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Musicians vs. RIAA At USA Today
An anonymous reader writes "USA Today has an article about the growing friction between recording artists and the 5 major labels which make up the RIAA. Many issues are covered, including copyright reform, fraudulent accounting on the part of record labels, and how selling a quarter million albums can leave you owing your label $14,000."
So, if the musicians don't like them, and we don't like them... why do they still exist?
levine
Yeah but you can thank suburban white CD buying 18 year olds for demanding the image and lifestyle you describe.
.. thank the protected coddled white masses in the 'burbs and the execs who market the image.
They don't do this stuff in a vacuum - the image sells, so blame your kids for wanting a Puff Daddy instead of a De La Soul, or wanting a Wu Tang instead of a Del tha Funky Homosapien.
There are plenty of positive, concious rappers out there who do not condone the "thug life". But the CD buying public drives the demand for the thug life
"Old man yells at systemd"
"Miles Copeland, chairman of Ark 21 Records, predicts that passage could significantly harm 'the entire music business because of the very visible complaining by a few successful recording artists. If the mega artists succeed with this effort, I feel strongly that it would be at the expense of those artists who have not made it yet.'"
:)
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sure, it might be bad to an executive like Copeland, who relies on sub-talented "artists" like Britney Spears to generate income for that new yacht. But this actually be the wakeup call needed to actually *develop* new artists, rather than toss them out there like so many Big Macs for huge immediate profits.
The whole industry needs an enema, and I am very happy to see some *real* artists starting to voice their concerns. There may be hope after all
"You're getting brutal, Sark. Brutal and needlessly sadistic."
"Thank you, Master Control"
-Sark and the MCP
Yeah. Nothing like walking by a yuppie bar and seeing a bunch of rich white guys standing around outside and saying things like, "Whazzat? Watchoo sayin?" "Yo, I said, Wassup, bitch?" "Mofo, I'm gonna bust a cap in yo ass!" Makes we want to drag them down to the nearest ER (where I used to work) and shove their faces in a convenient pool of blood. "That's 'wazzup,' you idiot."
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
"It's about profit, profit and more profit that always comes at a cost of principles. The predicament the record industry finds itself in is of its own making. They've alienated consumers and artists, and whether the rights movement succeeds, the house will fall under its own weight."
Welcome to capitalism.
That's not the artists' fault, so don't make them pay for the labels' poor decisions. It's the fault of the labels for signing every jackass garage band it 'discovers' to multi-album contracts.
Perhaps they'd lose less money (and maybe make some?) if their tastes and qualifications were a little more discriminating.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Major Label rappers who promote positve messages (and can be found in the stores you list):
.. anyone who watches The Sopranos has no right to diss Gangsta Rap. Thats not to say that you value the Sopranos, but I want to make it perfectly clear that ALL cultures glamoize the criminal underworld. Both portray a glamorized, clean-cut interpretation of seedy underworlds; the only difference is that The Mafia seems to have some sort of romance that people identify with, where as most folks cant identify with the romance in the gangsta life. Thats not to say that there is any, since I cant find the romance in The Mafia culture, but hey, thats just my take. Selling and glamorizing the criminal element is not something the rap culture came up with - hell, the roots of rap are in positive social change (read up on HipHop Culture if you have time on your hands), but as usual, the commercialization of something tends to support the perversion of any positive message.
De La Soul
Tribe Called Quest
Black Eyed Peas
Common
Mos Def
Talib Kwali
The Roots
The list goes on. That was my point. There are lots of positive rappers, but blame the marketers for not trying to sell it to you and the kids for not being interested in searching for a truth outside of the allure of gansta rap.
As a slight aside, something that irks me about the dismissal of Gangsta Rap as having no redeeming value
There's plenty of good rap out there like there is plenty of good Nu Metal bands out there. But like food, the better it is, the less people will like it, and thus the less it will be promoted into the public conciousness.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Al Sharpton is an opportunistic vulture. Nobody's taken him seriously for several years. Besides, Michael suprised even Sharpton when he called Tommy Mottola a racist (see the MTV article).
Race is entirely a social construct. There is only one race, the human race. We're all the same color, just different shades. It is easily possible to be closer genetically to a person of a different so-called race, than somebody that looks fairly similar to yourself.
Ever read a recording contract? Let's put it this way, I had the opportunity to read hundreds, maybe thousands, and many (especially new artist contracts) are huge, incomprehensible documents that often are skewed in the direction of the label. No argument there: this is business. Get a lawyer.
But if you are a new band, with (what until lately has been) the ultimate carrot of commerical success dangled in front of you, it's difficult to not rationalize "I can make this work, after all, I just wanna get my soul, my music to my fans."
