RIAA Wants Artist Royalties Lowered

laughingcoyote writes "The RIAA has asked the panel of federal government Copyright Royalty Judges to lower royalties paid to publishers and songwriters. They're specifically after digital recordings, and uses like cell phone ringtones. They say that the rates (which were placed in 1981) don't apply the same way to new technologies." From the article: "According to The Hollywood Reporter, the RIAA maintains that in the modern period when piracy began devastating the record industry profits to publishers from sales of ringtones and other 'innovative services' grew dramatically. Record industry executives believe this to be cause to advocate reducing the royalties paid to the artists who wrote the original music."

Comments

one would hope...

[Anonymous Coward]

One would hope that all those artists who've been letting themselves get used by the RIAA in their anti-piracy campaign get a good look at this.

Re:one would hope...

[DannyO152]

It isn't facilities per se, it's the capital to book time at a A-List facility with the amenities, such as a room where you can turn it up to 11 or an engineer who has 20 years of experience and knows where the mikes go, as well as the cuttiing-edge technology. That being said lot of people are doing a lot of work at home: demos, vanity projects, composition/arrangement, pre-production, and self-publishing. Cutting-edge technology starts in the studios and within five years becomes available for semi-pros working at home at low cost. At home, no sweat, you can have better sound capture, shaping, and playback equipment than Sam Phillips had for Elvis Presley, then Geoff Emerick had for the Beatles.

A recording label offers four things: sensibility, marketing, distribution, and capital. Successful independents may have less of the last one and "more" of the first. Because big labels have enough capital to fund a lot of failures, I think they have less sensibility -- in any case, there's less risk-taking at the big five (or is it four this year?). In theory, a label signs an artist because the label thinks its audience will buy things the artist records. Again, at the big label level, because of all the capital and politics, deals happen all the time where the artist never releases a single track and somebody knew that was going to happen at the time they approved the deal.

Moving tracks, even giving them away, is tough. Every day when commuting I walk through a half dozen guys near Hollywood's Graumman's Chinese offering free discs and headphones in order that people listen to their discs. The encouraging news is that there are still a few places on the radio and many on the internet which play music because the dj likes it and not because there's a deal some where. The better news is that, just like in the 50s when Chuck Berry wrote about mailing a letter to the local dj, web sites and e-mail addresses now exist where one can ask "what was it that was played," or "where can I buy it," or, "here's something that maybe you'd like to put on the air." The last couple of weeks I've been listening to KCSN out of California State University at Northridge and this seems to be exactly what's happening.

Ask me, the two biggest mistakes that the big labels made were to insist on DRM on all internet sold tracks and to get the US federal government to institute a draconian rights fee that drove out specialty internet radio broadcasters in the late 90s. The record companies need fans and those fans occur, not because the artist is having a 48 hour news cycle about choices in underwear, but because people hear the music. It's in Clive Davis' 20+ year old book for chrissakes, when people hear good music, they'll go out of their way to get it.

Back to today's topic: because the record companies cannot get Apple to raise its prices, they are trying to codify their under-paying of artist and publishing royalties in order to avoid the question of how to replace the revenue lost because customers may now pass on those weak tracks that were part of the package. It is a show business pattern to try and sell the B material by packaging it with the A material, so we can cut them some slack on that. The industry used to make their nut on the sales of 45s and the albums were the gravy. But consolidation, trimming rosters, and going to the government to change the rules (royalties, extension of copyright on British recordings) in order to artificially extend the 60s, 70s, and 80s strikes me as foolish, mainly because the audience changed. Today's teen-ager and young adult has a different pop culture. When the zeitgeist changes, get back to singles. Make lots of them quickly, for low-cost and make them so it doesn't kill you when a hundred fail. Get back to having a roster of hungry and talented producers, writers, studio musicians, and artists, producing items for hire and throw them together in Monday morning pitch sessions which cull the singles from the demos. Remember how Motown went from one person to the soundtrack for a time; remember that being the soundtrack for a time is a three decade business plan.

Please refer back to this article

[A beautiful mind]

...when the RIAA claims to do anything in the future for the sake of artists. They are not working for the artists as we all know, but this is a compelling argument detached from the copyright infringement case.

