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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."
I guess that shold answer your question - the RIAA represents the companies, not the artists. The companies should represent the artists, but they're too busy making a fast buck.
Tom.
Oh arse
RIAA holds the trunk and says music is a tricky snake that might get away if it isn't secured properly. Recording companys hold the legs and say music is a sturdy post that supports the US economy. Broadcasters hold the ears and say music is dish they use to aim what they want to play at who they want to hear it. Artists hold the teat and say music is a kind mother that puts food on their tables.
And we the fan get to hold the ass and say the whole thing just plain stinks.
...and that's it. It doesn't represent artists, or art, or cultural diversity, or musical history. It's there to protect the interests of the recording industry. No insidious evil plot here—that's simply why it was created, and that's what it does.
The emergent behavior of a system, however, can be completely different from the stated purpose. How does a concept like "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", for example, spawn realities like gulags and purges? The same way a concept like intellectual property spawns a group of uncreative lawyers protecting work that they neither create nor understand.
It wasn't that long ago when artists were simply paid by their patrons for works they'd commissioned, and didn't expect to get rich off royalties and licensing fees. It's a relatively new phenomenon, and in the face of technology, it may turn out to be quite short-lived. Just because we've lived with it all our lives doesn't mean it's right, or good, or sustainable.
They represent the people who have been exploiting musicians for close to 100 years. They represent the kind of people who would gladly pay someone 500 bucks for "Louie Louie" and make millions of dollars from it without thinking of sharing it with the songwriter. They represent the kind of people who pay radio stations millions of dollars a year to get certain songs played on the airwaves that are supposedly owned by the public. They represent the kind of people who think that paying new bands a wage that could be easily beaten by working at 7-11 is fair. They represent a way of doing business that makes used car salesmen, spammers and morticians blanch at the shamelessness of the bookkeeping and bookcooking. Hollywood, the publishing industry and the Fortune 500, would never consider for a minute some of the crooked gambits that are considered to be business as usual in the music industry.
They do not represent the artists. They do not represent the songwriters. They do not represent the audience of listeners and the people who buy the music. They do not, in any way shape or form, represent or respect American musical culture. When rock and roll came, they tried to bury it. When indy rock came, they tried to bury it and then tried to buy it off. When rap came, they tried to shut it out, and then they perverted it into violent, racial stereotyping. Now that electronica is here, they're doing their damnest to bury it under tons of catchy tunes that are a cross between dance and bubblegum. When home studios became a possibility, they outlawed the cheaper versions of the DATs to make it more expensive for those who wanted to start one - they even tried to get zoning boards in the L.A areas to shut them down for zoning violations. Now that they've waken up to the potential of computers, they are trying to cripple them with copy protection built in to the hardware that will also probably cripple an independent musician's ability to make copies of his OWN music and distribute them.
In short, they are a band of greedy, monopolistic Luddites who are attempting to strangle a new explosion in musical culture before it goes too far.
I think one of the best expressions of how many musicians feel about the industry is Joni Mitchell's "For Free", where she wistfully listens to a guy playing sax on the corner for nothing and wonders if she'll ever feel as happy and pure about her music again.
Copyright is an abstract concept.
It is not a technology that can be circumvented by a device anymore than you can travel in time by resetting your watch.
The RIAA represents the 'record industry', ie the record companies. The record companies are all, by law, required to look after their share holder's (financial) interests. So far, so good. They are doing exactly what they are supposed to do. This should surprise no one. However, the manner in which they look after those interests may be up for debate - what would happen if they started interpreting their mission with long-term goals in mind? All of their current tactics are short-term, stop-gap measures, designed to maximize profits right now. Viewed in a long-term perspective, those same measures are counter-productive. They will 'lose', eventually. Suing Napster and Napster-like phenomena will only work for a while. It will not stop Gnutella and it's peers (pun intended) and it will not make J. Random Listener stop downloading MP3s.
The RIAA is scared since they see a future where they don't exist. A future where the artists have all gone independent and is selling their music and other value-added products online through a number of portal sites. That business model is still not viable, but it will be because it has to be. The genie can not be put back in the bottle. Retail sales of CDs will go down. The current distribution channels will collapse. But people will still want to buy and listen to music and musicians will still want to perform.
There will be ways. We'll all find a way. But the RIAA will be roadkill.
