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RIAA Wants Artist Royalties Lowered
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Dec 10, 2006 06:01 AM
from the why-should-they-get-paid-it-is-not-their-music dept.
from the why-should-they-get-paid-it-is-not-their-music dept.
laughingcoyote writes "The RIAA has asked the panel of federal government Copyright Royalty Judges to lower royalties paid to publishers and songwriters. They're specifically after digital recordings, and uses like cell phone ringtones. They say that the rates (which were placed in 1981) don't apply the same way to new technologies."
From the article: "According to The Hollywood Reporter, the RIAA maintains that in the modern period when piracy began devastating the record industry profits to publishers from sales of ringtones and other 'innovative services' grew dramatically. Record industry executives believe this to be cause to advocate reducing the royalties paid to the artists who wrote the original music."
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one would hope... (Score:5, Insightful)
This could be a good thing (Score:5, Interesting)
If the RIAA start driving away the artists then it makes the RIAA even less of a player. Just think one day the artists and the fans might connect directly on the internet with no middle man in between to screw the artists and sue the fans.
Their greed will be their undoing. I wonder why it hasn't been their undoing in the past though?
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Re:This could be a good thing (Score:5, Interesting)
They should go out of business or enter into new ventures, instead of bitching all the time.
I bet the association of Watt steam-enging manufacturers also experiences difficult times these days. But they don't try to blame the Otto internal combustion engine people all the time.
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Re:This could be a good thing (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:This could be a good thing (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:This could be a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they're making a huge profit?
Because "new distribution technologies" is a thorn they faced before, and successfully got on the side of the law?
Because the current law has adopted to aid their business model?
Because, when you get right down to it, someone barely paying you for your work is better than someone NOT paying you for your work?
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Re:This could be a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
The only difference is that before you couldn't really prove or be able to tell who copied that cassette tape. With the internet, you are given away by your ip address, giving the RIAA a basis to sue, and I fully believe it is simply to use their legal muscle to gain even more cash through the legal system.
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Re:This could be a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:This could be a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a misrepresentation of Metallica's position. Metallica has always had a relaxed attitude towards bootlegs. They even allowed people to plug their tape recorders into the mixing desk at concerts. They just asked that nobody copied their studio recorded music - you know, the recordings that are an expense to Metallica and their primary means of income. I considered it a reasonable request at the time; they weren't saying you couldn't make your own MP3s, or even trade their bootlegs, only that you didn't trade the studio recordings.
Metallica was one of the first bands to offer high quality digital content to their fans, as a bonus download off their website when you bought their CDs. They have made available video and music files recorded at their concerts, all for free. They publish a huge quantity of material; a balance of music, video, movies and other paraphenalia that rewards those fans who want to know more about Metallica. Their concerts are amazing value for money; high energy and extremely well produced. Metallica treat their fans very well. In return they ask that you don't rip them off.
The meme that "Metallica is anti MP3" is up there with "Gore invented the Internet" and "sue McDonalds for making coffee". It's a stupid lie that just won't die.
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Re:This could be a good thing (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:This could be a good thing (Score:4, Interesting)
"It all depends on whose numbers you take. The margins for a label for the artist will appear low because the label claims a lot of expenses that are bullshit. It will pay itself $20,000 for the recording and mark that down as an expense. Pay itself 150,00 for promotion ditto with the fucked up accounting then it will pay the artists ect.. and int he end your left with 2-8 % but it managed to be the lions share of the expenses so in reality it made a lot more money but defered it to another portion of the label. Movies do the same stupid shit with fucked up accounting."
Good points (record labels are masters of funny accounting to avoid paying their artists) but keep in mind that the 2% net margin number I mentioned is what they reported to the street. There's absolutely no benefit to under-reporting your profitability when you're a publicly traded company. Your company's valuation is fundamental to your business.
I don't think you were going this far, but if part of accepting the "record companies make insane profits" theory requires belief that they under-report to their shareholders, then it's time for a bit of Occam's Razor or, as John Galt put it, time to check your assumptions.
By the way, I mentioned that Warner Records posted a 2% net margin last year. By comparison:
So, I guess one way to spin it is that Warner is hugely profitable because their net profit margin percentage last year was twice that of Novell. But Logitech and Apple left both in the dust.
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Re:This could be a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
That day has already arrived, and it has brought little change. We already have lots of artists, mainly the kind who can't get signed up by a record label, who publish their work online. It is only the tiny minority that get signed up by a major record label that we hear about though, and they are precisely the ones who will not 'cut out the middleman', because for them, the RIAA actually do provide a service: they advertise and brainwash the public into liking those choice few artists who are blessed with RIAA's stamp, leading to a tiny minority of artists making virtually all of the income in the music industry. How many artists are played on MTV? Not many.
[The RIAA's] greed will be their undoing. I wonder why it hasn't been their undoing in the past though?
