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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."
From the Article ( bold emphasis added):
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.
Of course, I didn't bother to look up his record. Maybe he really is just doing his job, protecting the citizens of New York State.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
Oh well. Good that they caught this. The artist do deserve their money.
I am as anti-RIAA as the next guy, but this doesn't seem all that bad.
The RIAA is going out of there way to correct a royalty problem that may/may not have entirely been their fault. And the article makes it seem that it was the idea of an RIAA lawyer.
Just my 2 cents...
Don't villianize the RIAA. It's not their fault the artists didn't want their money. After all, it should be the artists responsibility to track all playings of their song around the world.
That lie aside, the RIAA sucks. I'm glad I'm not a musician on an RIAA label, I would hate myself.
hrrm.
Don't tell me the RIAA are a bunch of hypocritical, dishonest bastards! Now I have nothing left to believe in.
Friggin' corporate pirates should be MADE to pay their proper dues!
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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...
Another question would be WHY the RIAA lost touch with these artists. Was it on purpose or accident?
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
"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)?
Forgive my oversimplification of the RIAA (and Anti-RIAA) tactics, but it seems to me like this is such a cat and mouse game. Someone points out problems with the RIAA, the RIAA points out problems with filesharing. One-Up to P2P, One-Up to RIAA. I'm waiting to see if politics, technology and common sense can elicit some sort of resolution to this perpetual nonsense. I won't hold my breath.
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.
The RIAA has sued what, 3000 people so far? With an average "catch" of $2500 each? If these numbers are correct, that's $7.5 million. Versus $50 million that RIAA cheated their own artists out of!
"He who throws mud, loses ground." - proverb
...paid...they should be paid with interest plus fined/sued for compensation. This is a perfect opportunity to point out that there shouldn't be one rule for consumers and one rule for the conglomerates.
I am NaN
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
RIAA forgets to pay royalties? From the article it was the RIAA lawyer who brought the problem up. The RIAA member companies were not forgetting to pay anyone. They had lost contact with the artists not through any fault of their own, but because the artists had not updated their contact details. Shite - even evil entities are capable of acts of good. In this case the RIAA did the right thing.
Who says they haven't? You are making the assumption that the government believes that the rules apply equally to everyone. If that were the case, then Oprah Winfrey would have been fined or taken off the air for indecency. Microsoft would have been punished under anti-trust laws and for illegally maintaining a monopoly. There are many many many other examples, these are just some of the more high profile ones.
The rules do not apply equally to everyone.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
The royalties are nothing to the RIAA, the amount the artists receive are about 50 cents out of the average $15 CD. That's why the organized music industry is so strong--they have an extremely vested interest in keeping this atrocious pricing structure intact. The real reason the internet worries the RIAA is that for the first time, artists (like Prince and Pearl Jam) have the ability to completely bypass this archaic distribution system and sell directly to the consumer, without all the associated markups, and receive a larger piece of the pie. Commercial distribution systems like iTunes are actually closer to traditional CD/vinyl sales, at least in their royalty structure.
I love music, and used to spend a lot on buying new CDs before this RIAA shakedown started. Stories like this, however, have made me change my ways, and now I buy exactly $0's worth from any label that supports the RIAA.
It's appalling to think that this is all done defending artists from file sharers when their watchdog is either this clueless or dishonest...with the RIAA, it's hard to tell which.
Artists might fare better if they could see an alternative to this corporate mire. Perhaps if they understood that consumers would be more supportive of the music if there was some reasonable guarantee that money would actually get to the artist rather than a conglomerate?
Granted I have no guarantee of that with my current label selections, but I feel better knowing that my cash isn't feeding the anti-piracy machine.
- Jack
For example, I've forgotten that I need to be bothered with buying overpriced CDs for the past 8 years. Instead, I've been spending my cash on video games, DVDs, live entertainment and socializing with my friends.
And sometimes I also forget that I don't need to buy a CD in order to determine whether I like the music. P2P has been gracious enough to keep reminding me of this whenever I feel the urge to go to the nearest Virgin Megastore..........