You're not listening. Aerosmith may have licensed their recording. The person who actually WROTE the song and still owns the Copyright was never consulted, and never got a dime.
And if Guitar Hero = Radio/Television/Movies/etc then Performance Royalties are in fact due and payable to ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC to be distributed to the songwriters the same way they are in those other media. Activision and the amusement companies who distribute the commercial version of the game need to figure out if they're going to pay them or if the individual business will.
Your statement, "No one is going to make millions... since no one singe entity can control it" is simply wrong. It wouldn't matter if Mac's song were in the public domain, Kenny would still have made millions from it, and millions of listeners would still have enjoyed hearing it. Business owners would have played it to draw in more customers, to keep those customers in their bars longer, and to sell more drinks to them while there.
I have to wonder how your opinion would change if you were a writer? I'm betting you'd have a very different outlook on that little section you quoted about Copyright. As is, I think you're reading it backwards. It isn't saying that science and art are promoted by dumping everything into the public domain. It is saying that they are promoted by making sure the creator receives financial benefit for the hard work they put into the creation. And it's right.
"Some people would miss out, but that's life?" The whole point of Copyright reform in 1976 was to protect all the folks who were getting screwed by the record companies. Unlike most of what our government does, this one was pretty good. What you're talking about would actually put us back 60 years in the fight to protect those talented few who create our most precious cultural treasures. Many of whom died penniless because of laws exactly like the ones you are promoting.
Songwriters, artists, and other creative people are not very often good business people. To say that someone who spends his entire life perfecting his art for the enjoyment of millions is just going to "miss out" because "that's life" is immature and insulting. I dare you to go a year devoid of all art (music, photos, movies, poetry, paintings, even freakin' Disney cartoons) and then tell me at the end of it what you think a creator is worth.
Sorry, I read the "Free Music Distribution Setups" and thought that meant that all performances would be free. This seems like an interesting avenue for artists who write their own material.
But how would someone who only writes songs but doesn't perform them fit into this format? Some of the best songwriters I know honestly don't have the chops (or the interest) to be performing artists. Even if they did, the reason they write so well is that they are able to devote 100% of their energy to it; if they had to spend 3/4 of the year in promotion / radio interviews / gigs / etc. they wouldn't write nearly as well or as much. Currently ASCAP / BMI / SESAC enable these writers to make a living. I'm not bashing your idea or trying to drag it down, just wondering if this has been accounted for in the model.
So you're saying that ASCAP asked him to pay his royalties and he just didn't want to? And ASCAP stopped bothering him as soon as he started paying them through the new Jukebox vendor?
Sorry, but it sounds like your friend was in the wrong here. And I'm sorry if the ASCAP reps seemed like "bullies" to him, but they don't work for him - they work for the songwriters.
First of all, creators and artists do not get paid forever; only while their work is popular and making money. That's the point of the long Copyright - you don't know how long it's going to be before it makes money. For example Mac McAnally wrote "Down the Road" something like 20 years ago, but it never went anywhere. Suddenly Kenny Chesney recorded it, it went #1 with a bullet and millions of dollars were made. By your rules, Mac would receive absolutely nothing for writing the song while Kenny raked in the dough.
The change your suggesting would actually HELP the RIAA screw songwriters. They would simply wait until the song entered public domain before recording it and wouldn't have to pay the author squat.
I should have provided a better response. The artists who recorded the songs were no doubt paid a license for their recordings, but the songwriters who actually wrote those songs didn't make squat. Songwriters only make money when a recording of their song is sold, or when their song is performed hundreds of thousands of times. In this case, ASCAP is only looking out for their member's federally mandated rights. The reason this entire thing is so stupidly overcomplicated is entirely the fault of the federal government.
Your blog is really interesting. I hadn't heard of the "Free Music Push," and I'm looking forward to visiting the sites you linked. I only have one question about it... how do the musician's pay their bills if they give away their recordings and don't get paid for performances? If there's a business model that works here I'd really like to learn about it, but as is I don't see how anyone can afford to do this.
