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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."
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.
...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.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
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.
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?
Finally, there is something I agree with the RIAA on (assuming their intentions are to reduce costs to the consumer). Publishers, and to a certain extent artists (mainstream) tend to over charge for their IP which partially results in higher CD costs and this results in extensive piracy. Not only that, the over inflated royalties are charged to movie companies developing their soundtracks which pass on those extra costs to the consumer resulting in over priced movie tickets/rentals/dvds which further drives piracy.
Piracy can never be fully eliminated but if you charge a price that the public is willing to pay, then they are significantly less likely to resort to piracy. Reducing royalties paid to publishers and artists, I suppose is one way to achieve this.
However, the RIAA acknowledging of this could just be a publicity stunt to show that they are trying to adapt to piracy when in fact they are only interested in screwing over the smaller independent artists to benefit the larger record companies. It could be that reduced royalties do not result in lower CD/digital music costs in which case I don't believe reducing royalties is useful.
12/08/06: Warner CEO slaps own child on wrist
11/28/06: Pressure on AllofMp3
11/22/06: Pressure on the RIAA
Forget this. In memorial.
Then I read the referenced article.
I owe the editors an apology for my mistaken assumption.
From TFA:
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.
Don't tell me to get a life. I had one once. It sucked.
It never stood for "Artists" in the first place... It for "association"... as in "Record Industry Association of America"
Follow the link and be amazed... the Artists DO NOT feature in the RIAA's thoughts at all, they're only concern is for the publishing rights holders as in the publishers, not the artists.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I had to say it because I honestly don't know their intentions. I agree that they historically have not been interested in consumer rights nor consumer costs. However, their goal in this case, IMO, appears to be to increase sales by reducing piracy as a result of reducing consumer costs. As a result, even though it wasn't their intention, such a move could benefit both the consumer and the music industry.
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.
Less look fast, more go fast.
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.
Most times they screw the consumer for the artist.
But this time, given the popularity of ringtones, they're screwing the artist for the children.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
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
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.
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.
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.
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. --
I personally know of 3 music artists that have died due to starvation, just in the last 2 weeks. One was a good friend involved on the verge of signing a big record deal with Sony music, but someone leaked the band's latest album on the net before the deal could be signed.. Once Sony realized pirates were using the internat to mass-copy the album, the lawyers walked away and my friend was left homeless and broke.. it was horrible watching his body decompose before my very eyes, I hope you never have to go through the same experience
Let me get this straight - record industry profits were devasted when profits from 'innovative services' dramatically grew ?
Talk about contradicting yourself.
They are not working for the artists as we all know, but this is a compelling argument detached from the copyright infringement case.
Just to add to this, here are articles by different artists about being ripped off:
Steve Albini
Courtney Love
Steve Vai
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
"Try before you buy" is my philosphy too, but that model relies only on one's intellectual honesty, that makes you actually buy the product after a short period of "trying". But most people just "try and never buy"...
The article headline is wrong. Artist royalties are paid by record labels to recording artists for use of their recordings.
The article is referring to MECHANICAL ROYALTIES which are paid to SONGWRITERS for use of their songs. While the songwriter and artist are often the same, this is not always the case
EXAMPLE: Joe Schmoe writes a song that is recorded by Britney Spears for her new album. Britney Spears gets paid artist royalties by the record label. Joe Schmoe get paid mechanical royalties by the label.
The article is talking about reducing Joe Schmoe's royalties
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).
That isn't even the issue. The real problem (and this applies to any organization, company or "industry trade group" that lobbies successfully for bad law) is the amount of damage they will do the to the economic and legal systems of our country while they're on the way down. The DMCA alone, passed at the behest of the MPAA for the most part, has to be one of the worst pieces of legislation to pass out of Congress in decades, given the bloody trail of frivolous lawsuits left in its wake. I submit that America can no longer afford to have these billion-dollar parasites exerting undue influence upon our elected representatives.
... they aren't some national treasure that must be protected at all costs. They're a bunch of self-serving corporate assholes who don't care who they hurt and yes, that includes the oh-so-important "artists": you know, the creative types whom the labels claim to "represent." Frankly, that kind of representation I could certainly live without.
The music studios are capitalist to a degree but they are most certainly unenlightened capitalists. They don't acknowledge, under any conditions, that any other entity, private or corporate, should be permitted to compete with them. And when they can't use their anticompetitive market practices to guarantee control of product distribution, they start whining and lying, and then they head for Washington and get some more protectionlist laws passed without regard for any collateral damage. I'm really getting sick of these people
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
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.
about the way the music industry is set up right now is why the artists are paid by the distributors as opposed to the other way around. The artists have created the music and should have full control over what happens to that music. They should be paying the distributors/production companies/etc. to handle the things they do.
As I see it, and this may just be the way I buy music, the reason I buy or don't buy music is because I like the artist, or I have heard something from them and want to hear more. I don't buy an artist because Sony or BMG is distributing it (although that may make me not want to buy an artist's CD). The recording industry should be paid for the service they provide and the artists should be the ones in the drivers seat. If the artist doesn't want full control, well thats what agents are for, right?
Clones are people two.
My father plays percussion in one of the worlds leading orchestras. Growing up I was exposed to and learned to enjoy orchestral music; I still do to this day. There is a lot of it out there, but most of the time the major orchestras play a small repertoire; Beethoven, Mozart, Mahler, etc. The big names, the things that have been played over and over again. I remember asking him one day, "Why does the orchestra play all this stuff over and over again? Sure, this is good music, but don't people get bored with the same thing over and over again?"
I was told, "There is a saying in the music industry: The audience eats shit."
