worse than you think. What happened is that, after he gained popularity, he decided to leave the recording contract he was in because it was draconian. However, the label pursued (and won) the rights to the stage name "Prince", so he couldn't record under that name for anyone else. Hence, he changed his name to a symbol (to get around legal issues as much as any other reason), wrote the word "slave" on his forehead and finished out his contract. When it was done he started his own label and became The Artist Formerly Known as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.
The worst part about this is that when he said he wanted out of his contract, his label actually decided that the best course of action was to take away his right to his own stage name, which I found to serve no purpose except spite. I must admit that after hearing this I have a lot more respect for him than when I thought he did it just to be eccentric (which I found out was just the way the recording industry spun it to keep them from looking bad).
Virg
Everything that the RIAA is active on--fostering a viable music marketplace online, preventing piracy, fighting censorship--is based on one premise: It all starts with the music and the music starts with the artist. The artist creates the music that jolts you back in your chair, whisks you across the dance floor, or freezes you in reverie. Music marks key moments in our lives. Memories of first loves, bitter battles, and sweet triumphs are all brought back by that favorite song. You "own" that anthem now, but it started with the artist. They all create different music, yet with the same passion to connect. Different path, same goal. When the connection is made?look out.
Music moves us. Music unites us. Not many art forms are as expansive, evocative, poignant, or powerful. That?s why, around the globe, the artist is embraced, honored, banned and sometimes feared. Nothing communicates like music does.
To do his or her best, the artist needs a supportive environment. That is a goal of RIAA. RIAA fights to preserve freedom of speech, copyright protection, and a positive environment in which to create and distribute music -- on and off the Internet.
The RIAA may in fact only represent entertainment corporations, but that's not the way the represent themselves to lawmakers and the general public.
The Milli Vanilli debacle was only embarassing to the recording industry because they got caught. The proliferation of dancing boy bands and jiggling girl bands is just the continuation of a cookie-cutter process that's become the RIAA's wet dream. Now that technology can assure that you don't actually have to hire musicians to perform music, they've gone overboard. And they're about to be bowled over by the backlash. Every musical movement engenders a backlash. I remember the "disco sucks" revolt. Hundreds of teenagers at my school smashing records in the playground. Literally thousands of records were smashed, angrily. It was years before disco artists resurfaced. The backlash against Britney and 'N'Sync is going to make that look tame. Those people won't be able to go out in public until they're fifty . . .
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Keeping the recording industry's behavior in mind, I think I can clear up the RIAA's confusion over why this brief was filed (quote from the Siliconvalley.com article):
First, the artists just don't like what the RIAA represents. It doesn't really hurt the artists if the Napster case has to go to trial, but it does inconvenience the RIAA. Secondly, and more importantly, the artists need to take every opportunity they can to fight the "work for hire" idea. If they can't (someday) own their own music, then they'll never be free of the recording industry.
To understand what's right and wrong, the lawyers work in shifts ...
Check this out:
$6.2B/488.7M = $12.69/Unit (last year)
$5.9B/442.7M = $13.33/Unit (this year)
They are charging more per unit, and selling less. Go figure.