It's not till later, when the buzz fades, wisdom comes knocking and you realize that even if your fans love you, and you are selling lotsa records, that you are making no money, and subsidizing 85 (not an exaggeration) same-label bands that are not as fortunate/talented as you. It's only then that you think "hm. this might be as fair as I'd like."
True, you should have demanded better terms. But often, if a young band has the choice of signing an extremely rare recording contract (with attached advance check) or continuing to live on Friskies and ramen casserole in their parents' garage, the implications of mechanical royalty disbursment and ownership of masters in 20 years seem unimportant.
Let's try an analogy. You are on a NY street and see a guy selling brand new, shrink wrapped DV camcorders out of his trunk. People are buying six at a time. You say "hell, I'm down with this" and plunk down $75 for a cool new Bluetooth minicam.
You open the box at home and find a house brick and nothing else. You've been scammed. Ok, so you should have checked the contents right there.
But who committed the crime?
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
The RAC has a good web site: http://www.recordingartistscoalition.com/
Would you still share music illegally if the artist was getting the money directly?
I think the biggest reason that a lot of people laugh off issues about music sharing is because we all know that the people complaining about music theft are the company fat cats, not the starving artists. The individual artist really isn't that affected when people share their music.
Check the numbers.
The RIAA lists around 800 recording companies as members. There are probably around 1,000 artists per recording company.
Say Billy BadGuy hooks up with his 50 friends, each of which has 200 CDs that they have all ripped.
By some magical twist of fate, no two people have the same CD, so we have a total of 10,000 different CDs that exist on the network to be illegally shared.
(10,000 CDs * $16) / 800 recording companies = $200 per company
Realistically there are probably only about 20 recording companies that likely produced the majority of those CDs.
(10,000 CDs * $16) / 20 real recording companies = $8,000 per company
On the artists side of the fence, if we assume that we have 10,000 different artists:
(10,000 CDs * $16) / 10,000 artists = $16 per artist
Realistically there are probably a few repeats, let's say 1/4 of the CDs are paired up with one other from the same artist. That means that 2,500 CDs belong to 1,250 artists, and the remaining 7,500 CDs belong to 7,500 artists.
(2,500 CDs * $16) / 1,250 artists = $32 per artist (for 1,250 artists)
(10,000 CDs * $16) / 8,750 artists = ~$18.29 per artist (average for artists)
Pair all of this up with the average number of (signed) artists in the world:
(7,500 artists + 1,250 popular artists) / 800,000 artists = 0.0109375
That means that 1 percent of the artists are paying about $18 per 50 geeks sharing files, with the majority of them paying only $16.
Now to poke at the RIAA's numbers some. They reported that they lost around 600 million dollars from 2000 to 2001 because of illegal file sharing. Using our above example:
$600,000,000 lost / (10,000 CDs * $16) = 3,750 occurrences
That means that the above example of 50 people with 200 unique CDs would have to have been repeated (uniquely) almost 3,750 times in order for the RIAA's posted losses to be correct.
3,750 cases * 51 people per case = 191,250 unique naughty people
(How many users are on SlashDot?)
On top of that, their numbers would fail again if any one of the almost 200,000 people bought any CDs based on what they heard on these networks.
Now any monkey with a keyboard should be able to sit here with these numbers and crunch out some figures, but in 99 out of 100 calculations, you're going to see this:
Recording Artists + Recording Companies = RIAA Monopoly
Besides all our fun number crunching, the article had some pretty good points.
"Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, once stated that the record business is the only industry in which the bank still owns the house after the mortgage is paid."
Not only do they still own the house, they can kick you out of it, sell it, and keep all the money.
Then when you try to buy a new house with a different bank, they sue your ass!
"...virtually all contracts renegotiated after a hit album added terms favoring the artist..."
Well that's a no-brainer. Think of it as a poor man with a $5,000 house that the bank is trying to repossess. All of a sudden he wins the lotto and has $500,000,000. You can bet that bank will be a lot nicer, hoping he will keep all of his money in their bank accounts.
"Artists know record companies are giving blood, sweat and millions of dollars to help them realize their dreams."
Wonderfully vague statement that should be fun to pick apart.
They neglect to mention that the blood they give is being sucked out of all the other artists that they've screwed over, and that the dreams they are realizing are for their own billion dollar mansions in La Hoya.
Artists know record companies have been screwing people out of their dreams for years.
To make another parallel, imagine that you want to buy a car so that you can go to work and make some money. So you go to your local GM dealer and find out that you have to pay them a bunch of money over a few years for the car. Ok that's not too bad, but wait...
It's not surprising that independent artists end up happily riding horses for most of their career. Sure you might not be able to get on the expressway, but if your ass hurts from too much riding at least you can get off of the horse.
"You have record companies bought and sold on the strength of copyrights created by artists who sign away all rights in perpetuity to a faceless corporation."
Who knew Don Henley was so eloquent?