And it does - to someone who appreciates the 'finer, more nuanced, less well known' areas of an art form. Music, like any art form, has a certain section that appeals the masses; A very small section at that. The casual audience doesn't have the patience or interest to delve deeper most of the time. They have something that makes them happy and they are content with that.
Let's take everyone's "Lave Her" or "Hate Her" 'musician': Britney Spears. Have you ever heard her sing? I watched an interview of her a few years back and she was asked to sing solo. No backup, no music, no effects to cover her voice. It was absolutely atrocious. That doesn't matter though; She performs well enough on stage, and combined with the marketing and enough makeup on her voice to make it acceptable, people are happy with 'her' product. "Enough ketchup and even my mother's cooking is edible."
Personally, I wouldn't even take an album of hers for free. I don't consider it art; I consider it boring, unimaginative, repetitive, and headache-inducing. Ultimately, though, I don't think that it is within the power of a few individuals to determine what 'art' is, except for themselves. It is society's job to determine what is art to society.
Unfortunately (in my opinion), Britney Spears, 50 Cent, Snoop Dog, etc. are all considered artists in society right now. That doesn't matter though; Nobody is holding me captive and forcing me to listen to their product.
Love sees no species.
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.
The average band makes maybe roughly 1-2$ per CD sold. FEW artists sell as much as 10,000 of an album. Take those say 20,000 dollars and for conversations sake divide it by the 3-5 band members. Yeah, nice yearly salary. If you are lucky and skilled enough to live of being an artist you play live acts for the "steady" income and your royalites make a bonus.
For royalites to make a liveable income in it self you have to hit superstardom(Gwen stefani, metallica, etc). You would be suprised at how many of the one-hit-wonders get some bling-bling, a couple of celeb parties and end up with no cash at the end of the 15-minutes of fame.
> 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.
You aren't making any sense. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) pays no royalties. It is the record industry trade group. The labels are the members and it does exactly what they tell it to.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Wow, usually when someone tries to screw every party in an attempt to line their pockets, they tell the artists that they are trying to make more moeny, so they can give more to the artists, and they tell the consumer that they are trying to lower prices so they can be competitive
Not here, however. Now they are pretty honest about their intentions. They want to give those who produce music the shaft on what they consider to be their biggest money-maker, and they are doing it so they can make more money...No noble intent, no "starving people in Hollywood" scenarios...just greed... I wonder if the brief ever mentioned the RIAA's desire to do a Scrooge McDuck-style swim in a pool full of money...
The recording industry is a bunch of middle-men, plain and simple. They are trying to screw artists and collect taxes on everything related to music, because they know that the only thing they have going for them is that their parent companies own the music stores, which are, also, not doing very well.
This is part of an ongoing dispute between the Harry Fox Agency, the RIAA, and the ringtone industry over compulsory licenses.
The recording industry in the US has a statutory deal in the Copyright Act which allows them to re-record previously published songs (i.e. issue "cover albums") by paying a fixed royalty determined by Congress and the Librarian of Congress. This is called a "compulsory license". Most music publishers are represented by the Harry Fox Agency, which actually issues the "compulsory license" on request and collects and redistributes the royalties.
Then came ringtones. The Harry Fox Agency, in 2004, took the position that the compulsory license required by law does not cover ringtones. This was a bogus position, and on October 16, 2006, the Registrar of Copyrights ruled that ringtones are subject to the compulsory license. The Harry Fox Agency is taking this badly; "This decision has no effect on HFA's existing policy that DPD licenses ... do not cover ... ringtones or mastertones.
The RIAA is sueing them, and HFA is probably going to lose this one.
This is really a very obscure issue even in the music industry. In the end, ringtones might get cheaper, and we may see the end of that silly distinction in the cellphone world between downloaded tracks and ringtones.
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.
What do you mean "now?" The RIAA has worked contrary to the interests of artists for decades--possibly since their inception. They're a parasitic organisation that steals money from creative people.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
This is the third major recent instance I can remember.
First was having a congressional staffer slip a clause into an unrelated bill that would have made the work of the musicians classified as a "work for hire," which would mean the record labels get the copyright to the music. After this was outed and some stars complained, the RIAA said "Oops, how did that get in there, we are working with Congress to restore the rights of the artists." The RIAA of course hired that staffer for a fat paycheck.
The second was holding back royalties, hiding behind complex accounting so the musicians wouldn't find out. Imagine some 70s musician who is probably owed an unknown amount of royalties, but it would take a $10,000 audit (that he has to pay for) to find out. NY AG Eliot Spitzer nailed them on this, and they owed millions in back royalties.
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."
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
In your example Joe Schmoe is an ARTIST while Britney Spears is a PERFORMER. So, yes, the RIAA is trying to screw ARTISTS even more than they do now.
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
Yes, their margins are "low" at 2%/8%, but low margins does no refute a claim that they are making a "huge profit." Using your reference, warner claimed $3,500,000,000.00 in revenue last year, or (on a 2% profit margin) $70,000,000.00 in profit.
Of course they claim to have earned $1,690,000,000.00 in (gross) profit this year, just a few lines down from their revenue statement. Margins are only important when they begin to scrape around the 1-0% ratio (or lower) where they are spendng nearly as much as they take in. On a buisiness that focuses on volume, margins don't need to be high. Look at wal-mart.
-GiH
What ever happened to people making money from gigs? When I was in bands, we used to give away our CDs (in the early 90s mainly) and make $$ from gigs. Bands like Metallica also used to advocate copying their music as the more people that heard the music, more people went to gigs (where the real money is for artists). Does anyone actually like to gig anymore?
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
-Magdalene --"there are 10 types of people in the world, those who read binary, and those who don't"