Slashdot Mirror
Musicians Get Together For Anti-RIAA Concerts
DarkZero writes "The Sacramento Bee is currently running an article
about several different bands getting together for five concerts to raise money for the Recording Artists Coalition with the express purpose of fighting the RIAA and the
unfair treatment of its musicians. The acts lined up include Elton John, Billy Joel, Ozzy Osbourne, Stevie Nick
s, The Offspring, The Eagles, Weezer, and plenty of other bands. Good for them. (And for those that are wonderi
ng, the RAC's site, ArtistsAgainstPiracy.com, is actually an anti-RIAA and somewhat pro-Napster site, not what you would immediately expect it
to be.)"
He has been a very active "Anti RIAA" soldier.
As most bands/artists know that a good relation with the fans is the key to success, and that their record-companies takes most of the profit anyway,they don't really see MP3's as a threat, but rather as a momentum to spread their music and gain popularity, hence creating the opportunity for more sales. I'd guess the only larger band to actually support the RIAA would be Metallica...
You can also fight majors'monopoles by endorsing Free Art distribution policies.
There is, for example GNUArt (soon to be translated in English, I swear) which promotes the application of the GNU General Public License to Art.
BTW...
Wasn't a Weezer video clip on the Windows 95 CD ? (an excellent Video Clip made after the "Happy Days" series)
Trolling using another account since 2005.
so basically all the old farts : what does that tell us ? that the older artists get, the more they realize how much the RIAA shafted them (and don't even tell Elton John about that !). Of course, that comment only applies to *real* artists, not fake teen bands that are direct products of the RIAA : if Britney Spear lasts beyond her first wrinkles as an "artist", she'll probably miss her RIAA-generated glory days dearly, when she finds out she actually needs talent to make it without them.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
If anything, the Napster case has prompted artists to fight for a better arrangement whith their record companies.
Maybe changing the balance toward artists, so they can decide how do they distribute their work, and not destroying the whole copyright concept, would be enough for many people.
As things stand right now, I feel ethically correct to copy RIAA's protected stuff. Maybe this and other legislative changes would change it.
If I know that 90% of the money I pay goes to productive people like musicians, sound tehcnicians, etc... (and this is possible with internet distribution and without spending money in pushing marketroid manufactured culture) I wouldn't mind to pay for my music.
Also I would like a free market where people can charge different amounts for different products. Maybe a start up band shouldn't charge as much as a reputed musician.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
Are Lars Ulrich and Metallica going to attend?
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Billy Joel: Sony/Columbia
Ozzy Osbourne: Sony/Epic
Stevie Nicks: WEA/Warner Brothers
The Offspring: Sony/Columbia
Eagles: WEA/Elektra Entertainment
Weezer: UNI/Geffen
Why don't they all just leave their major labels and take their 'business' elsewhere?
And yes, contracts can be broken if you have enough money and/or an inkling of complaint (see: George Michael) -- and it does seem there's complaint. After all, they are planning a series of concerts.
I had a really great fucking post but a stray keyclick nuked it. I don't feel like typing it all again so anyone interested please use ESP and I will send you a mind bullet. I'll also point to a handy website. Here is a really good page not because it contains much info but because it has two very good papers written about the recording industry and does a good job summing up what my mind bullets contain. It's good to see artists telling the RIAA to fuck off, the only problem I see is these artists have already made their money and have their fame, the recording companies could drop them like a bad habit and they could still make money on their own. There's thousands of bands that don't have that ability and probably never will. The recording industry likes it that way but then again, so do most people who really like listening to music (or just want to be cool for owning some new popular album). That blows.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
With stuff like TV's Popstars, the record labels aren't even bothering to hide the fact that "bands" these days are made-up. Do you think that these mime & dance combos can afford to complain to their record labels? No way. They'll dump you and then just phone up the model agency and ask for 5 more people who look OK and can sort-of dance. No singing ability required. If you can read music (much less, write it), then you're probably too clever and might make trouble later. Much as I can't stand the guy, but at least Elton can actually play an instrument.
I bet the labels can't wait until the CG stuff can be done cheaply enough to replace humans altogether.
Sad times indeed.
This sig made only from recycled ASCII
Cool, now i can just print out the list of member artists, cross-reference it to my list of people to buy presents for, and figure out what to buy in a matter of minutes without the guilt of blindly supporting the RIAA. True, depending on the label some money may make its way to their hired thu^M^M^M^M^M legal dept, but at least some other fraction of my money is going to fight said legal dept.
