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RIAA Forgets to Make Royalty Payments
theodp writes "NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer agreed with the RIAA on one point - artists WERE being deprived of money that was rightfully theirs. But Spitzer managed to find $50 million for performers without shaking down grandmothers. Spitzer's culprits? A Who's Who of the nation's top recording companies - members of the RIAA - who failed to maintain contact with artists and stopped making required royalty payments."
Oh well. Good that they caught this. The artist do deserve their money.
Better the money in New York State's coffers, where it will be of benefit to the public, than with the record companies, where a relatively small number of shareholders benefit from money that isn't theirs.
I don't understand why the government has not seen the RIAA as an orginization that doesn't adhear to the rules that it's set for everyone else. They have such deep pockets, they can make the effort to locate the artists and pay the royalties. Don't be surprised that this has happened. There's much more to come out of this...
"Standard Industry Practice."
RIAA members ripping off their artists is nothing new - it's been documented over and over and fucking over again. I'm sure some slashdotters can point to half a dozen articles written by artists who point out that, by the time the RIAA gets done doing the math on a "standard" industry contract, an even moderately sucessful artist winds up OWING a few thousand dollars to the label and is pretty much an indentured servant, because they can't jump labels to find a better deal by the terms of the contract.
What we REALLY need is for some court ruling to take all those fucking provisions, and declare them illegal. THEN when the RIAA cries about "artists" being deprived of money due to file sharing, I might give a rat's ass about their bullshit argument.
I find it completely unconsionable that the RIAA failed to protect the artists rights and make payments when due. Claiming they couldn't find the artists involved is a fabrication of the most fraudulent kind. It's not like David Bowie has fallen off the face of the earth.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Does this mean that since the RIAA is out 50 mil... (that THEY diddn't think to give to the rightful owner).... the 50 mil will be deducted from the amount of money made through cd sales so they can whine a bit more about file sharing?
Except that the artist doesn't always know that they are owed the money. Do you think they keep track of the sales of every one of their songs (both written and recorded)?
Prominent artists who were owed royalty payments included: David Bowie, Dolly Parton, Harry Belafonte, Liza Minnelli, Dave Matthews, Sean Combs and Gloria Estefan.
Ummm....how exactly do you lose track of your prominent artists? And for that matter, why aren't the agents of these artists banging down the doors at Sony, BMI, Vivendi, EMI, and so forth to get the royalties? IOW, the agents conveniently forgot to collect? Something doesn't sound right here -- when in the history of business has someone not aggressively pursued their debtors?
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Some artists do not even know they are subject to reimbursement or royalties from the RIAA, they just happen to sign up with a small company (which is part of)^n an RIAA member...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
According to CNN, sales dropped about 7.5% from 2002 levels of 32.2 billion to 2003 sales of 32.0 billion. RIAA blames "rampant piracy" for this.
Therefore, according to RIAA, piracy accounted for 200 million in sales loss. Therefore (unless artists get 25% or more of retail) with this announcement of withholding 50m in royalties from artists, the RIAA itself is personally responsible for more monetary loss to artists than piracy.
I didn't know you had to 'agree' with a law before it was applicable to you. Interesting.
I, well, by RIAA's logic actually, also suggest prison time - hey, it's only fair, they did benefit financially from this.
Have any of you ever paid a bill slightly (or even very) late? Ever take out a loan, with which you intended to enrich yourself, and then take longer to pay it back than you originally contracted?
If yes, do you then have the right to criticize the RIAA?
The fact is, RIAA's actions, though despicable, are ultimately irrelevant to whether or not it is morally acceptable, and/or should be legally acceptable, to copy and distribute someone else's work without authorization, contract or payment arrangement. The fact that RIAA members were lax paying artists does not give anyone a free pass, morally or legally, to download music illicitly. It does not make the claim that artists are being ripped off by illegal music downloaders any more or less debatable.
This is not an issue appropriate for posting to slashdot IMO. When the story deals with whether downloads are/should be acceptable, it's a tech story. When the story is about an RIAA conflict with artists, and the sole reason for posting it is to wag the finger of shame at RIAA for being hypocrites (ostensibly), that's just pandering and incitement.
