RIAA Wants Artist Royalties Lowered 399
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."
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).
There is an easy solution to this.. (Score:2, Interesting)
And lower income would stop the RIAA wasting money on expensive buildings and lawsuits, maybe sack a whole batch of those idiots that came up with the idea of suing their own customers (generating a generation growing up with nothing but hate for RIAA), it would no longer be worth bribing laws through Congress - I mean, I can just go on with benefits here.
In Powerpoint speak (yeeach) this seems to me a win-win approach.
Alternatively, putting the lot on detail to Iraq for a while could work as well. Let them do some real work. Or send them to Africa to work between people that are really starving so they know what the word actually means.
Eh...? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it just me or does this sentence make no fucking sense?
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?
Stabbing the artists in the back (Score:1, Interesting)
The RIAA (and the distribution companies) just see royalties as another income stream after the public have paid up front for product and the artists have gone into debt to produce it in the first place.
Isn't this one of those quick rich plans:
1. Loan shark the capital to the artists (advances)
2. Grab all the retail income and rip off as much as we can through phoney accounting
3. Skim the remaining "profits" before offsetting previously loan sharked funds (thereby impoverishing artists)
4. Pass on the option to extend the artists contract thereby getting more money for free if the rubes sign with another company - without actually having to keep the music in print and paying off the artist's debt in the meantime.
5. Keep the copyright for 75 years (the rubes'll be dead by then)
6. Bribe lawmakers to give you successive extensions so you keep it forever anyway.
7. (We'll think of other things as time goes by.)
8. Profit? "Hell we did that at step 1, the rest is where we make out like bandits"
The mob's in the wrong business - oh wait, you mean the mob's *already* in this business. Oh.
Re:one would hope... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:What are these people SMOKING?????? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I can dream.
For fucks sake, no. (Score:4, Interesting)
Absolutely fucking disgusting.
Re:Why artists? (Score:5, Interesting)
Another Good Reason to Kill the Industry (Score:1, Interesting)
Some of you will remember Steve Albini from "Big Black" others will remember him as producing Nirvana. Either way it just isn't worth the worry of supporting the industry in any way.Sure some jobs will be lost,but hey to quote Ted Knight in "Caddyshack"," The world needs ditchdiggers too".
oh, yeah, well as an artist (Score:2, Interesting)
I seriously wish more artists would boycott this stuff.
the record labels can also drop the RIAA (Score:2, Interesting)
things like the iTunes store has giving almost level distribution to smaller bands. the same 'store' that sells the biggest popular artists can also carry a small town band that plays in basements. the big artist may get an image on the splash page, but both are just as easy to find by typing the name in the search box. that whole thing about the long tail [wikipedia.org] is what makes online stores like Amazon, Netflix or iTMS want a HUGE catalog of products. those smaller indie released books or CDs have a very valid place in the new business models. that seems to be a pretty widely accepted economic fact at this point.
i agree with you 100% that as long as the RIAA and the huge labels still have enough momentum, they will be able to keep pushing the hell out of the artists that play by their rules. the average citizen still learns about new popular music by the radio, MTV or whatever. artists that barrage them on tv, print, internet, radio etc etc are the ones whose songs will stick in their heads. if you don't have RIAA artist files on your computer, they can not (legally) harass you.
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.
"Music is art" (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This could be a good thing (Score:1, Interesting)
"Because they're making a huge profit?"
That's another venerable Slashdot meme. Warner Music Group netted a 2% profit margin and an 8% operating margin [yahoo.com] last year. This isn't new -- nobody's going to believe this, but the record industry has always generally had shitty margins. The only record companies that typically do well are the media conglomerates who happen to own a record label; they can absorb bad performance into the company's overall numbers. But the record industry has always been, and probably always will be, a hugely speculative business.
"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?"
You've nailed it. The Grand Unified Slashdot Music Industry Mantra (GUSMIM) appears to be:
Slashdotters have been claiming that the record industry is dead for, what, ten years now? But as you've pointed out, they've adapted to new distribution technologies, and succeeded in having the laws changed to fit the new technologies (just as laws change to adapt to technology in lots of other fields).
On a related note... how many of you whom are getting on the RIAA's case about trying to reduce royalties are also big fans of allofmp3.com? Raise your hands! Yup, thought so. I think the mantra can be amended to "screwing the musicians is OK when I do it, but not when others do."
Re:This could be a good thing (Score:2, Interesting)
http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/
However, the music industry has lost it's grip on the industry, and it's internet chat that's doing it. I have three teens in the house, computer literate, and not one of them ever really listens to the radio at all. They and all their peers find out about music/bands etc directly from their private online communities. They have a very widespread eclectic taste in music, from the 1960's to current, drawing from mainstream to obscure.
This is what I beleive has the industry running scared - they can promote the next low talent Britney Spears with as many millions as they want, but the teens are not listening. This is very different from the last 80 years of industry - the loss of a broadcast audience is a loss of control and of money.
So, I respectfully disagree: the industry have never been good at paying musicians - unless the musicians had enough business sense to sue for control of their own catalog, and now they have lost the broadcast audience.
Re:This could be a good thing (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:one would hope... (Score:1, Interesting)
Hang about there... The rule of thumb is that sound quality reached a peak in the period 1958-62. Since then the only change has been in the size, cost, features and convenience of recording production and reproduction. If you listen to any of the Everest releases from that period, which were recorded on 35mm tape, on either (properly cleaned) vinyl or the commercially available, prerecorded open-reel tape, you will know what I mean. You'd probably also chuck out your digital music collection in disgust.
I guarantee if you could hear the original Sun tapes on period equipment you would be amazed at the clarity. What we hear of those tapes so many years later is an abomination and usually many generations of copying, etc.
For my part, I rarely listen to digital music - it's open reel or vinyl for me.
Cheers
Re:RIAA does *not* represent artists (Score:4, Interesting)
Except you have to get them to your website. (Score:3, Interesting)
-GiH
Re:This could be a good thing (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:RIAA = Middlemen - Excise. (Score:1, Interesting)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ [youtube.com]
Re:This could be a good thing (Score:1, Interesting)
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.