;-)
And while i'm at the record store, i can buy some scratched up used CDs which still, in theory, include liscence to enjoy the content originally pressed into those disks, so i can go home and download songs without pirating anything, while not paying full price
I wonder if some of them may decide to start their own artist run label.
You mean like Ani DiFranco's Righteous Babe Records? I'm not too sure about the background but as far as i know she didn't feel like getting screwed by a major record label and, being one of those pro-active folk singer types, started her own. Someone posted a letter she wrote to Ms. Magazine complaining about people looking at is a financial success rather than just not wanting to deal with a record company.
The fundamental problem is that musicians sign their lives away for multi-album contracts at an early stage in their careers. These contracts are signed with the artist at a huge disadvantage (for instance the artist often signs away their right to negotiate with any other studio without realizing that it was legally binding, let alone what they are now in for). And studios are under all incentives to take full advantage of this.
But as actors realized decades ago in movies and as professional sport after professional sport has found out, if you give talent the ability to renegotiate contracts early and often (ie make them free agents) then the top talent gets an absurdly better deal, and the average talent gets something much closer to a decent shake. Make musicians free agents and studios will have incentives to treat artists better, not worse.
Oh, people talk about having a studio founded by the artists, for the artists. But such a studio will have all of the same incentives as the existing ones, and in the end will turn out the same. Therefore until musicians wake up and start demanding to be free agents, I confidently predict that their treatment will continue to suck.
To clarify, the artists in this case want
Their music to no longer be classified as a "work for hire," aka a pointless industrial design owned by the system... such as the look of a car, the shape of a replica statue of liberty, or N' Sync. There isn't much money to be made creating "works for hire," nor is there many legislated rights associated with them.
Compulsory licencing for online music content with compulsory compensation for artists. Much in the same way that radio was working up until Clear Channel, compulsory licencing would mean increased online distribution and competition and with a per-song fee paid to artists. Artists would also like to have the option of licencing "their" music to free services like limewire and napster, in the hopes of making more on concert sales and merchandising.
An end to long-term contracts. This makes sense, as artists don't have much barganing power with their labels when they first sign that 10 year piece of paper. At the time it looks like a much better prospect than returning to Mc Donalds.
All of these things are aimed at making more money for the existing, successful (and unsuccessful but signed) artist, but with little real attempt to reduce the grip of the Recording Industry from the musical world.
I know a dozen musicians, all of whom have in-house recording studios capable of producing some truly professional quality audio and burning it to disk. And I know dozens of people who run sites, some of which involve payment authentication systems. Add a buck for postage, a few downloadable sample MP3's, and make the artists do all the legwork and you have a replacement for the traditional music distribution system. Why, then, do we not have benefit concerts to startup alternatives like this? (Hint - look at the dinner tables of the artists throwing this concert... )
While the tweaks to the system advocated by these artists are by and large good ideas (lord knows we could use a compulsory licencing scheme for online music), they are not in reality as revolutionary as some people here seem to think.
The ______ Agenda
above post moderated (-1, depressing).
Oh well, on to the christmas "cheer"...
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Wow, Jack Valenti is on Slashdot...."The Sky is falling, the sky is falling."
The stats that you quote are misleading to say the least. That was based on a survey of stores close (within a mile)of the campuses of the colleges and universities, it took place over a 3 year period, two of which of which were BEFORE Napster even existed, In addition it did not include stores such as Walmarts and Best Buy (chain stores,unless they were within a mile of the campus). In those stores sales were actually up over the three year period. This would be like surveying Slashdotters about MS Windows purchases. At best the figures were skewed, and quite frankly, highly misleading.
In 2001 during the first quarter of the year, CD Sales were up 12% when it looked like Napster would be shut down in March. In March after Napster was court ordered by Judge Patel to start filtering material, sales started to drop, and eventually shut down in July, sales have been down. Even "the Hilary" admits a big part of this is due in part to the economy going south.
This is an older article from May 16th when Courtney Love gave a speech on Napster and Recording Labels and such. Good speech too bad she killed Kurt Cobain
v e/
... zero!
=] anyway here's the first page:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/lo
Courtney Love does the math
The controversial singer takes on record label profits, Napster and "sucka VCs."