Re:Please refer back to this article

[Storklerk]

...when the RIAA claims to do anything in the future for the sake of artists.

Also refer to this article the next time they claim that the artists are starving because of the pirates.

Obviously its the other way round

[arun_s]

They say that the rates (which were placed in 1981) don't apply the same way to new technologies.

Technology has made it easier for the distribution of media. Its them who should be getting lesser 'royalties' for each copy sold, not the artists.

Artists and Writers Deserve Their Own Living

[Soloact]

The royalty schedule was implemented to encourage artists to continue with music by being able to make a reasonable living of the trade. These payments were increased so that the artists would actually receive money, instead of constantly owing the recording companies and thus being enslaved by them. The companies also, for years, "enslaved" the songwriters by signing them to publishing contracts, then claiming the works as IP. This is why I support independent musicians and songwriters. By lowering the royalties that are currently being paid, grudgingly by the recording companies to the artists involved, would be yet another huge backward step in the creative arts. Quite sad to see these sort of things in the works. I hope those pushing for the reductions fail in their quest. Would also be great if it was reversed, and increases in royalties paid to the artists resulted.

What about CD prices?

[achesterase]

But with the same argumentation, wouldn't one then also come to the conclusion that CD prices are massively inflated, as are prices for the DRM-laden digital variants?

What are these people SMOKING??????

[Lloyd_Bryant]

First I read the slashdot article, and thought to myself "okay, the editors are smoking crack again".

Then I read the referenced article.

I owe the editors an apology for my mistaken assumption.

From TFA:

As quoted by The Hollywood Reporter,"Mechanical royalties currently are out of whack with historical and international rates," RIAA executive VP and General Counsel Steven Marks said. "We hope the judges will restore the proper balance by reducing the rate and moving to a more flexible percentage rate structure so that record companies can continue to create the sound recordings that drive revenues for music publishers."

In other words, the RIAA has actually admitted what most Slashdotters have know all along - their crusade is concerned strictly with the "revenues for music publishers", and if enhancing said revenues means screwing the artists, then so be it.

Another point: "...so that record companies can continue to create the sound recordings...". Since when did record companies start creating anything? They take the creations of the artists, slap their name on them, and bleed off the majority of the profits for themselves.

I thought that the RIAA couldn't possibly sink any lower - looks like I was wrong.

Good.

[AngstAndGuitar]

When music creation becomes unprofitable, only those who seek to do it out of love will persist.
I really think that we'll see an improvement in the quality of music as a result of this.

Re:RIAA does *not* represent artists

[Maestro4k]

The Recording Industry Association of America represents the recording industry, like record labels and distributors, not artists.

Yes, but they like to use the artists for sympathy in their anti-piracy propaganda. But don't take my word for it, check out this page on their website where we have the following (emphasis added):

Though it would appear that record companies are still making their money and that artists are still getting rich, these impressions are mere fallacies. Each sale by a pirate represents a lost legitimate sale, thereby depriving not only the record company of profits, but also the artist, producer, songwriter, publisher, retailer, ... and the list goes on.

...

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the creative artists lose. Musicians, singers, songwriters and producers don't get the royalties and fees they've earned. Virtually all artists (95%) depend on these fees to make a living. The artists also depend on their reputations, which are damaged by the inferior quality of pirated copies sold to the public.

So yes, they DO claim they're doing this for the sake of the artists, you and the grandparent are both correct. The RIAA are claiming to be fighting piracy at least partially for the artists' benefit (although note it says "perhaps most importantly" about the artists) while at the same time trying to stab the artists in the back (again) by lowering their royalties even though they say that 95% of artists depend on those royalties to make a living. That last bit about artists' reputations suffering from sales of inferior quality pirated copies is kinda questionable in this day and age. A pirated CD should sound the same as the real thing, sometimes better since they'll remove any DRM crap from it.

Personally I don't see how they do it, having a soul-ectomy must be a job requirement.

RIAA = Middlemen - Excise.