It's a video game which uses popular songs in order to increase profits. I don't think anyone would argue that GH uses those specific songs for a reason and would not be nearly as popular if they had simply made up their own music. As such, the same federal laws that cover Jukeboxes apply here. IE: popular songs are being used to increase attention and profit from paying customers. It would be unfair to the folks who worked hard to write the songs if the business owners kept the profits they are deriving directly from the popularity of those works.
No, actually that's completely wrong. ASCAP, BMI and SESAC collect performance royalties only, only in the United State, and only for songwriters. If you use popular music to draw customers into your bar (through a jukebox, etc) and realize increased profits as a result, it's ASCAP's job to make sure the federally mandated royalties are paid to the folks who wrote that music you're using to draw in customers. Furthermore, I've never had any trouble at all getting them on the phone. I don't know who you think you're helping by making up these ridiculous stories.
ASCAP collects royalties for the folks who actually wrote the songs these business owners are using to draw in paying customers. In other words, the bar owner / arcade owner / whoever directly profits from the fact that Guitar Hero is using popular songs versus writing their own. Frankly, I think the people who wrote those songs and worked hard to get them recorded deserve to be recognized and paid their federally mandated royalties.
ASCAP has nothing to do with artists. ASCAP, BMI and SESAC collect and distribute federally mandated performance royalties for songwriters the United States (who don't make diddly squat off the agreement that Aerosmith signed with the game company). In this case, they're just doing their job. On the other side, the bar owners are using popular music to draw customers into their businesses and thus increase profits. If you really don't believe the bar owners should be required to pay part of that profit to the actual songwriters in the form of performance royalties then you need to talk to your Senate and Congressional representatives.
I'm glad to see that the Obama administration cares about protecting the rights of creators and I hope something positive can come out of this meeting that benefits BOTH sides of the equation. I'm sick and damn tired of hearing stories of insane RIAA lawsuits against teenage girls, but I'm even more tired of watching people take and enjoy the fruits of an artists labor without due respect and compensation.
I had exactly the same reaction. By the/. way of thinking it's perfectly fine to take a copy of a song that took years of a person's life to write and tens of thousands of dollars to record and release in a professional manor. Or how about downloading a movie that took years to write, employed hundreds of people during its creation and cost millions of dollars to make; that's fine too. Because after all, IP law was "made up" by big companies so they could hoard money (I believe that's how it was explained to me right here on this very board).
But if you copy a chunk of software that two guys wrote in their basement over a long weekend, well by God we'll SEND IN THE DOGS OF WAR!
Gotta love hypocrisy.
One of the reasons your 'art' gets 'ripped off' so much is that the people doing so will never be in the position of doing a job once, then getting royalties forever and they don't see why they owe you anything for doing the duplication themselves.
FYI, only big name artists get royalties. The rest of us count on album sales, merch and concert tickets to pay our bills. And I'm mainly a songwriter which means that I get 9.1 cents (by federal law) when you purchase that song I wrote. That's assuming I didn't co-write it, in which case I get 50% of that. I won't see royalties unless it gets played hundreds of thousands of times on radio stations; which only happens if you get lucky enough to get a cut on a major artist who loves your song enough to make it a single. So your comment about royalties only proves that you know absolutely nothing about the music business.
Are you contractually obliged to bitch about downloaders?
Go make pattern parts for GM vehicles, you won't get put away for grand theft auto, but you won't get paid per mile used either.
I know you'd love to believe that, but no. I'm an independent songwriter who saved up his money and self-produced my own CD that one of my adoring fans put up for download. I then spent the next year listening to people at my shows tell me how much they loved my CD even though I had only sold 5 fucking copies. Now I have a day job, I don't play out, and I can't afford to put out another CD. Not that I would seeing as people aren't going to pay for it.
So thank you so much for freeing music from the big record companies for me. Yeah, you're really opening things up for independent artists.
And BTW, my guitar was a one time purchase just like I'm asking you to make. I don't think 99 cents is unreasonable to ask for a son you'll listen to for the rest of your life.
Then please explain to me how we're supposed to pay our mortgages and feed our families.
The business models that you are trying to use to justify your position have no relevance whatsoever with regard to making music for the entertainment of others. The sound recording itself is our product exactly the same as guitars are Gibson's product. There is NO DIFFERENCE. If you get a copy of the sound recording that I worked hard to produce without either paying me for it or me giving it to you than you have stolen it from me.
I'm sorry that reality is so inconvenient for you.
You steal when you refuse to pay anything for something that a person worked years of their life to produce, and instead end run around them and download a copy of their hard work from an illegal source. It doesn't matter whether it was a sculpture, a painting, a movie or a song.
The fact that we musicians are treated like our art is worthless simply because it's easy to rip us off is offensive beyond words. If it were as easy to copy a sculpture, sculptors would react exactly as we have.
If you don't want to pay for the song, don't listen to it. If you download it for free from a source that wasn't authorized by the artist (IE: taking their hard work without payment and without permission) than you are a thief; it's that simple. If I did the same thing to General Motors they'd lock me up for grand theft auto.
Agreed, and here's why. All they need to do is walk into court and say, "We can only guarantee that hardware we built will operate properly with XBox Live. Additionally, allowing user modified hardware to operate on our network may adversely affect other paying subscribers and therefore cannot be allowed."
Case dismissed. This will go nowhere.
There's always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they Do... Not... Know about it!
This is a classic example of what happens when a bunch of engineers get together and they're all so dead on convinced that they've got the next great idea that they don't stop for 15 minutes to look at the market, learn what their potential customers actually want, or even write up a business plan.
No one is going to pay $700 for one of these. It's just not going to work. How is a salesman at Best Buy supposed to talk me into buying a device that has no hard drive, a tiny screen, stores all of my data out on the Internet, and doesn't run Microsoft Office when there's a cool looking 15" laptop siting right beside it for the same price?
It's just not going to happen.
Mark my words. This will all end in tears.
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You're not listening. Aerosmith may have licensed their recording. The person who actually WROTE the song and still owns the Copyright was never consulted, and never got a dime.
And if Guitar Hero = Radio/Television/Movies/etc then Performance Royalties are in fact due and payable to ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC to be distributed to the songwriters the same way they are in those other media. Activision and the amusement companies who distribute the commercial version of the game need to figure out if they're going to pay them or if the individual business will.
Your statement, "No one is going to make millions ... since no one singe entity can control it" is simply wrong. It wouldn't matter if Mac's song were in the public domain, Kenny would still have made millions from it, and millions of listeners would still have enjoyed hearing it. Business owners would have played it to draw in more customers, to keep those customers in their bars longer, and to sell more drinks to them while there.
I have to wonder how your opinion would change if you were a writer? I'm betting you'd have a very different outlook on that little section you quoted about Copyright. As is, I think you're reading it backwards. It isn't saying that science and art are promoted by dumping everything into the public domain. It is saying that they are promoted by making sure the creator receives financial benefit for the hard work they put into the creation. And it's right.
"Some people would miss out, but that's life?" The whole point of Copyright reform in 1976 was to protect all the folks who were getting screwed by the record companies. Unlike most of what our government does, this one was pretty good. What you're talking about would actually put us back 60 years in the fight to protect those talented few who create our most precious cultural treasures. Many of whom died penniless because of laws exactly like the ones you are promoting.
Songwriters, artists, and other creative people are not very often good business people. To say that someone who spends his entire life perfecting his art for the enjoyment of millions is just going to "miss out" because "that's life" is immature and insulting. I dare you to go a year devoid of all art (music, photos, movies, poetry, paintings, even freakin' Disney cartoons) and then tell me at the end of it what you think a creator is worth.
Sorry, I read the "Free Music Distribution Setups" and thought that meant that all performances would be free. This seems like an interesting avenue for artists who write their own material.
But how would someone who only writes songs but doesn't perform them fit into this format? Some of the best songwriters I know honestly don't have the chops (or the interest) to be performing artists. Even if they did, the reason they write so well is that they are able to devote 100% of their energy to it; if they had to spend 3/4 of the year in promotion / radio interviews / gigs / etc. they wouldn't write nearly as well or as much. Currently ASCAP / BMI / SESAC enable these writers to make a living. I'm not bashing your idea or trying to drag it down, just wondering if this has been accounted for in the model.
In fact, performance royalties are covered under Federal law - the Copyright act of 1976.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royalties#Performance_royalties
So you're saying that ASCAP asked him to pay his royalties and he just didn't want to? And ASCAP stopped bothering him as soon as he started paying them through the new Jukebox vendor?
Sorry, but it sounds like your friend was in the wrong here. And I'm sorry if the ASCAP reps seemed like "bullies" to him, but they don't work for him - they work for the songwriters.
First of all, creators and artists do not get paid forever; only while their work is popular and making money. That's the point of the long Copyright - you don't know how long it's going to be before it makes money. For example Mac McAnally wrote "Down the Road" something like 20 years ago, but it never went anywhere. Suddenly Kenny Chesney recorded it, it went #1 with a bullet and millions of dollars were made. By your rules, Mac would receive absolutely nothing for writing the song while Kenny raked in the dough.
The change your suggesting would actually HELP the RIAA screw songwriters. They would simply wait until the song entered public domain before recording it and wouldn't have to pay the author squat.
So unfortunately it's just not that simple.
I wish I had mod points to throw behind your post. Thank you so much for this excellent explanation.
I should have provided a better response. The artists who recorded the songs were no doubt paid a license for their recordings, but the songwriters who actually wrote those songs didn't make squat. Songwriters only make money when a recording of their song is sold, or when their song is performed hundreds of thousands of times. In this case, ASCAP is only looking out for their member's federally mandated rights. The reason this entire thing is so stupidly overcomplicated is entirely the fault of the federal government.
No, as a matter of fact they weren't. But thanks for trying.
Your blog is really interesting. I hadn't heard of the "Free Music Push," and I'm looking forward to visiting the sites you linked. I only have one question about it ... how do the musician's pay their bills if they give away their recordings and don't get paid for performances? If there's a business model that works here I'd really like to learn about it, but as is I don't see how anyone can afford to do this.
It's a video game which uses popular songs in order to increase profits. I don't think anyone would argue that GH uses those specific songs for a reason and would not be nearly as popular if they had simply made up their own music. As such, the same federal laws that cover Jukeboxes apply here. IE: popular songs are being used to increase attention and profit from paying customers. It would be unfair to the folks who worked hard to write the songs if the business owners kept the profits they are deriving directly from the popularity of those works.
No, actually that's completely wrong. ASCAP, BMI and SESAC collect performance royalties only, only in the United State, and only for songwriters. If you use popular music to draw customers into your bar (through a jukebox, etc) and realize increased profits as a result, it's ASCAP's job to make sure the federally mandated royalties are paid to the folks who wrote that music you're using to draw in customers. Furthermore, I've never had any trouble at all getting them on the phone. I don't know who you think you're helping by making up these ridiculous stories.
ASCAP collects royalties for the folks who actually wrote the songs these business owners are using to draw in paying customers. In other words, the bar owner / arcade owner / whoever directly profits from the fact that Guitar Hero is using popular songs versus writing their own. Frankly, I think the people who wrote those songs and worked hard to get them recorded deserve to be recognized and paid their federally mandated royalties.
ASCAP has nothing to do with artists. ASCAP, BMI and SESAC collect and distribute federally mandated performance royalties for songwriters the United States (who don't make diddly squat off the agreement that Aerosmith signed with the game company). In this case, they're just doing their job. On the other side, the bar owners are using popular music to draw customers into their businesses and thus increase profits. If you really don't believe the bar owners should be required to pay part of that profit to the actual songwriters in the form of performance royalties then you need to talk to your Senate and Congressional representatives.
I'm glad to see that the Obama administration cares about protecting the rights of creators and I hope something positive can come out of this meeting that benefits BOTH sides of the equation. I'm sick and damn tired of hearing stories of insane RIAA lawsuits against teenage girls, but I'm even more tired of watching people take and enjoy the fruits of an artists labor without due respect and compensation.
I had exactly the same reaction. By the /. way of thinking it's perfectly fine to take a copy of a song that took years of a person's life to write and tens of thousands of dollars to record and release in a professional manor. Or how about downloading a movie that took years to write, employed hundreds of people during its creation and cost millions of dollars to make; that's fine too. Because after all, IP law was "made up" by big companies so they could hoard money (I believe that's how it was explained to me right here on this very board).
But if you copy a chunk of software that two guys wrote in their basement over a long weekend, well by God we'll SEND IN THE DOGS OF WAR!
Gotta love hypocrisy.
So you do your job for free I take it?
One of the reasons your 'art' gets 'ripped off' so much is that the people doing so will never be in the position of doing a job once, then getting royalties forever and they don't see why they owe you anything for doing the duplication themselves.
FYI, only big name artists get royalties. The rest of us count on album sales, merch and concert tickets to pay our bills. And I'm mainly a songwriter which means that I get 9.1 cents (by federal law) when you purchase that song I wrote. That's assuming I didn't co-write it, in which case I get 50% of that. I won't see royalties unless it gets played hundreds of thousands of times on radio stations; which only happens if you get lucky enough to get a cut on a major artist who loves your song enough to make it a single. So your comment about royalties only proves that you know absolutely nothing about the music business.
Are you contractually obliged to bitch about downloaders?
Go make pattern parts for GM vehicles, you won't get put away for grand theft auto, but you won't get paid per mile used either.
I know you'd love to believe that, but no. I'm an independent songwriter who saved up his money and self-produced my own CD that one of my adoring fans put up for download. I then spent the next year listening to people at my shows tell me how much they loved my CD even though I had only sold 5 fucking copies. Now I have a day job, I don't play out, and I can't afford to put out another CD. Not that I would seeing as people aren't going to pay for it.
So thank you so much for freeing music from the big record companies for me. Yeah, you're really opening things up for independent artists.
You clueless fucking prick.
And BTW, my guitar was a one time purchase just like I'm asking you to make. I don't think 99 cents is unreasonable to ask for a son you'll listen to for the rest of your life.
Then please explain to me how we're supposed to pay our mortgages and feed our families.
The business models that you are trying to use to justify your position have no relevance whatsoever with regard to making music for the entertainment of others. The sound recording itself is our product exactly the same as guitars are Gibson's product. There is NO DIFFERENCE. If you get a copy of the sound recording that I worked hard to produce without either paying me for it or me giving it to you than you have stolen it from me.
I'm sorry that reality is so inconvenient for you.
You steal when you refuse to pay anything for something that a person worked years of their life to produce, and instead end run around them and download a copy of their hard work from an illegal source. It doesn't matter whether it was a sculpture, a painting, a movie or a song. The fact that we musicians are treated like our art is worthless simply because it's easy to rip us off is offensive beyond words. If it were as easy to copy a sculpture, sculptors would react exactly as we have. If you don't want to pay for the song, don't listen to it. If you download it for free from a source that wasn't authorized by the artist (IE: taking their hard work without payment and without permission) than you are a thief; it's that simple. If I did the same thing to General Motors they'd lock me up for grand theft auto.
Agreed, and here's why. All they need to do is walk into court and say, "We can only guarantee that hardware we built will operate properly with XBox Live. Additionally, allowing user modified hardware to operate on our network may adversely affect other paying subscribers and therefore cannot be allowed." Case dismissed. This will go nowhere.
There's always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they Do... Not... Know about it!
This is a classic example of what happens when a bunch of engineers get together and they're all so dead on convinced that they've got the next great idea that they don't stop for 15 minutes to look at the market, learn what their potential customers actually want, or even write up a business plan. No one is going to pay $700 for one of these. It's just not going to work. How is a salesman at Best Buy supposed to talk me into buying a device that has no hard drive, a tiny screen, stores all of my data out on the Internet, and doesn't run Microsoft Office when there's a cool looking 15" laptop siting right beside it for the same price? It's just not going to happen. Mark my words. This will all end in tears.
Best ... comment ... ever ....
Just had to say I think that's a great idea!