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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.
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
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.
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.
Aren't they supposed to be on the artists' side?
Yes, just not the artist you thought. They are really on the side of the con artists (I.E. the corp backers).
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...
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."
Trust me: the industry can find a thousand people to write crap like this: Oh baby, baby
Oh baby, baby
Oh baby, baby
How was I supposed to know
That something wasn't right here
Oh baby baby This blatant money-grab is just one more nail in their coffin. Yes, but you didn't kill the bastard before putting him in the coffin! Duh! He's banging and screaming and pissing & shitting himself senseless - because he knows, unless someone rescues him, he'll die soon.
For the record, one of my all time fav artists does this. Ayria. She's cute, too! or form their own collectives with their own interests at heart. ooh, goodie! How long until they become just as bad - or worse - than the RIAA? Seriously, this tendency of people to group themselves.. is boring... and annoying. Of course, that's how the RIAA started, Wait, hold on! You KNOW that has happened in the past and you want to repeat it?!
What?! Should we try Communism ONE MORE TIME because THIS TIME we'll "do it right"? Ha. Come on.
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
They are constantly beathing that drum, claiming to be looking out for the "artists, songwriters, [and] musicians" but that's just propaganda. If they admitted they were just looking out for record company executives, it wouldn't go over as well. Here they have shown their true colors.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
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.
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....
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.
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.
The only thing they know to do is lose money.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
That's the RIAA.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
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.
Communism according to Marx is the small town writ large. That's it. No magic, no huge government aparatus, no secret police, it's just the idea that as we evolve as a society we will find a way to interact economically with each other in a billion person city the way we did when we had a town of 20 and we knew everyone. It's basically ethics without observation.
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."