[Cordath]

The major labels had a legitimate niche back when it took a massive distibution network to press an artists records and deliver them to record stores across the world. Today, distribution is a non-issue. It used to take massive ammounts of money to produce a good recording. Today, all the equipment that is required can be bought for less than a modest car. In fact, many major label recordings made today are of substantially lower quality than those of independants. It's not just the equipment, but the people using it. If upper-management orders the knob-jockeys to "make it louder" that's what they do, even if it means mixing tracks so hot that they clip continually. The labels remain the masters of big-budget promotion, but some bands have managed to be successful as independants with a tiny fraction of the promotion budget that a major label band gets. How do they do it? Make good music.

In all honesty, the labels aren't good for consumers. They stifle creativity and promote the stagnation of musical forms by promoting "safe" music over the innovative. This is why a top-40 music station sounds so homogenous whether it's playing pop-country, pop-rock, or pop-rap. Instead of promoting original artists, they hire 40 year old men to write songs about a teenage girl's life, hire a model who can't sing to sing those songs, and then digitally correct the tone-deaf waif's caterwallings in much the same way they air-brush away her zits and about 40 pounds. Then they promote this manufactured crap so heavily that it squeezes good music into the musical margins of life.

The labels aren't good for artists. Only a tiny percentage of artists signed to major labels ever make a profit. Most wind up in debt to the labels with no control over the rights to their own creations. Is the purpose of a record label to make money for itself or is it to make money for the artists? In the past RIAA has argued that artists provide a service, much like recording engineers or the squeegee monkeys that keep the windows of the exec's corner offices clean. They pay their lawyers better than 99.999% of their artists. Those lawyers enforce a copyright system designed to pump money into those corner offices at any cost. One of the costs happens to be the freedom of artists. Take the amen break for example. A whole musical genre grew up around a single sample made 40 years ago because the copyright on it was never enforced. What legally aborted genres might exist today were it not for the labels' lawyers?

Personally, I think RIAA and the major labels know all this. They know they have no legitimate role to play in distribution. They know they manufacture and promote crap because promoting original music carries risk. They screw the artists both financially and creatively. On some level, although they'd never admit it, they even realize that the labels are, at the most fundamental level, only there to get the music from the artist to the consumer and the money from the consumer to the artist. They're middlemen and they know it.

How do you improve any business transaction for both the consumer and the supplier? Cut out the middlemen.

Re:RIAA does *not* represent artists

[TheRaven64]

Each sale by a pirate probably does represent a lost legitimate sale. If you are willing to give a pirate money, then you would probably be willing to give the artist that money (ethical concerns of paying the RIAA aside). It is somewhat misleading, because very few people actually buy pirate CDs. It is also misleading, because it ignored fact that part of the reason that it represents a lost sale is that the official CD is so overpriced people don't consider it worth purchasing.

As an Artist Myself...

[ponderance]

This truly makes me furious. This is just one reason I've chosen to stay independent. Granted the only choices I've had were smaller labels like Grey Flat and Saddle Creek. This is truly a disgusting move by the RIAA. It's not bad enough they're making the publicity stunt lawsuits against perpetrators of free advertising (file downloaders), now they need to cut even more from their artists. Just like when the MPAA started their "want a backup copy? buy one." comments in press meetings, this makes me want to remember to "engage in piracy." Thank you, Capitalism. Thank you.

Re:Why artists?

[Emmettfish]

Alright, clownshoes, listen up.

Comparing the entirety of the music industry to the entirety of DeviantArt is fucking insane, as most people on DeviantArt do not make at their vocation, let alone their business. You are comparing a 15-year-old kid's drawing of a Yu-Gi-Oh character to the entire catalog of the Beatles.

By lumping 'musicians' as their own group, away from 'artists,' it's like saying that music somehow has a baseline for appreciation that is lower than that of, say, Rodin. Yet the Rodin Museum has to advertise like crazy to get people in the door, and Green Day sells out in seconds.

Does this mean that Green Day is better than Rodin? No. Does this mean that your analogy is nearly indescribably obtuse? Yes.

Music is art. Some music is brilliant. Other music is not. Some paintings are brilliant. Other paintings are not. Do the math -- Music is art.

Re:This could be a good thing

[kripkenstein]

Just think one day the artists and the fans might connect directly on the internet with no middle man in between to screw the artists and sue the fans.

