Slashdot Mirror
RIAA Math: Sell 1 Million Albums, Still Owe $500k
An anonymous reader writes "For all the complaints from the RIAA about 'pirates,' who are the real pirates in this scenario? Through a variety of contractual tricks, it's nearly impossible for artists signed to major labels to get paid. The article and video detail how an artist who thinks he's getting a 10% royalty is actually getting closer to 2.5% through various tricks placed in the contract. The labels, then, end up with 97.5% of the gross revenue, and anything they 'spend' on the artist continues to come out of the royalties, not the labels' cut."
With the ability to distribute online so easily these days, I don't know why artists even bother with major labels anymore. I'm sure with a little investment even the smallest artist can attain a decent marketing campaign. Word of mouth and social networks are a wealth of free publicity as well.
Given that weve seen similar stories for years (hollywood accounting, unfair contracts, better off going alone), 2 questions spring to mind:
1) Surely enough people have been burned to set up a class action lawsuit and /or lobbying for new regulation/legislation towards Hollywood / the recording industry for their accounting practices; Im generally gun-shy of unnecessary regulation but this seems to be an area where audits would be helpful, and the odd multi-million-dollar judgement might not hurt either
2) If these contracts are known for being so bad, why do people continue to sign them? I sympathize if the contracts are simply not being honored, but if it continues to happen and people continue to sign the contracts, my sympathy begins to wane. I do NOT want to get into a situation where contracts are no longer enforceable because of legislation protect people from sneaky contracts; people DO bear responsibility for contracts that they sign if they are upheld to the letter of the contract.
Articles like this make me really nervous because they may have a valid point, but I am terribly worried about the results of overambitious and overreacting legislation.
If these contracts are known for being so bad, why do people continue to sign them?
Lets say 95% of people are smart enough not to sign one. If you work for a record company, it means you only sign up people who fall in that 5% category. The pool of people who could actually make money for them will always be large enough that they can afford to ignore the rest.
And it gets worse. Let's say I started a record company today, and I genuinely want to do right by my artists. If I don't employ the same money squeezing tactics that the existing labels do, then my margins suffer and the only way to succeed is to have a much higher success/flop ratio with the acts I sign than everyone else. And that's not trivial to pull off.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
98% of all media are owned by less than 10 conglomerates. Where do you suppose you'll be advertising?
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
With all due respect... Are you implying that you are entitled to make money with what you love doing? I assure you that's not even remotely close to how reality actually works. Most people have a day job that they either accept as "necessary" or flat out hate it. Many people, including me, used to love what they did, but the realities of the workplace and business requirements usually put a halt to that. My dad always used to say, "Find a job you love and you'll never work in your whole life". As a matter of fact, I have a corollary to that: "Find a job you love, and lose your love for it". Yes, I still love programming, fiddling with hardware (e.g. dumpster diving), helping out people with their computer problems, but it's for my own and for the people I care about. My job, is just that... a job.
What about the people who love things like D&D or simply going for a walk in the forest? Should they be able to make money of it? Sure... They should have the right to attempt that, but reality will kick your butt quickly.
My wife would love to make her money with her paintings. She's pretty good, but to make a living out of it? I'm doubtful, may happen, but only if someone rich actually fancies her art and gets her out in public.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Hey there Mr. Indielabel that's a nice little website you have there. It'd be a shame if anything happened to it.
Oh, by the way, it sounds like one of the artists on your little label wrote a song that sounds similar to one of our millions of copyrighted songs, so we're suing you for $1,000,000,000 right after the Division of Homeland Security shuts down your website for copyright infringement and the SWAT team kicks down your door.