Editor's note: This is an unedited transcript of Courtney Love's speech to the Digital Hollywood online entertainment conference, given in New York on May 16.
By Courtney Love
June 14, 2000 | Today I want to talk about piracy and music. What is piracy? Piracy is the act of stealing an artist's work without any intention of paying for it. I'm not talking about Napster-type software.
I'm talking about major label recording contracts.
I want to start with a story about rock bands and record companies, and do some recording-contract math:
This story is about a bidding-war band that gets a huge deal with a 20 percent royalty rate and a million-dollar advance. (No bidding-war band ever got a 20 percent royalty, but whatever.) This is my "funny" math based on some reality and I just want to qualify it by saying I'm positive it's better math than what Edgar Bronfman Jr. [the president and CEO of Seagram, which owns Polygram] would provide.
What happens to that million dollars?
They spend half a million to record their album. That leaves the band with $500,000. They pay $100,000 to their manager for 20 percent commission. They pay $25,000 each to their lawyer and business manager.
That leaves $350,000 for the four band members to split. After $170,000 in taxes, there's $180,000 left. That comes out to $45,000 per person.
That's $45,000 to live on for a year until the record gets released.
The record is a big hit and sells a million copies. (How a bidding-war band sells a million copies of its debut record is another rant entirely, but it's based on any basic civics-class knowledge that any of us have about cartels. Put simply, the antitrust laws in this country are basically a joke, protecting us just enough to not have to re-name our park service the Phillip Morris National Park Service.)
So, this band releases two singles and makes two videos. The two videos cost a million dollars to make and 50 percent of the video production costs are recouped out of the band's royalties.
The band gets $200,000 in tour support, which is 100 percent recoupable.
The record company spends $300,000 on independent radio promotion. You have to pay independent promotion to get your song on the radio; independent promotion is a system where the record companies use middlemen so they can pretend not to know that radio stations -- the unified broadcast system -- are getting paid to play their records.
All of those independent promotion costs are charged to the band.
Since the original million-dollar advance is also recoupable, the band owes $2 million to the record company.
If all of the million records are sold at full price with no discounts or record clubs, the band earns $2 million in royalties, since their 20 percent royalty works out to $2 a record.
Two million dollars in royalties minus $2 million in recoupable expenses equals
How much does the record company make?
They grossed $11 million.
It costs $500,000 to manufacture the CDs and they advanced the band $1 million. Plus there were $1 million in video costs, $300,000 in radio promotion and $200,000 in tour support.
The company also paid $750,000 in music publishing royalties.
They spent $2.2 million on marketing. That's mostly retail advertising, but marketing also pays for those huge posters of Marilyn Manson in Times Square and the street scouts who drive around in vans handing out black Korn T-shirts and backwards baseball caps. Not to mention trips to Scores and cash for tips for all and sundry.
Add it up and the record company has spent about $4.4 million.
So their profit is $6.6 million; the band may as well be working at a 7-Eleven.
> I mean how long did the RIAA think all this could last? Lets see what exactly do they do?
I'm just speculating, but I suspect they actually served a purpose when the electronics industry was young and not every superstarwannabe had a digital recording studio in his bedroom and an internet to lead the world to his bedroom door.
Nevertheless, dinosaurs will not go willingly into the night.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The Monkees were assembled not as a misucal band but as a comedy team. Despite the fact that both Peter Tork and Mike Nesmith were musicians, they didn't play their own instruments on the show or in their recordings for several years. After several years of success due to the show, Mickey Dolenz started actually learning how to play the drums he'd been faking for years, and Davey Jones (who had a pretty good singing voice) started studying seriously.
The telling point is when the Monkees had a well-watched meeting with the Beatles ("The Fab Four Meets the Prefab Four!" shouted the headlines) John Lennon looked at Mickey Dolenz and said (paraphrase here; I don't remember the exact quote), "I finally get it. You're the Marx Brothers!"
So, in short, the Monkees were chosen by how well they worked as a comedy team, not for their musicianship. This makes them a bad example of a "manufactured band" since they weren't really intended to be a band at all. They just grew into the role. And yes, this also goes for the Partridge Family.
Virg
...but I really don't see much of a need and I don't have much of a desire to support an artist in their struggles against their personal or individual contracts/etc with their employers, the record companies. RIAA as it affects my rights to fair use of stuff I BUY? Nuke em from orbit, as far as I'm concerned.