That day has already arrived, and it has brought little change. We already have lots of artists, mainly the kind who can't get signed up by a record label, who publish their work online. It is only the tiny minority that get signed up by a major record label that we hear about though, and they are precisely the ones who will not 'cut out the middleman', because for them, the RIAA actually do provide a service: they advertise and brainwash the public into liking those choice few artists who are blessed with RIAA's stamp, leading to a tiny minority of artists making virtually all of the income in the music industry. How many artists are played on MTV? Not many.

[The RIAA's] greed will be their undoing. I wonder why it hasn't been their undoing in the past though?

The problem is that the public is very easily controlled by advertising and the media. So long as that is true, the RIAA will be able to create a few 'big acts', and to get the public to listen only to them. A few 'big acts' are easily controlled by the RIAA, especially since those acts will only make money as long as the public is convinced that they like them - which is the only thing the RIAA is good at.

In this media-driven age, I don't expect things to change anytime soon. But yes, cheap recording and publishing technology is helpful, even if only in a small way.

Royalities on ring tones???? WTF

[3seas]

I don't use them myself as I don't like using the phone in general, but I hear enough of other peoples ring tones to know:

There is not enough of a tone sequence to pay a royality on. Only enough to play the game "what ring tone is that from?"

Seriously, it may just barely step over the copyright line by linke three notes of something BUT there is the fair use clause.
And considering the most useful thing about ring tones is having a different one than everyone else around you, its not like they are of much valueto share.

Maybe you have collectors of ring tone (like you did with amiga mod files - but even then a mod file is at least a whole song) and perhaps The RIAA should push legistration for requiring collectors to register (get a collector license) or something.

Another thought is that ring tone users, should charge the RIAA for using their phone as an advertising media, like ads on your web site and getting paid for clicks...

But in no case should RIAA be able to use ring tones as an excuse to lower the royalities the artist get. If anythinhg they shoul increase them if they are not paying the phone users for advertising space.

Somebody really needs to lay it all out and really slap the RIAA down via exposure of their hyporacies.

To be clear, there is no reason with todays technology to subsidize new band promotional risks with the profits off the successful artist (one of the reason we having had enough real creativity on the air). What this means is that the profits/finances the record industry needed in the past to bring new artists to the public with hope the public will buy, doesn't need to be spent today as the internet is alot less expensive and artist can themselves get a following to prove themselves and have bargaining power with any contract they might sign with a label. The fact they did it themselves should show they are serious and business oriented. This path greatly reduces the need to subsidize and mean the successful artist should get more... not less (as they are not helping tro pay for other unknow artist to be market tested)

Maybe that is the problem here! Maybe the new technology is resulting in successful artist annual income to be raising and the RIAA figures it can take some of it but need an excuse (and we all know they do make use of excuses/lies to support their claims).

Is it really that hard to get?

[Arwing]

It's about the marketing machine, not the actual process of printing and shipping CDs to stores anymore. Those costs are cheaper than ever, what's really driving up the cost for the industry is similar to what's driving up the costs for professional sports, salary and marketing costs. In order to get the 'next big thing', companies have to pay more and more to sign established and even 'up and coming' artists to bigger and bigger contracts. They also have to pay for the ever increasing costs to pay radio stations to play their tunes (i know it's illegal, but you know they do it) and get their artists on MTV. The ever increasing costs of filming music videos (you think those girls shake their ass at you for free?) And since the 'artists' are getting less and less talented, the production costs are going higher and higher as well. And that is one thing that iTune and all the internet technology can not change.

The establishment has the connection with radio, magazine, and TV to promote their artists, and they want to get paid for spending millions of dollars on marketing their products. It's no different from fashion industry or any other marketing driven companies, they sell stuff by making it artificially popular. For me, this is no different from talking with their suppliers (artist) to cut down the cost.

Re:This could be a good thing

[Planesdragon]

I have often wondered why the recording industry, faced with increasing competition from other distribution technologies, has not concluded that "recording" no longer is a viable business today.

Because they're making a huge profit?

Because "new distribution technologies" is a thorn they faced before, and successfully got on the side of the law?

Because the current law has adopted to aid their business model?

Because, when you get right down to it, someone barely paying you for your work is better than someone NOT paying you for your work?