The RIAA is going out of there way to correct a royalty problem that may/may not have entirely been their fault.
The RIAA was collecting money on behalf of the artists. If they kept it without making much effort to track down the rightful owners, then that's theft as far as I'm concerned. Especially if they insist on calling 12yr old children thieves for swapping mp3s.
Kind of reminds of me of some bigger (cough - Catholic Church) examples (cough - US war effort).
I'm sure that last bit will get me slammed. There goes my karma =D
I must point out that it is only individual members of the RIAA, not the RIAA itself, that are responsible for failing to pass on the royalties, and this in no way reflects RIAA policies. It simply shows poor or irresponsible book keeping on the part of the companies involved.
To pre-empt any ad-hominem replies: I do not like the RIAA's tactics & I was once signed to one of the companies mentioned (BMG). But claiming this is an RIAA act is entirely incorrect, self gratifying FUD, and as we all know, spouting crap in lieu of facts does not make a convincing case. If you want to criticize a system, learn how the system works first.
With all of the noxious public actions they have taken it turns out the RIAA is the biggest music music theif of them all.
I think that goes to show that if a canditate has a good record and doesn't show partisanship, then he/she can be popular across the board. Here, you have the AG, who shouldn't be partisan in his position, working for the people, and with the approval ratings, it shows the public appreciates it. I really thinks it comes down to, he was doing his job (fighting for the citizens of NY) and he was successful in what he was elected to do.
- While this will be great for a lot of artists I question the motive. I doubt that Eliot Spitzer is doing this for artists. I'm sure New York state will benefit from the interest revenue from "hold[ing] these monies. It won't hurt his career to have his name in the paper either.
You know, he does work for the state of NY, after all.In any case, these royalties should benefit either the copyright holder or, failing that, the state and not these distribution companies. So, this is a good thing.
The people grant all copyrights for the advancement of art. Clearly, the RIAA members have shown contempt for advancement of anything except their own profits. We have to make sure they don't benefit from their "inability" to find the artist.
Morals do matter.
You can't make a claim about filesharing on moral grounds if your own morals are suspect.
If you're a crook, its hard to take cries of "thief" very seriously.
What I don't get is the idiotic RIAA bashing in the article head.
:-)
It is cleverly disguised, but it is there. In saying the *RIAA* is at fault, that is like saying that all software developers abuse their power simply because Microsoft does. The RIAA is not the music industry. It is an association of music industry corporations. It doesn't run the companies nor does it collect the fees. It helps make certain that the fees can be collected in some instances where their stakeholders feel they need to do so, but they don't collect the fees.
Every artist has a publisher. His or her publisher is responsible for making certain that all royalties are collected. It is the artists responsibility to make certain that the publisher knows where you live so that you can get paid. Its not too hard. In the US there are 3 main publishing agencies -- Harry Fox, ASCAP and I believe BMI (err..I think one of those is affiliated with the other these days). I get my measly check every so often from these guys -- and they even took care of doing a search for overseas owed money when a friends song was on a foreign soundtrack (somehow I was listed on it even though I only helped with minor structural changes -- sometimes friends don't screw ya over
The point is, if someone isn't getting paid -- its there fault.
Time to flush the toliet on the middlemen. Boycott industry music, and roll your own crap. All this talk about the important role of the middle men in choosing good music, and what do we get? Good Charlotte, Britney Spears, Sean Puffy PDiddy Combs? Give me a garage band anyday!
Capitalist bastards.
Well, to be fair, I think they're more accurately oligarchic bastards. They really don't seem to get the whole market economics thing.
Amazing. A politician helping his political career by helping his constituents. What the hell is the world coming to???
If you wanted to pay Bowie for some service he performed, how would you go about doing it?
If I worked for the Recording Industry Association of America? Then gosh, I would call up the record companies that are members and funders of my organization and say, "Hi, Vigin? It's Bob at RIAA. I need to get ahold of David Bowie. Yeah, he's under B. Sure, I'll wait."
