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PressPlay and MusicNet vs. Artists
gilroy writes: "According to a New York Times article (free registration, yadda yadda), despite taking the moral high ground (that they want to see artists compensated, as opposed to all those evil downloaders), the record companies have actually set up pay schedules so as to -- wait for it -- rip off the artists who record the music. Some figure they will earn less than $0.0023 per download -- yes, that's hundredths of a penny. Best quote from the article: 'For many acts, suddenly there appears to be little difference between the illicit file-sharing system and record-label services.' Good to see they're fighting for the artists, n'est-ce pas?"
So when someone get's busted for illegal copies of mp3s, is that the value the MPAA will use to calculate damages?
Holy Hannah, the labels and Pressplay get 91% of the revenues? I want in that racket. And think, after 1000 downloads, the artists will have a shiny 2 dollars 30 in their pocket...reasonable compensation.
Even better is this tidbit: Another irritant for the artists, several lawyers and managers say, is the distribution of the $170 million settlement from MP3.com, an Internet company that offered a music storage service in violation of copyright law.
The labels were to share that money with artists whose music was put online without authorization, but several artists' representatives said nothing had been distributed.
Raise your hands, who here didn't see that coming.
Fortran programmer...oh yeah. Array math for life!
...who really believes that the Record Companies have their artists' best interests at heart? Miles Copeland III can tear up his shirt all he wants about how Napster is infringing on musicians' rights, the only thing members of the RIAA care about is keeping their stockholders happy.
We need more artists like George Clinton and media-whore Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit to support file sharing of their music, and give the (record) Man a big finger. When artists agree to file sharing, perhaps we'll see a real shift in the industry's exploitative business model.
Reminder: find a new sig
Most bands have already signed their rights away to the music to the record company for the record deal. So the stuff that you're download still belongs to the record company, not the band. So when you download something that the record company owns, and pay the band, the person that actually owns the rights to that music you just downloaded isn't getting anything.
Yes, it sucks for the band/artist, but they're the ones that signed the contract. Nobody is screwing the band/artist, except themselves. It may not be morally right, but it's true.
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Ever notice how entertainers often champion the anti-corporate causes out there, or at least bemoan the politicos who support the big "traditional" corporations like oil, steal, chemicals, etc. I'm talking about Alec Baldwin, Barbara Streisand, Rob Reiner, etc.
Don't you think its funny that, in terms of basic business ethics, their industries are about the most atrocious as far as supressing individual rights?
Then again, bad practices by the music/movie industry probably never killed anyone, whereas Union Carbide has a death count worse than Ted Bundy. Then again, its easy to point to the sludge in your backyard and say "The Exxon plant next door put this here" and get a positive public reaction than "The RIAA won't let me share my music online."
Some men spend their entire lives trying to kill themselves for having been born. --Ross MacDonald
Start the "label" with the knowledge that records are primarily promotional tools for bands, and design the business with as little overhead as possible and to be as artist-friendly as possible. A real "internet-only" record label wouldn't make a whole lot of money, but it might be able to attract a fair amount of attention from artists if it played its cards right: sharing small profits generously might well work out better for most artists than sharing miniscule fractions of large profits.
This is the Mechanical Royalty which is paid to the songwriter, not the performer, and is a publishing royalty. The minimum is 7.1cents/song, if the song is long (I think over 5 minutes) they are paid even more. This, I presume, would be paid on top of everything else, because they are not necessarily paid to the same people.
The arguments the labels are using, said Jill Berliner, a leading music lawyer, are exactly the ones Napster made. "And, from our perspective, if the technology is going to be out there and the artist isn't really going to make money, we'd prefer that our fans just get it for free," she said.
Hmm... I wonder. It sounds like a threat just to get the labels to share, but could we really see artists coming out and endorsing free music sharing? Well, I doubt we'll see Metallica doing a 180 on free music downloads.