Money for nothing, pix for free
The bargaining leverage of the RIAA is touted repeatedly in this brief, and not as a good thing. This may or may not be true, depending on the "status" of the artist sitting at the negotiating table. By the same token, most artists dont have the bankroll to do their own marketing/publicity. So they do, in effect, get a VC investor when they sign up with an RIAA member. The typical observer may not see the big difference between this relationship, and someone with a good business plan who needs capital to startup another dotcom. We all know what the typical VC wants for their cut.
What they (the artists) dont yet fully realize, is that digital format, and encryption is going to change things. This is their moment. This is ground zero for digital music, and it might be their last chance to assert their own authority over their own works in the digital realm, which will soon be (perhaps already is) the basis of all other realms. There are very few analog distribution channels left out there with any popularity.
I hope that they (artists) take the time to learn how to use crypto/digital to their own advantage. If they (RAC) wanted to, they could (say) make their own CA and start their own distribution network immedietly. Then the RIAA would simply be another purchaser (redistributor) of the digital form of the works.
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
- Recording label scout finds a band he likes
- Scout promotes his band to execs
- Execs decide they like the band and sign them to a contract
- Label offers to loan the band money to record album
- Band records album, usually taking quite some time, because they are new to the recording industry and they may not initially have 45-60 minutes of material
- Band returns to label with finished album
- Band finds that neither scout nor exec nor anyone they've ever seen before still works at label (the turnover in this industry surpasses even the tech sector for some reason)
- No new exec is interested in publishing the band's album
- Band tries to take album to another label, perhaps where the original scout or exec now works, but is unable to because they've signed a contract
- Band still owes recording loan to label
- Band languishes in debt because they cannot do anything with their created music nor start over without breach of contract
- Label starts sending bill collectors for their loan payments
Maybe I should ask you to tell me how it could be possible for the label to fail to make money.Fuck 'im up, Tim! His views are invalid! -Pirate Corp$
... the RIAA represents the companies, not the artists. The companies should represent the artists, but they're too busy making a fast buck.
No, the RIAA SHOULD NOT represent the artists. It is an organization of, by, and for the labels.
There IS an organization that SHOULD be representing the artists.
It's their UNION.
To which they've been paying dues since they first got on stage.
The Musician's union has accused of been nothing but a scam for quite some time.
Now's the artists' chance to do something about it.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
...profit-hungry recording companies. The artists are, for the most part, getting ripped off by RIAA companies, but some of what they do doesn't sound all that out of the ordinary to me.
First, the bad: RIAA companies that contract musicians under the "works for hire" type contracts really try hard to screw musicians out of ownership of their songs. Heck, even HBO claimed that they owned Tenacious D's songs that were made for the one and only season of their cable television show. To me, that sounds like the argument many academic institutions have used to claim patents/credit for innovations: "If you hadn't been using our resources, you wouldn't have come up with the result."
Now, the "not out of the ordinary". I remember reading Courtney Love's rather well-written tirade about the behavior of RIAA companies and they way they (the companies) spend money in advance on recording, promotion, touring, etc and expect to be paid back. I don't really see that as a problem. The recording company is, in effect, an investor in an artist. The company will spend the money on all the aforementioned things in an effort to sell a product and make a profit. Sure, I wish people weren't greedy and they didn't expect to make so much of a profit, but humans will be humans. Love explains that after all the bills are paid back, many artists don't make much money. Well, Courtney, most working people in the world don't have much money left after the bills are all paid, this applies perhaps even more so to those in the arts. Contracted musicians aren't a special social class who deserve to earn a 6-figure-plus salary. I'd be willing to bet that the figures are more or less proportionate. Artists who sell a lot earn a lot. Artists who sell relatively little get paid relatively little.
Just as an example, one of my best friends was actually a performing musician in Nashville for a while. He wrote a song that was recorded on an album by a contracted, professional pop/rock group. The album, consequently, went platinum. Just royalties on that song along made my friend just over $50k that year. I would hope the recording artists receive much more compensation than that, given live performances, t-shirt sales, etc.
So, yeah, I've heard it all before and I agree with most of it. The RIAA is evil, tramples on personal property rights, is clueless when it comes to protecting intellectual property, bought lawmakers, persecuted the Christians, sold crack to kids, broke my lawnmower, yada, yada , yada. They are a business and like any other business, they are struggling to protect their paradigm. Some of the ways they do it are just normal for business. Too many, though, are just brutal.
My sigs always suck.
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