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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."
that anyone had any doubt that the RIAA were anything but money-grubbing middlemen.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Why is the RIAA even able to set any sort of financial policy for its parent companies? I thought it was just a big bunch of lawyers! Should not each recording studio set compensation based on the contracts it signs with the artists?
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...
Lest anyone be at all surprised, remember that RIAA stands for the Recording Industry Association of America. It represents the record companies, and that's all it represents. If these companies could find some legal way to hold a gun to a songwriter's or musician's head and take their work at gunpoint, they'd do it.
I'm not going to insist that digital downloads are the future and that all artists should follow Radiohead's lead, but any artists who care at all about their future had damn well better examine every single alternative when figuring out how to produce and distribute their music. Things are changing, and you can be sure that the record companies are going to be looking out for their best interests. Artists had better do the same, or they're going to get screwed.
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.
Imagine if musicians had to pay out of pocket for every song that was distributed, say one cent per track. On the one hand, they'd be angry because it would mean that they would have to pay a lot if their songs reached a lot of people. But on the other, it would also be an indication of their popularity and the money to be made on concerts and schwag. This is analogous to what a web author has to deal with when his site hits the big time. And yet, web authors can usually figure out how to monetize the publicity and pay for the traffic. The fact that music could even make musicians money if they had to pay people to take their music sheds some light on the outdated nature of the industry.
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the RIAA essentially a representative group formed with the intent of pushing forward goals and legal issues for the major record labels?
If so, then they are doing an admirable job of inspiring people to direct ire and hared towards the constructed organisation rather than to the parent companies.
It isn't often that I see people complaining about Sony or BMG (Comparatively speaking).
It always seems to come down to that nasty RIAA.
Well done indeed.
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.
Now the record companies, who created the internet and invented downloading music and streaming audio, have seen their take of the pie stay the same, whilst freeloading music creators are actually making more.
I shall write to Orrin Hatch about this...
I bet that the prices for the songs won't be lowered as a result...
Now the RIAA is a bunch of money grubbing pricks, but I can't believe Apple would have anything to do with ... HEY LOOK! OMG! New AirBooks are OUT!!!
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
They should write songs because they love it, not because they get paid. SONGS WANT TO BE FREE! FREE THE SONGS!
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
Of course, streaming internet radio is quite different than music sales.
Nails frontman [Trent Reznor] urges fans to steal music
"Steal it. Steal away. Steal, steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealing," Reznor, who has been dubbed the Ralph Nader of the music industry, said.
Steal NIN music too? He steals he says. Read that article. Interesting.
How to Download YouTube Videos
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. . . .
They want the 4% royalty rate for STREAMING... IE internet radio, which right now is treated much different than terrestrial radio where the songwriter gets practically nothing for. They are saying that they shoudlnt be treating internet radio as if it is somehow different than normal over the air.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
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.
If only the artists would go on strike like the writers. Maybe we could thin out some of the crap on the radio these days. I hate that most new music makes me love the songs my dad sung to in the car (oldies) and that it makes me not even want to look for the few artists who have really great music.
There is. In Melbourne, it's called "Bourke St. Mall". Best not to set up too close to the tram tracks though.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
The only problem is, songwriters don't have a full control over their creative work. The mechanics of the system goes under various names, such as "compulsory license", "statutory license", or in TFA, "mechanical license". Lessig's Free Culture gives a better account than I can, but the most songwriters can do is refuse to write more songs, not refuse to license their already-published work.
Given the usual release cycles of albums (probably the real difference between the music industry and TV shows), they will need to do be able to sustain their strike for one year or longer—how many strikes have you seen that lasted one whole year?
Under the current situation it might make sense to make this move by the RIAA:
1) In USA there are virtually no free media - everything is owned by one large corporation or the other
- This include radio, TV, magazines and so on - tell me one TV station or national radio station - or even a one state radio station that is independent of big companies likes of NBC, Time Warner, Viacom, News Corp., and so on.
2) The Internet is not yet established enough as a channel of new music
3) In the current system you need - lets say 50 000 people listening to you to break even and be able to live by the art you make, by reducing the payout this will reduce the number of artists out there who may make enough to live by making music, however as they control the media, they may increase the airtime of fewer artists making them stay firm while the rest "disappears".