Re:This could be a good thing

[StarvingSE]

This is even more reason for having the artists and consumers connect directly. For example, go to Metallica's website, download non-drm tracks for a buck a pop or whatever, and metallica gets 100% of the money. Throw in merchandise sold directly through the same website and artists could stand to make a lot more money than with the RIAA. Yes, people will copy, put on filesharing, etc, but this has realistically been going on for ages. My friends and I used to get together for hours copying cassette tapes. I never once paid a dime for a commercially produced cassette. When cd's came out, I purchased these so that I could have a "collection" but people can copy them just as easily.

The only difference is that before you couldn't really prove or be able to tell who copied that cassette tape. With the internet, you are given away by your ip address, giving the RIAA a basis to sue, and I fully believe it is simply to use their legal muscle to gain even more cash through the legal system.

Re:This could be a good thing

[Technician]

The problem is that the public is very easily controlled by advertising and the media. So long as that is true, the RIAA will be able to create a few 'big acts', and to get the public to listen only to them.

The internet where everyone is a publisher is changing the landscape. There are a few acts everyone is familiar with even though they got no MTV or Clearchannel airtime. My Space, YouTube, Google Video, and others are starting to give the cartel a run for the money.

Are you still doubting? Ever heard of the Numa Numa guy? Has he ever been on MTV or a Clear Channel station?
How about the dancing baby?, the Badger or Lama song?

To Rephrase

[Miseph]

So, what they're saying is something like: "Our old business model of raping and pillaging artists and selling their work at hyper-inflated prices to a consumer public that has very few other choices, most fairly difficult to do, if they want music, is failing miserably. So we've started finding new ways to sell the same media in ways that the consumer public, once again, has very few other choices with, most fairly difficult to do, which lets our old business model live for a few more years while the public again finds a way to circumvent paying us through the nose for the labors of others. Somehow we think this means that we should pay our indentured serv... ah, that is to say the artists - you know, the guys who we keep claiming are the ones hurt by piracy, even though nearly all musicians who make a lot of money do so primarily with live performance, a format which is inherently unpiratable and has seen absolutely no loss of profitability - deserve to be paid less for their hard work. We justify this with the fact that Chewbacca is a 7' Wookie, and Endor is populated with Ewoks, and that doesn't make any sense. Seriously."

Re:This could be a good thing

[guice]

Wow, Metallica finally learned? Took them long enough. Remember, they were the original artists FOR DRM based music and FOR strict control over their music and even FOR the RIAA. It would seem somebody has changed their tunes. Finally...

Re:This could be a good thing

[nathanh]

Wow, Metallica finally learned? Took them long enough. Remember, they were the original artists FOR DRM based music and FOR strict control over their music and even FOR the RIAA. It would seem somebody has changed their tunes. Finally...

That's a misrepresentation of Metallica's position. Metallica has always had a relaxed attitude towards bootlegs. They even allowed people to plug their tape recorders into the mixing desk at concerts. They just asked that nobody copied their studio recorded music - you know, the recordings that are an expense to Metallica and their primary means of income. I considered it a reasonable request at the time; they weren't saying you couldn't make your own MP3s, or even trade their bootlegs, only that you didn't trade the studio recordings.

Metallica was one of the first bands to offer high quality digital content to their fans, as a bonus download off their website when you bought their CDs. They have made available video and music files recorded at their concerts, all for free. They publish a huge quantity of material; a balance of music, video, movies and other paraphenalia that rewards those fans who want to know more about Metallica. Their concerts are amazing value for money; high energy and extremely well produced. Metallica treat their fans very well. In return they ask that you don't rip them off.

The meme that "Metallica is anti MP3" is up there with "Gore invented the Internet" and "sue McDonalds for making coffee". It's a stupid lie that just won't die.

smacks of the studio system

[Magdalene]

This is just the RIAA attempting to rein in yet more control of the artists under their power. The movie studios in the 20's and 30's did the same thing to thier artists before the the actors finally stood up to the studios and formed the precursor to SAG and brought the studio system to its knees. Perhaps this is what is needed in the music industry now. If the musicians and artists took a stand and united against the RIAA perhaps they would actually get fair monies for their talent, own their own music, and not have to be contracted for pennies while the Labels make millions on their names.

-my drachma