The problem is that the public is very easily controlled by advertising and the media. So long as that is true, the RIAA will be able to create a few 'big acts', and to get the public to listen only to them. A few 'big acts' are easily controlled by the RIAA, especially since those acts will only make money as long as the public is convinced that they like them - which is the only thing the RIAA is good at.
In this media-driven age, I don't expect things to change anytime soon. But yes, cheap recording and publishing technology is helpful, even if only in a small way.
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Re:This could be a good thing (Score:4, Insightful)
The internet where everyone is a publisher is changing the landscape. There are a few acts everyone is familiar with even though they got no MTV or Clearchannel airtime. My Space, YouTube, Google Video, and others are starting to give the cartel a run for the money.
Are you still doubting? Ever heard of the Numa Numa guy? Has he ever been on MTV or a Clear Channel station?
How about the dancing baby?, the Badger or Lama song?
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Re:the record labels can also drop the RIAA (Score:4, Interesting)
If the only way to get your face there is to sell your soul to the RIAA, then I'll stick with the one-zillionth fraction. But there are times I'm not so sure.
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Re:the record labels can also drop the RIAA (Score:5, Informative)
> the record labels can not walk away. they could form a new organization or
> figure out some other method of making their money. the RIAA and the labels
> have a symbiotic relationship though.
You aren't making any sense. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) pays no royalties. It is the record industry trade group. The labels are the members and it does exactly what they tell it to.
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Re:Not likley (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:one would hope... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:one would hope... (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't facilities per se, it's the capital to book time at a A-List facility with the amenities, such as a room where you can turn it up to 11 or an engineer who has 20 years of experience and knows where the mikes go, as well as the cuttiing-edge technology. That being said lot of people are doing a lot of work at home: demos, vanity projects, composition/arrangement, pre-production, and self-publishing. Cutting-edge technology starts in the studios and within five years becomes available for semi-pros working at home at low cost. At home, no sweat, you can have better sound capture, shaping, and playback equipment than Sam Phillips had for Elvis Presley, then Geoff Emerick had for the Beatles.
A recording label offers four things: sensibility, marketing, distribution, and capital. Successful independents may have less of the last one and "more" of the first. Because big labels have enough capital to fund a lot of failures, I think they have less sensibility -- in any case, there's less risk-taking at the big five (or is it four this year?). In theory, a label signs an artist because the label thinks its audience will buy things the artist records. Again, at the big label level, because of all the capital and politics, deals happen all the time where the artist never releases a single track and somebody knew that was going to happen at the time they approved the deal.
Moving tracks, even giving them away, is tough. Every day when commuting I walk through a half dozen guys near Hollywood's Graumman's Chinese offering free discs and headphones in order that people listen to their discs. The encouraging news is that there are still a few places on the radio and many on the internet which play music because the dj likes it and not because there's a deal some where. The better news is that, just like in the 50s when Chuck Berry wrote about mailing a letter to the local dj, web sites and e-mail addresses now exist where one can ask "what was it that was played," or "where can I buy it," or, "here's something that maybe you'd like to put on the air." The last couple of weeks I've been listening to KCSN out of California State University at Northridge and this seems to be exactly what's happening.
Ask me, the two biggest mistakes that the big labels made were to insist on DRM on all internet sold tracks and to get the US federal government to institute a draconian rights fee that drove out specialty internet radio broadcasters in the late 90s. The record companies need fans and those fans occur, not because the artist is having a 48 hour news cycle about choices in underwear, but because people hear the music. It's in Clive Davis' 20+ year old book for chrissakes, when people hear good music, they'll go out of their way to get it.
Back to today's topic: because the record companies cannot get Apple to raise its prices, they are trying to codify their under-paying of artist and publishing royalties in order to avoid the question of how to replace the revenue lost because customers may now pass on those weak tracks that were part of the package. It is a show business pattern to try and sell the B material by packaging it with the A material, so we can cut them some slack on that. The industry used to make their nut on the sales of 45s and the albums were the gravy. But consolidation, trimming rosters, and going to the government to change the rules (royalties, extension of copyright on British recordings) in order to artificially extend the 60s, 70s, and 80s strikes me as foolish, mainly because the audience changed. Today's teen-ager and young adult has a different pop culture. When the zeitgeist changes, get back to singles. Make lots of them quickly, for low-cost and make them so it doesn't kill you when a hundred fail. Get back to having a roster of hungry and talented producers, writers, studio musicians, and artists, producing items for hire and throw them together in Monday morning pitch sessions which cull the singles from the demos. Remember how Motown went from one person to the soundtrack for a time; remember that being the soundtrack for a time is a three decade business plan.
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Please refer back to this article (Score:5, Insightful)
RIAA does *not* represent artists (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:RIAA does *not* represent artists (Score:5, Interesting)
It's easy to get confused simply because they lie about it so much. "Won't somebody think of the starving artists!" is their main battle cry, not "Won't somebody think of the fat record company executives". However, it's also easy to avoid confusion by simply reminding yourself that they are lying weasels with the ethical standards of a rat. Never take anything they say at face value and you won't get misled (as often).
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What the fuck man, have you no compassion? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:RIAA does *not* represent artists (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:RIAA does *not* represent artists (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:RIAA does *not* represent artists (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but they like to use the artists for sympathy in their anti-piracy propaganda. But don't take my word for it, check out this page on their website [riaa.com] where we have the following (emphasis added):
So yes, they DO claim they're doing this for the sake of the artists, you and the grandparent are both correct. The RIAA are claiming to be fighting piracy at least partially for the artists' benefit (although note it says "perhaps most importantly" about the artists) while at the same time trying to stab the artists in the back (again) by lowering their royalties even though they say that 95% of artists depend on those royalties to make a living. That last bit about artists' reputations suffering from sales of inferior quality pirated copies is kinda questionable in this day and age. A pirated CD should sound the same as the real thing, sometimes better since they'll remove any DRM crap from it.
Personally I don't see how they do it, having a soul-ectomy must be a job requirement.
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Re:RIAA does *not* represent artists (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:RIAA does *not* represent artists (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:RIAA does *not* represent artists (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oblig. article links (Score:5, Informative)
Just to add to this, here are articles by different artists about being ripped off:
Steve Albini [negativland.com]
Courtney Love [salon.com]
Steve Vai [vai.com]
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Re:Why artists? (Score:5, Insightful)
Comparing the entirety of the music industry to the entirety of DeviantArt is fucking insane, as most people on DeviantArt do not make at their vocation, let alone their business. You are comparing a 15-year-old kid's drawing of a Yu-Gi-Oh character to the entire catalog of the Beatles.
By lumping 'musicians' as their own group, away from 'artists,' it's like saying that music somehow has a baseline for appreciation that is lower than that of, say, Rodin. Yet the Rodin Museum has to advertise like crazy to get people in the door, and Green Day sells out in seconds.
Does this mean that Green Day is better than Rodin? No. Does this mean that your analogy is nearly indescribably obtuse? Yes.
Music is art. Some music is brilliant. Other music is not. Some paintings are brilliant. Other paintings are not. Do the math -- Music is art.
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Re:Why artists? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Obviously its the other way round (Score:5, Insightful)
RIAA = Middlemen - Excise. (Score:5, Insightful)
In all honesty, the labels aren't good for consumers. They stifle creativity and promote the stagnation of musical forms by promoting "safe" music over the innovative. This is why a top-40 music station sounds so homogenous whether it's playing pop-country, pop-rock, or pop-rap. Instead of promoting original artists, they hire 40 year old men to write songs about a teenage girl's life, hire a model who can't sing to sing those songs, and then digitally correct the tone-deaf waif's caterwallings in much the same way they air-brush away her zits and about 40 pounds. Then they promote this manufactured crap so heavily that it squeezes good music into the musical margins of life.
The labels aren't good for artists. Only a tiny percentage of artists signed to major labels ever make a profit. Most wind up in debt to the labels with no control over the rights to their own creations. Is the purpose of a record label to make money for itself or is it to make money for the artists? In the past RIAA has argued that artists provide a service, much like recording engineers or the squeegee monkeys that keep the windows of the exec's corner offices clean. They pay their lawyers better than 99.999% of their artists. Those lawyers enforce a copyright system designed to pump money into those corner offices at any cost. One of the costs happens to be the freedom of artists. Take the amen break for example. A whole musical genre grew up around a single sample made 40 years ago because the copyright on it was never enforced. What legally aborted genres might exist today were it not for the labels' lawyers?
Personally, I think RIAA and the major labels know all this. They know they have no legitimate role to play in distribution. They know they manufacture and promote crap because promoting original music carries risk. They screw the artists both financially and creatively. On some level, although they'd never admit it, they even realize that the labels are, at the most fundamental level, only there to get the music from the artist to the consumer and the money from the consumer to the artist. They're middlemen and they know it.
How do you improve any business transaction for both the consumer and the supplier? Cut out the middlemen.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Paying less royalties for different quality would lead to a classification of media we don't need at all. Think of the opposite situation: recording agencies would then be in the position to ask a higher price for "superior" media like DVDs or CDs. A creation is a creation no matter what the media or quality is (as long as it is recognizable, of course).
Artists and Writers Deserve Their Own Living (Score:3, Insightful)
What about CD prices? (Score:4, Insightful)
RIAA - Recent PR rundown (Score:3, Informative)
11/28/06: Pressure on AllofMp3 [techdirt.com]
11/22/06: Pressure on the RIAA [weblogsinc.com]
What are these people SMOKING?????? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then I read the referenced article.
I owe the editors an apology for my mistaken assumption.
From TFA:
In other words, the RIAA has actually admitted what most Slashdotters have know all along - their crusade is concerned strictly with the "revenues for music publishers", and if enhancing said revenues means screwing the artists, then so be it.
Another point: "...so that record companies can continue to create the sound recordings...". Since when did record companies start creating anything? They take the creations of the artists, slap their name on them, and bleed off the majority of the profits for themselves.
I thought that the RIAA couldn't possibly sink any lower - looks like I was wrong.
Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
I really think that we'll see an improvement in the quality of music as a result of this.
You people misunderstand the RIAA (Score:4, Funny)
But this time, given the popularity of ringtones, they're screwing the artist for the children.
Eh...? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it just me or does this sentence make no fucking sense?
For fucks sake, no. (Score:4, Interesting)
Absolutely fucking disgusting.
Mechanical Royalties != Artist Royalties (Score:5, Informative)
The article is referring to MECHANICAL ROYALTIES which are paid to SONGWRITERS for use of their songs. While the songwriter and artist are often the same, this is not always the case
EXAMPLE: Joe Schmoe writes a song that is recorded by Britney Spears for her new album. Britney Spears gets paid artist royalties by the record label. Joe Schmoe get paid mechanical royalties by the label.
The article is talking about reducing Joe Schmoe's royalties
Performer != Artist (Score:4, Informative)
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Royalities on ring tones???? WTF (Score:4, Insightful)
There is not enough of a tone sequence to pay a royality on. Only enough to play the game "what ring tone is that from?"
Seriously, it may just barely step over the copyright line by linke three notes of something BUT there is the fair use clause.
And considering the most useful thing about ring tones is having a different one than everyone else around you, its not like they are of much valueto share.
Maybe you have collectors of ring tone (like you did with amiga mod files - but even then a mod file is at least a whole song) and perhaps The RIAA should push legistration for requiring collectors to register (get a collector license) or something.
Another thought is that ring tone users, should charge the RIAA for using their phone as an advertising media, like ads on your web site and getting paid for clicks...
But in no case should RIAA be able to use ring tones as an excuse to lower the royalities the artist get. If anythinhg they shoul increase them if they are not paying the phone users for advertising space.
Somebody really needs to lay it all out and really slap the RIAA down via exposure of their hyporacies.
To be clear, there is no reason with todays technology to subsidize new band promotional risks with the profits off the successful artist (one of the reason we having had enough real creativity on the air). What this means is that the profits/finances the record industry needed in the past to bring new artists to the public with hope the public will buy, doesn't need to be spent today as the internet is alot less expensive and artist can themselves get a following to prove themselves and have bargaining power with any contract they might sign with a label. The fact they did it themselves should show they are serious and business oriented. This path greatly reduces the need to subsidize and mean the successful artist should get more... not less (as they are not helping tro pay for other unknow artist to be market tested)
Maybe that is the problem here! Maybe the new technology is resulting in successful artist annual income to be raising and the RIAA figures it can take some of it but need an excuse (and we all know they do make use of excuses/lies to support their claims).
No, no, it's about the Harry Fox Agency (Score:4, Informative)
This is part of an ongoing dispute between the Harry Fox Agency [harryfox.com], the RIAA, and the ringtone industry over compulsory licenses.
The recording industry in the US has a statutory deal in the Copyright Act which allows them to re-record previously published songs (i.e. issue "cover albums") by paying a fixed royalty determined by Congress and the Librarian of Congress. This is called a "compulsory license". Most music publishers are represented by the Harry Fox Agency, which actually issues the "compulsory license" on request and collects and redistributes the royalties.
Then came ringtones. The Harry Fox Agency, in 2004, took the position that the compulsory license required by law does not cover ringtones. [harryfox.com] This was a bogus position, and on October 16, 2006, the Registrar of Copyrights ruled that ringtones are subject to the compulsory license [cll.com]. The Harry Fox Agency is taking this badly; "This decision has no effect on HFA's existing policy that DPD licenses ... do not cover ... ringtones or mastertones. [harryfox.com]
The RIAA is sueing them, and HFA is probably going to lose this one.
This is really a very obscure issue even in the music industry. In the end, ringtones might get cheaper, and we may see the end of that silly distinction in the cellphone world between downloaded tracks and ringtones.
"Music is art" (Score:4, Interesting)
smacks of the studio system (Score:4, Insightful)
-my drachma
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
It never stood for "Artists" in the first place... It for "association"... as in "Record Industry Association of America" [riaa.com]
Follow the link and be amazed... the Artists DO NOT feature in the RIAA's thoughts at all, they're only concern is for the publishing rights holders as in the publishers, not the artists.
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