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ASCAP Says Apple Should Pay For 30-sec. Song Samples
CNet reports on a new money battle brewing between those who generate music and those who profit from selling it on the Net. "Songwriters, composers, and music publishers are making preparations to one day collect performance fees from Apple and other e-tailers for not just traditional music downloads but for downloads of films and TV shows as well. Those downloads contain music after all. These groups even want compensation for iTunes' 30-second song samples. ... Apparently, the music industry can't obtain the fees through negotiations. They have begun lobbying Congress to pass legislation that would require anyone who sells a download to pay a performance fee..."
for advertising their product for free.... um, pretty much EVERY other industry in the world would like their products advertised for free, and if someone did that for them they certainly wouldn't sue over it.
Monstar L
Dig a grave for this dead industry.
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Man, this makes SOOOOOOOO angry. Someone should write a song about this.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
I'm sure if I presented a thesis saying that my new form of business model required passing laws in Congress requiring people to give me money at the mere mention of my product, I'd be laughed out of school.
And yet, this seems to be turning into a reality?
Maybe what we need isn't just a government that has its hands off of business, we need businesses to keep their hands off the government too.
Amendment XXVIII - Strike the following: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited
Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;". Replace with: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for Times not to exceed 14 years to Authors, or 25 years for Inventors, the limited Privilege to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
The actual time limits can be debated, but they need to be set in the constitution, not left to a congress that can be bribed with corporate donations.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The makers of the film or TV show had to pay for the song in the first place. The label was already paid for the use and can't extract money again from the redistributor.
Were it not for the fact that it would cause iTunes to implode (fiscally speaking), I would suggest that Apple simply remove the 30 second streamsand sell everything based on title alone, or make them available "for a fee" that nobody would EVER pay. Let's see how well that works.
Of course, the other explanation for their request is that the music they're selling mostly sucks bad enough that exposing 30 seconds of it will kill the sale.
P.S.
I should probably explain: I think "Right" needs to be changed to "Privilege" for the simple reason that rights are timeless. They are an innate quality of being human and never expire. Therefore a limited-term copyright is not a right, but merely a privilege extended by the ruling government.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
They really want to shoot themselves in the foot, don't they?
They don't have feet, they're an entity... what they need is to be sucker-punched in their Accounting department and then kicked repeatedly in the Legal until they promise to stop being a dick.
It would be interesting if Apple did a test where they removed samples from say from the top 1000 songs, then provided 30 second samples for say 50 and calculated how much the 30 second sample actually generated in sales revenue.
The samples on iTunes allow people to figure out if they want to legally buy a song that actually generates revenue for the artists. If I can't sample what I'm deciding to buy, chances are I'd most likely go straight to limewire and get it that way, because these songs are non refundable.
All ASCAP seem to be doing here is encouraging more piracy, most people are generally happy to pay for media if its easy to obtain and its not a difficult process that you have to jump through endless micro payments, confusing license agreements and rights managment that is unreliable. iTunes is making it easy for artists to make revenue off the internet but that is just not enough it seems for those greedy bastards.
"We make 9.1 cents off a song sale and that means a whole lot of pennies have to add up before it becomes a bunch of money," said Rick Carnes, president of the Songwriters' Guild of America. "Yesterday, I received a check for 2 cents. I'm not kidding.
Who in the hell has Rick's other 7.1 cents?
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
I'll give them a free 30 second preview of the body part they can kiss. (Limited time only, restrictions apply, one per customer.)
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Out of cannons, preferably.
There is a war going on for your mind.
It's not a performance if I ...
Play your CD
Hear your Song on the Radio
Look at your album jacket
It's a performance if:
You come to my house and play,
Hold a concert
Play on a street corner or a subway
Everyone in the chain of production needs to quit pretending that somehow, each time that CD is played, they have put in a personal appearance. // rant off
Performance as defined above is the method the bulk of working musicians actually make money. The RIAA just doesn't want to admit it.
Here's how I see this conversation going.
ASCAP> Give us lots of money!
Apple> You're already getting lots of money.
ASCAP> We want *more* money!
Apple> No.
ASCAP> We *demand* more money!
Apple> No.
ASCAP> If you don't give us more money, we'll take our music off your service!
Apple> No you won't, and we both know it.
ASCAP> WAAAAH GIVE US MORE MONEY
C'mon. If they wanted the extra fees so bad, they'd take their music off. Obviously they don't - they just want the government to step in when their own demands for money fell flat.
Why don't they make their own music distributor? Oh, that's right, because that takes work, and they don't want to do work. They just want free money.
