Rockers Sue Sony Over Download Royalties

Ohreally_factor writes "According to an AP article, groups Cheap Trick and The Allman Brothers allege that Sony is paying them less than what they deserve for music downloaded from popular download sites such as iTunes. Because Sony counts such sales as the equivalent of a physical phonorecording sale, they deduct costs for packaging (20%) and breakage (15%) from the artists' royalties, just as they would if they were selling CDs through more traditional means. Seeing as how there is no physical packaging, nor physical inventory that might suffer breakage, one wonders how Sony will defend against these charges."

Comments

Re:such sweet irony

[ozbird]

All your bass are belong to us.

Re:such sweet irony

[dr_dank]

The most famous exception is the Beatles' catalog, which is not owned by their record company Apple Corp., but jointly by Michael Jackson and Sony. Apple Corp still holds the mechanical rights, however.

Let Sony keep the mechanical rights. Do you REALLY want to see the Beatles try to re-record those songs without using Frankenstein-esque means of bringing John and George in on it?