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RIAA Admits 70 Cent Price is 'In the Range'
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In its professed battle to protect the 'confidentiality' of its 70-cents-per-download wholesale price, the RIAA has now publicly filed papers in UMG v. Lindor in which it admits that the 70-cents-per-download price claimed by the defendant is 'in the range'.(pdf) From the article: 'The pricing data really may not be all that secret. Late in 2005, former New York Attorney General (and current Governor) Eliot Spitzer launched an investigation into price fixing by the record labels, alleging collusion between the major labels in their dealings with the online music industry. Gabriel believes that making the pricing information public would 'implicate [sic] very real antitrust concerns' as the labels are not supposed to share contract information with one another ... Beckerman argues in a letter to the judge that the only reason the labels want to keep this information confidential is to 'serve their strategic objectives for other cases,' which he says does not rise to the legal threshold necessary for a protective order. The proposed order would force the labels to turn over contracts with their 12 largest customers. Most details--such as the identities of the parties--would be kept confidential, but pricing information and volume would not.'"
No matter how many more songs there are on a disc, an album is nearly always defined as containing 10 songs in a recording contract. And payment is based on that figure to the artist, which means the labels do a good deal better on CD sales than online downloads, though that doesn't account for materials costs I suspose.
$0.45 per song sounds high, but if you think about all that they take care of (advertising, risk of producing your album (which if it's your first could be a total loser bringing in no money), etc.), it doesn't sound too rediculous.
I can't recall where I got this from (TV show, news article?), so it could be wrong, but I think if you're a new "up and commer" artist, your cut is ~ $0.02 - $0.03. And I can't remember if that was per song or per CD! Again these numbers may not be exact, but it puts the RIAA cut back into what I'd call the ridiculous %.
Britney Spears may be getting $0.45 per song, but she probably didn't get near that much on her first couple of albums. Most artists make their money on tour.
<blockquote>There is a difference between actual damages and statutory damages. Actual damages are an attempt to compensate the victim. Statutory damages are an attempt to include punitive damage in statute law.
Whether or not this is wise law-making is debatable. I suspect that it would be better to force the victim to sue directly for punitive damages, thus leaving the matter to a judge to determine of the punishment fits the offense.
</blockquote>
This is not quite correct.
Actual damages are damages proven in court, and are intended to compensate the victim.
Punitive (also "Exemplary") damages are damages intended to "punish" or "make an example" of the victim (largely as a general and specific deterrent), beyond what compensates the victim.
Statutory damages are amounts set in statute law in the absence of proven amounts of actual damages (or when the proven amounts are lower); in some cases they are largely compensatory in purpose, and included on the presumption that the kind of harms the statute seeks to provide a remedy for are prohibitively difficult to prove and quantify, and that substituting a default damage amount is a way to provide a reasonable remedy. In other instances, their intent is somewhat punitive in nature, though they are particularly ineffective in that regard as they tend to be superceded by actual damages rather than on top of actual damages.
<blockquote>Whether or not this is wise law-making is debatable. I suspect that it would be better to force the victim to sue directly for punitive damages, thus leaving the matter to a judge to determine of the punishment fits the offense.
</blockquote>
Since the courts have held that punitive damages may only be awarded in a limited proportion to the actual damages proven, this would eliminate the principle role of statutory damages, which is to obviate the need to prove specific actual damages to receive some remedy for certain offenses.
Certainly, there is an argument that substantive due process analysis of the type that constrains <i>punitive</i> damage awards ought also be applied to statutory damage awards beyond what can be reasonably seen as compensatory, and/or that statutory damage amounts in law serving as a rebuttable presumption of actual damages rather than providing an amount that is available in all cases regardless of circumstances.
Quite true, and many more costs besides. The artists have to bear the entire cost of creating and selling the album, before they get any royalties.
Fair enough, you say? Perhaps - except they don't get to keep it. That album, that they conceived, wrote, performed, recorded, marketed and paid for in full, is no longer theirs. Copyright for the album is owned by the LABEL, and NOT the artist. That really sucks.
Time to link to Steve Vai's words of experience too, on this and the many other nefarious clauses that appear in a standard label contract.Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
and registered a U.S. domain root. (.com)
.com is not a US domain root, it is an international root mainly used for commerce. The US domain root is .us That's not to say the root servers aren't in the US, only that .com is international and not country specific.
FalconShould there be a Law?
it varies from place to place, but in many areas the local PD certainly has a clear stake in the proceeds generated by ticketing. That's why they troll the section of the highway that goes through their jurisdiction and pull people over for doing 70 in a 55.
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
I'm not quite sure how it works, but the composer always makes money on airplay, I think it's called "Mechanical Royalties". There's an article here: http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/music-royal ties6.htm
but I have no idea if it's accurate.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I spend a lot of time in the music industry. Half of those costs are pretty much obsolete now. I mean, I can't remember the last time I saw a commercial for a band that wasn't paid for by a concert promoter (Mix CDs with a theme don't count). And in radio, there's "no payola". And recording costs are falling pretty quickly. You're not at the point where anyone can record in their garage, but costs are rather down. Almost any group of college kids can record a decent demo nowadays (yeah, I'm stuck listening to about a dozen this week) that every year sounds more and more professional. When we book bands, we deal with their agents, or our agents deal with their agents.
Most of what the RIAA groups do could be replaced by VCs who specialize in music, and with managers/agents. If the RIAA wasn't being a monopolizing, price-fixing force, it might have happened already.
It might be more appropriate to say "They care, they just don't know it." All the people who have iPods and huge iTMS libraries likely just continue buying iPods. Other players are no longer an option to them, unless they want to burn-rerip. 5-10 years down the road when there is more competition in the portable "digital audio" player market (or even home stereo "digital audio" player market), they will be more likely to care. Whether they'll realize that they had an option not to buy compressed DRM'd music at that point is unknown though.
Keep in mind that my parents' generation still owns many of their records from over 30 years ago.