The main problem as I understand it is that the labels pretty much controls the major arenas. Bands that grow beyond club size need the labels or they won't ever see the stage of a major arena. Flaunting the major players will assure that a band, no matter how many CDs they sell online will never get to play before the big crowds and make the big money. Perhaps this will prompt more of the big bands to take on the labels and change the way the whole industry works and break the control the labels have over the arenas. For the sake of the small bands, I hope so.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
I disagree, but let me explain why:
I don't have a lot of money to spend on CDs, and even if I did, purchasing music which you haven't heard is a total shot in the dark. In the past, I would hear music my friends listened to and buy CDs from the artists I liked, if I had the money to do so. With the advent of the big P2P networks, I was able to check out a much wider variety of music, though I still only bought what I could afford. When I was exposed to so much music which I liked, I found myself making greater allowances in my budget for music - though you would be correct in the assertion that I downloaded much more than I paid for. I purchased what I found to be most interesting, rewarding the musicians which I felt deserved it most - many of whom I would never have heard if I had continued learning about new music through my peers. I now spend more money on music than I ever have in the past, though I listen to more music than I could afford to purchase - and at the same time, I have diversified my cultural input by stepping outside of the clicques my friend have ordered themselves into.
Who is this hurting? Musicians whose music I don't like who were relying on name recognition for shot-in-the-dark sales.
How is this good? It helps create a more evolving music market which can function via natural selection (ie, survival of the fittest) rather than survival of the best-funded (advertised).
I spend more money on music now than I did before, nobody is losing sales to me - I can't buy any more music than I do.
I've started writing to artists and asking them directly for copies of their music. We generally work out a nice deal and then exchange money for music. No record company.
Record companies are making one simple mistake. People who like big name artists need their music 'pushed' onto them, a la radio and charts, and MTV and yadda yadda.
.. like, how much of the music they were pushing around were big label artists. I'd venture that big names didn't do to well in an environment that encourages the discovery of new music.
There is no way the artists that make it big with the casual listeners, those who need to be told what to like, what is next, who is big, will make it big in an evironment where the listener must go out and 'pull' music from interactive sites.
We should have gotten some stats from Napster
Discovery and self-education, is, of course, the bane of media big business.
"Old man yells at systemd"
The record industry STILL doesn't want an online distribution method. They have done this KNOWING that the artist will protest and that it will not make money. They will then take it down. They then will have successfully stoped p2p sharing (napster) AND not have to distribute music online.
It's just a red herring.
Burn the CD from your buddy. Mail a couple dollars to the artist. The artist makes more money. You save money. The CDR makers make money. The CD burner makers make money. The USPS makes money. Everybody wins. Except for the RIAA, they gain and lose nothing.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
I've been using OMDs (internet Original Music Distributors) for some time now- was with mp3.com for a while until they got bought out by Vivendi and changed their contract in really negative ways, have stuff on BeSonic, and now I'm setting up shop on Ampcast.com.
I get FIVE CENTS per full download from Ampcast. (This is why they have you register- otherwise artists would cheat)
That is more than twenty times the royalty the RIAA is willing to pay...
Why, how? First, Ampcast really wants to be selling its CDs (a primary reason I like them so much is that they burn-to-order from genuine (rippable) Red Book CDs. The one I have for sale there is a Red Book, full 44.1/16 from high-resolution masters (done with my GPL mastering software Mastering Tools), I'm trying to negotiate a cooler tray-liner artwork but it's 'live' and buyable right now. If you buy one, I get a few bucks, and Ampcast gets a few bucks, and the RIAA gets absolutely fscking nada, zip, zilch, zero, thank you for playing. Secondly, Ampcast ain't a free OMD or trying to be one. It charges a fee like a hosting service, and that's where those five centses come from, plus from the CD sales. They're good that way- they have sense and have managed their budgeting intelligently so they have control of their business.
I'm still putting up other work and remastering my back catalog, but go check out 'Full Day', buy the CD (with a little bonus track not listed on the page) if you like it. And then ask yourself: is it fair that RIAA major label artists get a less than a twentieth of the download-royalty I'm getting from Ampcast? That _stinks_. The RIAA has _more_ money than Ampcast! They could well afford to do a HELL of a lot better than that. It's pathetic, outrageous, insulting. I'm not saying my music isn't as good- I put a lot of work into it- but TWENTY times as good? I think NOT... yet that's the discrepancy in pay.
By the way, if you don't like the idea of me getting paid off downloads, the streaming plays don't pay anything, you could check out those. Or, if there are people who've bought the CD, I write right on it "please copy this CD for your friends" and it's totally rippable, so you could look for the tracks on Gnutella or something- I hope people do share my music that way. If someone has a problem with dealing with Ampcast registration etc. and wouldn't buy my CD anyway, they should still be able to have mp3s of it... I don't need their nickel that badly that I should insist on putting them through a hassle...
