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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
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.
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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.
As a guy who works with one of those long-tail bands, I can tell you that it's a lot more fun to be in the short head. People click on the face on the front page about a zillion times more often than they type your name in a search.
If the only way to get your face there is to sell your soul to the RIAA, then I'll stick with the one-zillionth fraction. But there are times I'm not so sure.
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.
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