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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."
I eagerly await the insightful words of Lars Ulrich, Dr. Dre, et al to explain to me why pissing off the people who were perfectly willing to pony up good money for concerts, T-shirts and, yes, full retail priced CDs was worth it in the end.
why? forty-two.
Stupid pigopolists. Aren't they supposed to be on the artists' side? This blatant money-grab is just one more nail in their coffin. More artists will find ways to sell directly to the public, or form their own collectives with their own interests at heart. Of course, that's how the RIAA started, but it is well past its usefulness and needs to be replaced.
The RIAA has come a long way since they were setup to regulate and maintain the technical standards on how vinyl records should be manufactured. Hopefully they will go the way of the vinyl record real soon...
This is too funny they want more money in compensation for each illegaly downloaded file yet want to give less to the artists that make it...
...because they're going about the right way of lowering the loyalty rate of artists and customers alike.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
'"Fundamentally, this fragile marketplace is showing signs of promise, but it cannot be saddled with additional, excessive costs," DiMA wrote. "The board should be careful not to impose a royalty that kills the proverbial goose and deprives songwriters and publishers of their golden egg."'
A little nugget of FUD to mask the fact that digital downloads are going to render obsolete their entire middleman operation.
RIAA: Recording Industrialists Against Artists.
How ya like dat?
The H1B issue is the same way: lobbyists squirm and wiggle to bend statistics and magnify (or make up) anecdotes to sell the idea that there are not enough citizen programmers or not good enough citizen programmers and therefore the industry needs H1B's in order to prevent an economic collapse. It is all just a ploy to get cheaper labor. This is what happens when business lobbyists have more power over legislators than voters. It's that simple.
Table-ized A.I.
If they actually use the "Save the Artists" thing then maybe someone should sue them for _fraud_ just to publicise the issue and drop the case quietly before it goes to court ;).
I bet that the prices for the songs won't be lowered as a result...
From now on, I'm pirating everything, and I'll mail some money to the band.
I'm sure the RIAA and MPAA would be quite happy if the "artists" would do as they're told, the "consumers" would buy whatever's being sold at the price offered, the internet would go away and everyone would simply shut the hell.
I'm sure they would enjoy their huge salaries and bonuses much more without all the whining.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Cutting 13% down to 8% is a 38% reduction.
So everyone else's cut is going up, even though the songwriter's costs and work are the same. But the rest of the "value" chain to the consumer (which now is composed mostly of the consumer, recommending and trying to share the content) is drastically reduced in cost and increased in availability of inventory (which was typically paid off according to plan many years ago).
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make install -not war
For This Reason, New Media Players (Apple, Yahoo, Napster, etc) argue that the "mechanical royalty for copyright" should be lowered significantly on digital downloads (specifically, to 4%).
RIAA etc argue the fee should be dropped only slightly (specifically, only to 8%).
RIAA are arguing to maintain profits for their (arguably, exceedingly dinosaur-like) "distribution model".
"While record companies have been forced to drastically cut costs and employees, music publisher catalogs have increased in value due to
The New Media crew are arguing the way of sanity and intelligence. (ie trying to push the 'downloads are effectively performances, because there's no way to differentiate' argument)
New-media companies want the rate to go even lower, contending that it should disappear when music is digitally streamed.
Every time you hear something new from the RIAA it boils down to "someone needs to shovel more money into our bank accounts, without any additional effort or contribution on our part. Our business model dictates an infinitely increasing profit margin, for infinitely decreasing effort, ad-infinitum."
And the same can be said of those ISPs who intend to violate the concept of "net-neutrality". ("someone's making money , and the bits cross our network. Ignore the fact we already billed someone for those bits, I want to directly bill BOTH the producer AND the consumer of those bits, even though they have NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with me").
That's not a business-model, that's a fantasy.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
'R' is for 'recording'.
You'll notice it's not the "Songwriting Industry Association of America", nor the "Music Publishing Industry Association of America"?
Huh? The RIAA doesn't deal with terrestrial radio
You are correct. My mistake.
Table-ized A.I.
The artist(s),engineers and producers had to sit down, write/plagirise the lyrics figure out the chords, make the musical arrangements record the song.
The industry had to take care of the printing of the actual cd's its physical distribution to certain stores etc etc etc..in short it had to do a decent amount of work
After the revolution of digital distribution
The artist(s),engineers and producers had to sit down, write/plagirise the lyrics figure out the chords, make the musical arrangements record the song. Basically do the same amount of work.
The industry has less cd's to distribute and print, and most of the distribution can be done via websites. Which once created and designed, require a relatively simple upload of a certain album/song which can be done by well trained cat and dog tandem.
So the artist does the same amount of work as before, the recording industry less work then before....and the artist gets paaaaid less....hmm makes sense.
Sorry to interrupt your diatribe against THE MAN, but as I recall Al Capone was a gangster, the man behind the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. And yet you would compare this with a trade body that tries to protect its revenue model and earn money from selling music?
Get some fucking perspective. Yes the RIAA act like idiots and have questionable morals, but this adolescent whining that compares them to real violent criminals who kill, torture and maim people just totally discredits the entire argument, and makes people opposed to the RIAA look like dorks.
I genuinely believe that geeky kids get more upset these days by having to pay for mp3s than they do if their president lies to them in order to start a war for his self interest.
get some perspective.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
"but this adolescent whining that compares them to real violent criminals who kill, torture and maim people just totally discredits the entire argument, and makes people opposed to the RIAA look like dorks" A little like comparing people who copy music to real violent criminals who attack peaceful vessels on the sea to kill, torture and maim people completely discredits the RIAA's argument huh?
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
Hmm
Al Capone: Provided a quality product against the government's objections.
RIAA: Provides crap with the government's assistance.
Al Capone: Kills competitors (either himself or through his direct subordinates)
RIAA: Kills competition (collusion, price-fixing), bankrupts people through the legal system, gets laws passed to put geeks in pound-me-in-the-ass Federal Prison for writing software.
Their eagerness to get criminal laws passed to accomplish their objectives means that the difference between them and Capone is that they use more intermediaries.