Hardware: $25k (one time)
Net connection: $10k (monthly)
Backend+HTML: one week coding
So there it is, $35 grande (plus or minus) and one week later a website could be up and fully fuctional selling artist songs direct, no record label necessary. I would guesstimate this would easily support 100,000 unique views and the costs would be minimal to expand with popularity.
Now if only someone could convince some rich musicians to fund this, turn into a non-profit and offer its services to any other artists.
Attn current musicians: Sooner or later your contact will expire. This artist-run-website idea can be used to position yourself favorably if you wish to re-negotiate your contact. Or better yet, to free yourself from the labels.
Attn future musicians: Record labels offer two things. Producing your album and distributing it. Find an alternate way to produce your album (really, not that hard) and now you are free negotiate anything with anyone.
If the artists help themselves, the labels will be at the artists' mercy (like they should be). If they don't, artists will continue to whine until they are blue in the face about their penny per album (meanwhile enriching the old guys who have a corner office). The tech community has empowered you (the musicians) to throw off the shackles of a system that (sorta) made sense in the 50s and 60s. The choice is yours. Like the matrix, we can show you the door, but you got to walk through it.
Prediction: Nothing will change. Most musicians will prove the stereotype that they are lazy can't-hold-a-real-job types willing to sell their soul to the devil to be famous. Not that I equate the music industry to the devil, but if the devil was in the music business I am sure he would have no problem signing musicians as long as the promise of fame is there.
Does anyone know how emusic pays the artists? emusic (http://www.emusic.com) is a subsription based service where you can download plain old mp3s for a monthly fee. They mostly have older stuff but hey if that's what you like... Anyway they only state that artists get paid but they don't say how.
this is just an example - all money is USD all figures are conservative but speculative.
my favorite dj/producer performs at clubs ranging in sizes between 1K - 5K. he seems to charge an average of 10K per set and seemingly performs at least 100 times a year. so the math comes to around 1 million dollars a year for touring.
he also produces records, which I buy for around 7 dollars apiece. though I am cluless about the economies of vinyl, I am positive heis making money off these pressings.
he currently has one mix cd available for purchase, and I own it. I could have downloaded it for free but the quality isn't as good. I have at least 15 mixes that I downloaded from the net of live performances at clubs, these were free, but the key point is that having them (even if they were high quality wouldn't keep me from going to hear him perform live because each performance is different.
so based on these numbers... even if you take away 70% for taxes and travel and business expenses, he should be getting at least 300K per year. not too shabby.
all of this was accomplished without selling to the majors and reputation was built on word of mouth or sound of music, no bullshit advertising.
sorry if I rambled and for the excessive use of "at least".
ps. he plays the 909 like an instrument!
The company is still footing the bill up front. If the record doesn't sell, the artist hasn't lost anything (and actually gained quite a bit).
Here's the obligitory link to Albini's "The Problem with Music". Read it.
In regards to cost of production, these costs are falling dramatically with the advent of high-quality, inexpensive, digital audio cards for pcs(no, I don't work for Aardvark, I'm just a very satisfied customer). I would guess that at least 50% of the "hit" records of the past ten years were digitally recorded using pro-tools, or even less expensive, gear. Cubase, cakewalk, or logic, a decent PC, and a good pro sound card are about the same cost as a decent guitar/amp setup. A good mic/mic-pre/mixer setup will cost another chunk of change, but not too much. There are numerous softsynths and effects packages out there for reasonable prices (or as warez, if you're ethically challenged). $500/hr studio fees for unproven, non-mega-star bands should disappear eventually.
I don't mean to disrespect any audio engineers out there, btw. A really top-notch production job is going to always be a valuable service, and anybody would rather record their master through a Neve board to 2" tape than through a Mackie to their hard drive, but these new methods of recording can, and do, yield impressive results on a budget. Most consumer grade stereo equipment is for shit, anyway, and if you're listening to compressed, lossy audio, then it hardly matters.
"If you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're right." -
The statutory rate defined in 37 CFR 255.3 applies to the compulsory licenses defined in 17 USC 115 (note that 37 CFR 255.1 specifically states that the following subsections are enforcing 17 USC 115). Compulsory licensing makes it possible for an artist to record a song without the permission of the songwriter. Section 115 of the Copyright Act allows performers to notify the songwriter, pay the compulsory royalty, and distribute their songs.
The performer can negotiate a lower rate to pay the songwriter, and performers who write their own songs don't have to worry about compulsory licensing.
Oh, and a bit of advice (with several levels of irony), never get legal advice off of /. -- it's almost always wrong.