EMI May Cut Funding To RIAA, IFPI

Teen Bainwolf notes a report that Big Four record label EMI, which is under new ownership, is considering a big cut in its funding for the IFPI and RIAA. Each of the labels reportedly contributed over $132 million per year to fund industry trade groups, and EMI apparently believes that money could be better spent elsewhere. "One of the chief activities of the RIAA is coordinating the Big Four labels' legal campaign, and those thousands of lawsuits have done nothing but generate ill will from record fans, while costing the labels millions of dollars and doing little (if anything) to actually reduce the amount of file-sharing going on."

Comments

Tag this

[Mike89]

Tag this 'commonsense'. Finally a record label who is starting to 'get it'.

Re:Tag this

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but the moment of truth will be when more effective TPCA / Vistaids backed DRM becomes feasible to widely deploy ... will they use it and shit all over consumer's fair use rights again? I suspect they will. They're waking up to the fact that their current tactics are counter-productive, not necessarily to the general idea that their consumers should be treated fairly.

Re:Tag this

[CastrTroy]

Finally a BIG NAME record label who is starting to 'get it'.

There, fixed that for you. There's lots of smaller labels who have "got it" all along, but they're just smaller ones, and you don't hear their music on the radio, or on the TV. There's plenty of good music on the smaller labels, and if people actually had any convictions, the RIAA would have gone bust many years ago, and their member companies wouldn't have been able to sell any music. The point is that most people don't know or don't care about the RIAA tactics. My biggest question is what happens to EMI now if they do this? Will they still be able to get as much radio play their music on a regular basis? Will their bands still get invited on the talk shows? How far does the power of the RIAA really extend?

Re:Tag this

[dgr73]

Exactly what he said :) Plus the fact that it's slowly but surely becoming an "in" thing to be seen to be on the consumer's side. Why fight a fight you can't win and ruin your reputation in the process. Why not make a big hoopla about cutting funding to RIAA and then cut it by 10%, which is invested into other counterpiracy measures. Not only will your company look good (compared to the other 3 major labels), but they may actually see slightly improved results.

Or it could be that the music industry is turning altruistic in it's old age and they wish to slash their profit margins by condoning free downloads. The next move in this vein will undoubtedly be a repeal of the "work for hire" clauses in all contracts, as well as a large hike in royalties.

Re:one down, three to go!

[Billosaur]

Actually, I don't think that's a bad analogy. Making liquor illegal only drove liquor production and distribution underground, brought about the rise of organized crime (remember Al Capone?), and probably increased the amount of alcoholism prevalent at the time. Face it -- if the liquor supply is limited, and you know where to get it, you're going to try and get as much of it as you can. Same thing is happening to music -- making file sharing and ripping illegal is simply driving the illegal file sharing economy, and it's costing the music industry far more money to try and stamp it out than it would be to embrace it and try to work with buyers.