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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.
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...
RIAA: Recording Industrialists Against Artists.
How ya like dat?
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).
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 ;).
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
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....
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 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.
[1] With random auditing.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
"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.
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.
Many artists have sued their labels for unpaid royalties. Some have even sued to get their share of p2p lawsuit moneys. It doesn't get widely publicized.
You passed up a chance to use a recursive acronym (RIAA is Against Artists) in a /. post? Are you feeling OK?
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
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.
Well, one perspective is that they differ only in the details. The most famous example of this perspective is Clausewitz's remark that war is just a continuation of diplomacy by other means. Others have observed that the same principle applies in business, where there are various persuasion tactics ranging from misleading advertising, "industry standard" contracts and legal threats to actions like mayhem and murder of competitors. Which are used are determined not by any morality or ethics, but by what the local government permits.
With both the Bush gang, and the RIAA, the motive behind their actions are essentially the same: power and profit. In both cases, they openly say that they consider themselves just businessmen, trying to maximize their profit. Bush, Cheney et al have done this by fomenting a war, as a way of channeling funding to their crowd's companies such as Haliburton. The RIAA uses shady legal tactics and bribery of politicians to control the distribution of funds away from artists and into their corporate coffers.
You can obviously argue that wholesale killing of innocent bystanders is something different from suing grannies. But to the top managers of these enterprises, this isn't really their concern. Businessmen have often used tactics like extortion, torture and killing when the legal system permits it. Bush's people are allowed to kill to get their way, so they do that. The RIAA is constrained by government regulation (criminal law) from doing this, but they are allowed to use the legal system as they have been doing, so they do. In each case, they're merely using the most extreme persuasion techniques that the legal system permits them to use. If the RIAA knew they could torture or kill people with impunity, that's what they would be doing.
See Russia for a nice example of how this works. Russia has been a "free and unregulated market" for over a decade now. It's open knowledge that extortion, torture and murder are now standard business practice in Russia, and the reason is simple: The government has stopped regulating such actions when done by businesses. At the other extreme, business in much of Europe is now suffering from the fact that some of them have actually been prosecuted for bribing politicians. In the US, political bribes are called "campaign contributions", and they're legal. So corporations like the RIAA might not be able to send in thugs to rough up "pirates", but at least they can pay money to politicians to get the laws changed so that more money gets channeled away from the artists and into the corporate coffers. And so far, they haven't been punished for scatter-shot lawsuits, so they use that tactic.
Actually, of course, there are a lot of politicians and businessmen with functional morals and/or ethics. But we're not talking about that kind of people here; we're talking about big, successful trade organizations and big, successful governments. These are usually not constrained by anything except the punishments they might receive for their actions. And that's really the only thing that explains differences in their tactics.
(It can be fun to look at "perspectives".
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.