But let's face it... nobody ever (well, maybe not EVER) put a gun to the head of a no-name, starving artist and forced them to sign away their rights in order to allow them to get a shot at being rich and famous; they made that choice themselves. I'm sick of the "woe is me" and "but that's unfair" attitudes of these people. Big Lou made N Sync what they are, and now that they're famous and seeing just how much money their band is making, they're whining about how they should be getting a bigger cut. Srew that. He put his industry contacts, know-how and money on the line, took most of the risk, and they agreed to it, so they should have to live with it. Do you think they'd pony up the huge bucks if it tanked? Yeah, and Brittany's tits are real, too.
The real problem is that there are WAY too many rock-star wannabes that are willing to sign away everything for life in order to take a shot at being on the cover of Rolling Stone, so there's not much forcing the record companies to offer something other than a "we take everything forever" contract. That'll only happen when there is someone with enough talent (and potential revenue generation) to make the record companies fight over them. Sarah Mclachlan is a case in point. She's got a great deal with Nettwerk Records in that she owns all of her own publishing. That's because she was smart in (a) hooking up with an excellent manager, Terry McBride, and (b) she was smart in assessing her options and making her choices.
In a way this is similar to what I'm going through right now in taking a software product public. We're getting LOTS of offers for VC funding, and most of it is Pirate money... "give us 80% of the company, and we'll give you a bit of cash". Lucky for us we've got investors that are willing to take a more reasonable stance with us. But if those "more reasonable" investors weren't there, and the only deal we had was a bad one, and we took it, should we be able to whine and complain about how we were taken advantage of and abused? Absolutely not. We were presented with an offer, and WE ACCEPTED IT. If we were stupid enough or desperate enough to accept a bad deal, then we'd have to live with the consequences.
$0.02 (CDN)
I don't see the fun in opposing as association of labels instead of attacking each label individually. The RIAA can dissolve tomorrow and nothing will have changed. What artists need is a class-action suit against their label for arguably decieving them with the "work for hire" clause in the Satellite of Love act of 1991 or whatever it was called.
Secondly, consumers must gripe and stop buying the artists' music. If Elton John fans go pissed enough he would be forced to file a suit to get a more respectable label (or perhaps form his own indie label) to sell his music. As long as you keep buying it doesn't matter, the label will have the upper hand.
This is a breathtaking new level of corruption - from the party that promised to "restore honor and integrity to the White House." Surpassing even the time that Republican Tom Delay delivered envelopes full of cash from tobacco companies to members of Congress who had just voted for a pro-tobacco bill. he did this on the floor of the House of Representatives just after the vote.
The reason these guys get into office is because this cash buys thousands of campaign commercials telling us how honest they are and how corrupt the Democrats are. Yes, the same Democrats who are trying to make this sort of bribery illegal.
So even though it's one group of rich bastards against another, "fuck the RIAA" is about to become a household phrase.
-Legion
3) Professional musicians
by yamla
These days, it seems that virtually no professional musicians actually make a decent living. Courtney Love has said that she is pretty much playing for free already. TLC declared bankruptcy. And these are just two examples. Yet during this time, the record industry is reporting record sales, record profits.
What do you think the answer is? Is the day of the professional artist over? Is it still possible to make the music you love and make enough to pay the bills? If so, how? How do you see the record industry changing over the next ten years?
John:
Being broke is not being poor, and one should be skeptical of such complaints, as they often reveal poor judgement more than poverty. In both of your examples, you are talking about people who generate huge amounts of revenue and conspicuously purchased very expensive things.
I don't think the era of the professional musical artist ever really existed. Through the course of the 20th Century from the birth of publishing to the explosion of rock as a mass market business, the business terrain has changed for the better, but long term professional employment remains an elusive reality. Musicians are always at the end of the food chain in the music business. It has never been easy making money.
How brilliant! But maybe, enjoying economies of scale, these venture capitalists should also provide the production facilities to press the CDs. They could coordinate the marketing too! I even have a name for these "venture capitalists" who put up the money behind bands ... we could call them "record labels"!
Seriously, why do you think that venture capitalists will want less money than record companies. Take a look at the books of EMI some day. Sure, on one superstar band, they make out like bandits. But that's ignoring all the flop acts, on which the musicians haven't paid them back a cent. Across the whole portfolio, they are substantially less profitable than many other industries. This mythical surplus profit which "could go to the musicians" just doesn't exist.
-- the most controversial site on the Web