I'm guessing that since they do millions of dollars worth of business with him, they'll have some idea of how to get ahold of him.
This might not always be easy to do and might be time consuming per artist.
Did you note the part about $50 million? If they put that in a regular bank account, they can get $1m per year in interest. So it's not like they couldn't find the funds to hire a clerk to look into this. Their, "Gosh, honey, look at this $50 million I found under the couch cusions," line is not particularly plausible.
Okay, I'm going to comment on this whole "why weren't the artists trying to collect their money?" thing...and why they may not have realized they weren't getting paid. Not every artist waits by the mailbox for their royalty check like a kid at Christmastime. Hell, I wouldn't doubt that many labels have some sort of direct deposit system set up to save on postage. Now imagine you are Sean "Puffy" Combs. You have millions of dollars. Not only that, but a majority of your income is NOT from royalties...in fact, I'm betting royalties aren't even a significant portion of his income. He makes money for producing other groups, off his own record label, of promotions (such as Xbox Live), and off a million other things. Is it unreasonable to think that maybe he simply hadn't noticed that the deposits for royalties weren't there anymore? For further perspective, I have a very rich in-law. He doesn't balance his checkbook. He knows the money is in there, he knows the check he's writing will not bounce, and he pretty much take's his bank's word for it when the statement comes. He looks over it, of course...but not as closely as those of us who face the actual possibility of running out of money do. He's not anywhere as wealthy as Puffy.
What I don't get is your reasoning. The RIAA is at fault because by contract they were required to pay royalties. Again I quote "Spitzer's culprits? A Who's Who of the nation's top recording companies - members of the RIAA - who failed to maintain contact with artists and stopped making required royalty payments." If you have a problem with people associating the RIAA with all those record companies, you should remember that while prosecuting pre-teens and grannies, the RIAA has constantly reminded us that they are the representative of all those record companies and artists. You can't have it both ways. Either they are the representative of all those record companies and OK to prosecute people for alleged violations of the law, and it's OK to say they are to blame for this lack of payment to artists *or* they are not really responsible, you're right, we should lay off the, *and* they have no right to sue anyone. Which is it? You say the recording artists are at fault for the record company not paying them their royalties due. I'm sure then you'd be perfectly OK blaming yourself if your employer suddenly stopped giving you paychecks.
Grrliegeek
Did you read the list of some of the artists they lost contact details for, they included long forgotten one hit wonders like "David Bowie, Dolly Parton, Harry Belafonte, Liza Minnelli, Dave Matthews, Sean Combs and Gloria Estefan". Now if you believe they couldn't contact these people then you'll believe anything. It's just a typical out of court where the guilty party pays up and in return get to deny all blame i.e. the RIAA are good guys stuff in document is only for the consumption of the legal system and fools.
I submit that Dolly has far better terms than some relatively unknown/new/crap band, and probably does rather well with mechanical royalties, and other royalties than the unknown/new/crap band.
IOW, Dolly is most likely making money in areas that an unknown/new/crap band would not, such as printed sheet music, covers by other artists, film and television, and public performance (musak, etc.).
That said, it's not surprising that the whore-tards in the RIAA wanted to 'misplace' those extra dollars; what is surprising is that the missing artists' lawyers weren't all over those nickels and dimes in the first place - especially Dolly's lawyers. She likes the money.
Even more reason to bypass the RIAA. What you lose in enforcement (public performances, radio play) and marketing, you gain in knowing that you are getting the best deal as an artist.
I'm glad someone found this story and pointed this out. All along we've considered the 'Napster issue' from an impartial POV when yes, DUH, everyone knows what crooks these recording company execs are, everyone knows at least half a dozen horror stories about how songwriters and performers are getting ripped off all the time. Music is supposed to be nice, and beneficial, and soul-soothing - it's a wonder and a mystery why these lowlifes get into the business in the first place.
Both David Lindley and Courtney Love have spoken out eloquently against them in the past. I think we should remember who the real villains are here - and that they're not 13yos with a few songs on a hard drive.