4) By focusing on online media as broadcasting, thus reducing artists revenue further, they may limit the possibility even further for artists using the online media as an alternative channel.
Prepare for even more commercials in music videos etc. Artists will likely need to more frequently require brands to pay part of their initial promotion to get media attention.
...this article isn't about the RIAA pissing off customers, it's about the RIAA pissing on artists.It is - and that's actually much better. Let's hear Lars and Dre defend this.
BTW, Lars...Dre....if by some bizarre chance you happen to read this: I Told You So. Nyah Nyah Nyah.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Price fixing
That is the "settlement" that isn't worth a shit...So much for abiding by the law.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
This post was on the front page of a torrent site:
The Flashbulb wrote: Hello listener...downloader...pirate...pseudo-criminal... If you can read this, then you've more than likely downloaded this album from a peer to peer network or torrent. You probably expect the rest of this message to tell you that you're hurting musicians and breaking just about every copyright law in the book. Well, it won't tell you that. What I would like to tell you is that my record label understands that a large portion of people pirate music because it is easier than buying it. CDs scratch easily, most pay-per-download sites have poor quality and ****ty DRM protection, and vinyl is near impossible to find or ship without hassle. In many cases I wonder why people buy CDs at all anymore. A few like the tangible artwork, some haven't adapted to MP3s yet, but most do it because they have a profound love for music and want to support the artists making it. Kind of restores your faith in humanity for a moment eh? So, now what? Like the album? About to go "support the artist" on iTunes? Well, don't. Alphabasic is currently in a legal battle against Apple because NONE of our material (Sublight Records included) receives a dime of royalty from the vast amount of sales iTunes has generated using our material. Want to buy a CD just to show your support? If you don't particularly like CDs, don't bother. Retailers like Best Buy and Amazon spike the price so high that their cut is often 8 times higher than the artist's. Besides, most CDs are made out of unrecyclable plastic and leave a nasty footprint in your environment. If you do particularly like CDs, buy them from the label (in our case, alphabasic.com). After manufacturing costs are recuperated, our artists usually receive over 90% of the actual money coming out of your wallet. In addition, all of our physical products are made out of 100% recycled material. Want to show your support? Go here and browse our library of lossless, DRM-free downloads. Already have that? Then feel free to donate whatever you want to your favorite artist. 100% will go directly to them. Hell, you can even donate a penny just to thank the artist. If you really like 'The Flashbulb - Soundtrack To A Vacant Life' and want to show your support without it going to greedy retailers, distributors, and coked-up label reps, then click the button below. http://www.alphabasic.com/index2.htm If you send us your mailing address, Alphabasic may occasionally send you various goodies (overstocks, stickers, even rare CDs) in appreciation and encouragement for your support. Thanks for reading. Who knows if my little business plan here will work to fund new releases, but even failure is better than the crappy label/distributor/retailer system musicians have suffered from for over 50 years. We hope you enjoy the music as much as we do releasing it. Finally, if you plan on sharing this release, please include this file. The only reason it is here is to show the listener where he can support his favorite artists! Benn Jordan CEO - Alphabasic Records
Even more interesting: it was on the site as a "free leech", meaning it did not count toward your download ratio. There were about 2700 seeds. even if 0nly a tiny percentage send a little donation, the artist will be doing better than through the normal distribution channels, with the added bonus of getting it out to more people, which is what I believe true artists are in it for.
It's mafia, or Mafia, or if you want MAFIAA. It's not Maffia
It comes from italian - some kind of revenge cry for the death of someone's daughter (my daughter, ma fia)
To quote from the brief:
This assumption, made by the RIAA and NMPA, that streaming is the same as selling a music track, is what triggered a whole stream of Slashdot stories about how the RIAA was trying to destroy Internet radio, such as: Webcasters Call Bunk on SoundExchange DRM Ploy.
This would have nothing to do with Apple iTunes Music Store sales of music, which are considered the electronic delivery of an album.
As a side note, I'm astonished how quickly so many otherwise intelligent Slashdot readers seem to pile up on one side or another of an issue, such as Internet Radio royalties, depending on how the winds happen to be blowing--because they fail to think for themselves. If supposedly more intelligent than average Slashdot readers are this easily manipulated, then God help us during tomorrow's Super Tuesday elections...
No, that'd be the Kosher Nostra!
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful