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RIAA Wants Songwriter Royalty Lowered
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Lest there be anyone left who believes the RIAA's propaganda that its litigation campaign is intended to benefit the 'creators' of the music, Hollywood Reporter reports that the RIAA is asking the Copyright Royalty Board to lower songwriter royalties on song file downloads, from the present rate of 9 cents per song — about 13% of the wholesale price — down to 8% of wholesale. Meanwhile, the big digital music companies, such as Apple, want the royalty rate lowered even more, to something like 4% of wholesale. So any representations by any of these companies that they are concerned for the 'creators' of the music must henceforth be taken with a boxcar-load of salt."
Aren't they supposed to be on the artists' side?
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry.
Reducing costs is good for the Industry.
ROFL, oh but THEY DO!!!! the traditional RIAA contract has the artist paying for all the costs out of their royalties. essentially companys RIAA represent take an artist onboard and fund the album, making the artist pay it all out of their royalties at an inflated price as well as taking their cut of the profits, so if an artist is very lucky they might walk away not owing them money... studio's are a pit of snakes, make no mistake.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
You should be careful about such comments. One would think you were talking about "communism" the economic model since you are comparing it to capitalism, instead of "communism" the political ideology. This is important because "communism" the political ideology generally tries to apply extreme "socialism" as economic policy and has basically nothing to do with "communism" the economic model aside from the political parties that misleadingly stole the name. This is also important because "communism" the economic model is alive and well for those who apply it to small communist cell sizes. The most common example of this would be the family unit, which comprises a communist cell by buying and selling goods and services collectively (although these cell sizes are shrinking in the US). Other applications of communism that have stood the test of time are monasteries, co-op housing, co-op stores, credit unions, municipalities, etc.
Most Americans seem to have some messed up ideas about communism and socialism, both as political ideologies and as economic models. For example, public schools are an example of socialism, although those schools seem to have failed to educate their students as to that fact. Most people with an even cursory education in economics, however, will tell you that communism, socialism, and capitalism are all present in every economy in the world and what usually leads to disaster is when an economy becomes extremist and failing to balance these aspects. Extreme capitalism is just as unstable and disastrous as extreme socialism or extreme communism... that is the lesson we all should have learned from history.
"I heard it was too complicated to do it that way. Maybe with modern computers it may be easier. It used to be that radio-stations etc. would simply[1] keep a list of each song they played and periodically handed that list over to the RIAA, who applied a set even percentage and collected corresponding fees to be distributed. It worked well for several decades. In fact, I think that patents should follow a similar technique so that you don't get slammed with surprise royalties."
Huh? The RIAA doesn't deal with terrestrial radio... that's ASCAP and BMI, who represent artists. That's the beauty of terrestrial radio royalties... it goes directly to the artists. The record companies don't see any of it.
This is exactly why the RIAA wanted to get its paws on the royalties from streaming radio. They've missed 90 years of radio royalties; thus, they successfully got the rules changed. Thus was formed SoundExchange. The artists still get much (or most) of the money, but now the record companies line up for their share, too.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.