Slashdot Mirror
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."
It's easy to get confused simply because they lie about it so much. "Won't somebody think of the starving artists!" is their main battle cry, not "Won't somebody think of the fat record company executives". However, it's also easy to avoid confusion by simply reminding yourself that they are lying weasels with the ethical standards of a rat. Never take anything they say at face value and you won't get misled (as often).
All RIAA members have to do is to lower their share of the revenue. That'll get the price down no problem (as it's the majority part), thus also addressing that piracy problem they're so worried about (nothing to do with promoting mainly crap, nooo). And it would thus result in less damages caused by dead people, grandmothers and children because the per song costs would be lower - hell, it may then not even be worth suing them and being made to look ridiculous in the first place.
And lower income would stop the RIAA wasting money on expensive buildings and lawsuits, maybe sack a whole batch of those idiots that came up with the idea of suing their own customers (generating a generation growing up with nothing but hate for RIAA), it would no longer be worth bribing laws through Congress - I mean, I can just go on with benefits here.
In Powerpoint speak (yeeach) this seems to me a win-win approach.
Alternatively, putting the lot on detail to Iraq for a while could work as well. Let them do some real work. Or send them to Africa to work between people that are really starving so they know what the word actually means.
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.
Is it just me or does this sentence make no fucking sense?
If the RIAA start driving away the artists then it makes the RIAA even less of a player. 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.
Their greed will be their undoing. I wonder why it hasn't been their undoing in the past though?
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
This is a completely abhorrent move. The artists are in debt to the companies (from their advances), and now they're going to be reimbursed *slower*?
The RIAA (and the distribution companies) just see royalties as another income stream after the public have paid up front for product and the artists have gone into debt to produce it in the first place.
Isn't this one of those quick rich plans:
1. Loan shark the capital to the artists (advances)
2. Grab all the retail income and rip off as much as we can through phoney accounting
3. Skim the remaining "profits" before offsetting previously loan sharked funds (thereby impoverishing artists)
4. Pass on the option to extend the artists contract thereby getting more money for free if the rubes sign with another company - without actually having to keep the music in print and paying off the artist's debt in the meantime.
5. Keep the copyright for 75 years (the rubes'll be dead by then)
6. Bribe lawmakers to give you successive extensions so you keep it forever anyway.
7. (We'll think of other things as time goes by.)
8. Profit? "Hell we did that at step 1, the rest is where we make out like bandits"
The mob's in the wrong business - oh wait, you mean the mob's *already* in this business. Oh.
I would think it would be the exact opposite. In the last 25 years the cost of audio production equipment, cd presses (well equivelant to mainstream of yester-year) and printing presses (for inserts) have advanced dramatically and gone wait down in price. I think its about time artists begin recording their own music or grouping together for recordings then paying the labels a small cut for mass reproduction of their music...
It would be great if a judge looked at this case, weighed the evidence, then said "ACTUALLY, RIAA, I'm assigning all royalties to the people who create the music, with the exception of a small stipend to pay you for lawyers' fees, since that's your sole function these days. Now shut the fuck up and get out of my courtroom before I have you all shot."
Well, I can dream.
Just, no. Greedy fuckers. If anything the royalty rates need raising to apply to new technologies, considering how much revenue the industry and artists are losing from people downloading instead of buying.
Absolutely fucking disgusting.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
The music industry is bad m'kay. If you don't believe it deserves to die look here, m'kay. This is an insiders view of the music industry so pay close attention.Then tell me if it wouldn't be a better idea for artists to promote themselves on the net,giving away their mp3s under some gnu-like license and making money touring.
Some of you will remember Steve Albini from "Big Black" others will remember him as producing Nirvana. Either way it just isn't worth the worry of supporting the industry in any way.Sure some jobs will be lost,but hey to quote Ted Knight in "Caddyshack"," The world needs ditchdiggers too".
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
I want the RIAA disbanded and sued for every bit of money they've stole from the public and artists, and be forced to give it back!
I seriously wish more artists would boycott this stuff.
if the RIAA is not going to pay the old kinds of royalties, there is no reason the record labels can not walk away. they could form a new organization or figure out some other method of making their money. the RIAA and the labels have a symbiotic relationship though. i don't know if a new group would treat artists any better. i bet there will always be artists so hungry for fame that they are willing to sign just about anything. maybe with all the bad publicity the record labels and RIAA have gotten in the last few years, artists will at least think twice before blindly signing. some pretty big mainstream artists have come out and said they were being ripped off. there are documentaries about it too. if younger bands are still so crazy to sign 100 record deals (or something that lasts the entirety of their possible careers), then there is not a lot you can do.
things like the iTunes store has giving almost level distribution to smaller bands. the same 'store' that sells the biggest popular artists can also carry a small town band that plays in basements. the big artist may get an image on the splash page, but both are just as easy to find by typing the name in the search box. that whole thing about the long tail is what makes online stores like Amazon, Netflix or iTMS want a HUGE catalog of products. those smaller indie released books or CDs have a very valid place in the new business models. that seems to be a pretty widely accepted economic fact at this point.
i agree with you 100% that as long as the RIAA and the huge labels still have enough momentum, they will be able to keep pushing the hell out of the artists that play by their rules. the average citizen still learns about new popular music by the radio, MTV or whatever. artists that barrage them on tv, print, internet, radio etc etc are the ones whose songs will stick in their heads. if you don't have RIAA artist files on your computer, they can not (legally) harass you.
Sure it is, the way they pump out artists with modifications to their vocals and all the industry music magic they use. That's not art, that's a product being produced just the same way a Ford Mustang is produced on an assembly line.
Hang about there... The rule of thumb is that sound quality reached a peak in the period 1958-62. Since then the only change has been in the size, cost, features and convenience of recording production and reproduction. If you listen to any of the Everest releases from that period, which were recorded on 35mm tape, on either (properly cleaned) vinyl or the commercially available, prerecorded open-reel tape, you will know what I mean. You'd probably also chuck out your digital music collection in disgust.
I guarantee if you could hear the original Sun tapes on period equipment you would be amazed at the clarity. What we hear of those tapes so many years later is an abomination and usually many generations of copying, etc.
For my part, I rarely listen to digital music - it's open reel or vinyl for me.
Cheers
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
I need mod points because you hit it right on the nail. If you deal with illegal activities, you expect the chance to be burned. But when you deal with supposedly legal activities, you expect to get value in return and not be burned. We have federal organizations to deal with Taco Bell, but if there is no recourse to shady dealings from the legal source, then the RIAA should expect nothing less than severe backlash, whether it be pirated CDs, internet sharing, or what I suspect most people have done: stop buying new albums. I haven't done any downloading in years, mainly because I got the songs I wanted and there's nothing good coming out via the labels.
Our founding fathers removed the guys in charge. Be American. Vote incumbents out.
New artists benefit from the exposure of having their CDs appear in wal-mart, their songs get released and downloaded through ITunes, they get played on the radio. We need clearinghouses for music. There's no reason to accept the RIAA's constituents as that clearing-house, but certainly altering the system so that the mega-bands have an even greater systemic advantadge dosen't strike me as "fair" or "productive."
-GiH
This is a video on YouTube that explains this "loudness war" in layperson's terms.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