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Sale Or License? Sister Sledge Sues Over ITunes
Hugh Pickens writes "The Hollywood Reporter reports that members of the iconic disco-era musical group Sister Sledge have filed a major class action lawsuit against Warner Music Group claiming that the music giant's method for calculating digital music purchases as 'sales' rather than 'licenses' has cheated them out of millions of dollars from digital music sales. Songwriters typically make much less money when an album is 'sold' than they do when their music is 'licensed' (the rationale derives from the costs that used to be associated with the physical production of records) but record labels have taken the position that music sold via such digital stores as iTunes should be counted as 'sales' rather than licenses. The difference in revenue can be significant as Sister Sledge claim their record deal promises 25 percent of revenue from licenses but only 5-1/2% to 6-1/2% of net from sales. Eminem's publisher brought a nearly identical claim against Universal Music Group and won an important decision at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2010 when the 9th Circuit ruled that iTunes' contract unambiguously provided that the music was licensed. The lawsuit argued that record companies' arrangements with digital retailers resembled a license more than it did a sale of a CD or record because, among other reasons, the labels furnished the seller with a single master recording that it then duplicated for customers. 'Unlike physical sales, where the record company manufactures each disc and has incremental costs, when they license to iTunes, all they do is turn over one master,' says attorney Richard S. Busch. 'It's only fair that the artist should receive 50 percent of the receipts.'"
That's the whole point of the RIAA. Their only contributing members are the big labels. They can file lawsuits on behalf of those companies, but artists can only file against the companies directly. So the RIAA itself is pretty much untouchable.
Please RTFS again. Artists get a 25% percent cut when it's a license. The MAFIAA is telling them that music through iTunes is sold, which only gives artists a 6% cut.
Oh, they're not providing the recording studio for free. All of the costs of recording and production - at full retail value - come out of the artists share of their contract proceeds before they start receiving any money. It's just that the studio is lending them the money so they aren't out of pocket for those costs up front.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"Hoist with his own petard" is a quote from Hamlet: "For 'tis sport to have the engineer/ Hoist with his own petard"
"Hoist" in this context means 'lifted into the air'
"Petard" is a small explosive device.
"Hoist with his own petard" = blown up by his own bomb.
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
Well, as a musician with a pal who was in the music business for a while (I'm not his kind of act, so I didn't work with him), he described it like this:
"The big distributors screw the labels in a very uncomfortable place. The labels, in turn, screw the band managers, who screw the musicians. Every time you move up in the business, you basically get to shift your position so that you are more the screwer and less the screwee." He also mentioned that because of the cash involved, if he'd wanted to screw his bands he could very easily have taken most of their share of the door and told the band members (when they woke up) that they'd spent it on alcohol, hookers, and blow.
You can also read this article by Courtney Love explainin precisely how record contracts screw musicians very very badly.
I am officially gone from
With the Internet, there are effectively an unlimited number of slots
Not if your target audience lacks access to the Internet. For example, a lot of people aren't willing to pay roughly $30 more per month to replace their dumbphone with a smartphone just to listen to Internet radio instead of FM radio. (Dumbphone plans on Virgin Mobile USA start at $7/mo; smartphone plans on the same carrier start at $35/mo.)
on a single channel that can only show so much
The front page of a web site can only show so much. Not everybody's music video can be on the front page of, say, YouTube at once.
Sweet. I like the way you think, because I am short on cash and thought I would resell my iTunes purchased music that I don't listen to anymore to a friend of mine to raise some extra cash. First-sale doctrine being what it is, I bet I could get him to pay me a quarter a song to transfer ownership to him.
Wait... what?
Exactly so, go for it. And if your friends don't want them, there's even a market maker called "ReDigi." If they're relatively popular tracks, I think ReDigi pays more than $0.25 each.
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