I feel so sorry for them.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
I call distinction without a difference. Publishers in ASCAP and record labels in RIAA tend to have the same parent companies.
As a performing artist, I know all too well how ASCAP and BMI work. They are actually artist organizations (they don't represent the labels) that pay the artist directly for "performances" of their music. Any public performance of an ASCAP or BMI artist's music is supposed to be supplemented by payment, usually in the form of a contract between the venue and ASCAP/BMI. The money the venue pays to the organization goes into a pot - and then this money is distributed to the artists. Nice idea, in theory. The problem begins when one looks at how these organizations pay the artists. It is almost entirely based upon radio airplay, so the system doesn't work particularly well except for the big players in the game.
ASCAP is well-known in cities for cracking-down on places like coffee houses that have live music - they send in what are essentially thugs to scare the venue into paying what works out to be "protection money" to keep ASCAP from suing them in the event someone plays an ASCAP-artist song during an open mic or live music event. Rather than trying to come off on a more positive marketing angle of trying to help out the music business and the artist, which ASCAP could easily create a pretty compelling argument for, they instead use strongarm legal language and intimidation. I know many coffee houses who simply won't allow live music due to a scary visit from ASCAP or BMI thugs.
Much like the RIAA, these "artist" companies, due to their plainly nasty way of dealing with their clients and the public, are simply in the business of making money off other people's work. This is why I am not a member of any of these organizations and work hard to support venues who don't cave-in to the pressures these organizations place on them. Original live music, owned by the performer - that cannot be touched by these cads.
No, it's business. Men in suits sit around quoting business concepts at each other until they convince themselves they have a good idea.
They're executives, the way they work is by outsourcing their specialized thinking to others while they manage. I'm sure they honestly don't know how stupid they look. They read a report that mentions in passing the 30-second preview, they reel and can't understand why they're giving away content for free. They call in the secretary and set up a meeting with their iTunes lead. The poor guy tries to explain how obviously it's of enormous benefit to offer a preview. The MBA hears some engineer admitting that he's following his personal opinion in a matter of possibly huge importance to the company. The MBA looks for a real report done by Research with real numbers and tables and projections that confirms the engineer's opinion-- and there are none. He assigns a team in Research to investigate the matter and recommend any disciplinary action against the engineer. Research consults Legal, they say they have no contract with iTunes for getting paid for their content when it's in a 30 second sample. They contact the MBA, give him a preliminary report that confirms his suspicions. He sets up a meeting with Apple to discuss future payment. MBA gets laughed out, MBA lobbies congress.
I read slashdot to *escape* the workplace, not relive it.
*sigh*
It IS greed. There are successful businesses, and then there are businesses who care about naught but lining their and their shareholders' pockets with money. Time, time, time, and time again, history has shown that you can run a business that people like and make money, or you can be a greedy monster and make money. It works for some time, but will those businesses be around in 100 years? If you go around the world and look at some of the companies that HAVE been around for over a century (a lot of food companies have), you'll find that the workers there are typically treated well and are very happy.
It's the same as the old king analogy. As a king, you can rule with kindness or you can rule by fear. By kindness and you can have everything you want (and everything your prosperous country can produce) and will be remembered forever. By fear and you can have everything (only what your pitiful starving country can give you) and will be forgotten over the centuries. For some reason, a lot of leaders tend to choose the latter.
This a repeat of the game they play with radio stations. When you hear really long concert commercials with the band's track playing the whole time it's promoters gaming the ASCAP system for extra radio plays. I think radio stations have to count a "play" at 15 seconds or something, and now ASCAP want's samples at a "play" rate.
We're still dealing with fallout from the "digital" versus CD distribution. Just like performance artists don't get $2.50 ringtone royalties (those go directly to the publisher) the per track royalties ASCAP gets for CDs (and probably digital rentals of movies/TV shows) aren't contractually written for "digital" mediums at all, or for a reduced rate. ASCAP lost it's chances with Hollywood on this one fare and square. They tried to hold up early DVD releases of TV seasons (Freaks and Geeks was a famous one on Slashdot that actually had to reedit soundtracks because ASCAP artists wouldn't budge) playing contractual games and lawsuits. They won some lawsuits but in a limited enough fashion Hollywood was able to get the last laugh by getting "blanket" licensing for thing like CDs and TV seasons directly from the artists before even letting them work, and added the "digital" parts to distribution for TV, movie, DVD, etc. ASCAP is trying to end-run contracts and get Congress to create yet another new "on the internet" fee for "web distribution", but not the same web distribution covered under the webcasting clearing house (same rules as radio play) or the "sale" royalties for things like iTunes and emusic (counts as "CD" sales, not webcasting).