Musicians vs. RIAA At USA Today

An anonymous reader writes "USA Today has an article about the growing friction between recording artists and the 5 major labels which make up the RIAA. Many issues are covered, including copyright reform, fraudulent accounting on the part of record labels, and how selling a quarter million albums can leave you owing your label $14,000."

Wait a minute...

[Levine (22596)]

So, if the musicians don't like them, and we don't like them... why do they still exist?

levine

Because...

[gfxguy (98788)]

Non-musicians, like Brittany Spears, are the ones selling millions of records to people NOT like us.

Re:Because...

[SerpentMage (13390)]

And there you highlight the problem. The big five music industry only want to sell, sell, at the expense of the original intent.

I see it here in Europe when they do star talent search. What do they look for? A voice, looks and dance ability. Gee whiz when did music become voice looks and dance ability? I always thought music was the ability of the artist to create something that we enjoy listening to. And if the show is good, well more power to you.

The other problem with people like Brittany Spears is that those are the people where we "steal" music in the form of napster. With talent though, most people I know will actually buy the content since they think they are actually getting value.

Re:Wait a minute...

[Mashiki (184564)]

That's a wildly stuipid question. It's because they have unfair control of the market. Come on now, I would figure that most people that read slashdot can understand monopoly.

And since they also control and finance their own bands, and control the content, and distribution and sales, and on and on. I'm sure you get the picture, they exist because yes they do control it. And they will continue controling it until the average consumer(not us) realize that this isn't good. Or we can convince the goverment that these guy are out to hurt us.

Re:Wait a minute...

[Rader (40041)]

Maybe it's just taking the artists longer to figure out what's going on. And definately a while to figure out what to do about it.

It's like being screwed by your landlord. You know you don't like it. You should leave. But where will you live?

It should be interesting as these multi-year contracts start to run out, and artists start to look for other solutions. (Unfortunately there aren't any other great solutions. Most of the good ones lack any real marketing) With sales not increasing, and artists speaking up, the Big-5 might actually have to do something.

Or maybe not. I'm sure there's always another "Korn" willing to sign their lives away for fame.

Re:Wait a minute...

[jc42 (318812)]

> You know you don't like it. You should leave. But where will you live?

When I faced this question a few decades ago, I did what a few thousand other young musicians with good math grades did: I went into computers. In particular, I got mixed up with communications software. We've spent the past quarter century building the recording industry's coffin.

If you think I'm kidding, ask a few "internet" programmers. You'll have a lot of trouble finding even one who isn't an amateur musician. Given the choice of a living making music, most of them would have jumped at it. But that choice wasn't available to us. So we built another kind of communication system.

This wasn't an accident. In high school, I understood full well that I'd have to be a total idiot (or an addicted gambler, which amounts to the same thing) to go into music as a profession. Only the owners of the recording companies made any money then and now. The top-selling bands couldn't live off their royalties.

And if you think the development of RIAA-killing software is an accident, go to the usenet archives and google for the topic. You'll find lots of discussion of how and why this was going to put music (and other information) back in the hands of the people who create it.

We haven't won yet. The political system and the courts could still take it all away from us and hand control of the Internet to the fat cats. But we will have tried.

The main battle now, actually, is to prevent the growing stranglehold on the "last mile" by the merged cable/phone companies. The best chance there is for all of you to go out and buy lots of wireless hardware. If we get the Net redundantly connected this way, there's no way they will be able to block the data path between artists and audience.

And look seriously at using IPv6. The commercial gang hasn't noticed it yet. It provides a great arena for unmoderated development. It includes encryption at the packet level, so they can't track what you're doing. By the time they wake up and try to take control, we can have a "distribution" system that they can't kill.

Re:Wait a minute...

[aronc (258501)]

I believe one of the problems in the industry is that multi-year deals are actually kind of out of flavour. Labels used to look for career musicians. Now they rent you for an album; if you sell, you might get one more album. Rince, lather, repeat.

Read the article.. it's actually much worse than 'multi-year' right now. It's multi-[b]album[/b]. You sign to do say, 6 albums. If you don't sell well they can shelve you. No studio time, no advertising, nada. And you can't go anywhere else until you give them 5 more "releasable" albums. The company, of course, is the sole arbiter of what is "releasable" or not. Joan Osborn, after her first hit "What if God Was One of US", turned in two complete and finished albums both of which were rejected by the labels. That means she spent nearly 3 years working, owes them money on it, and of course the label still owns those songs even though they don't want them.

Yeah, they might not release any more albums after the first. They might just "rent" you for an album. But they make damn sure the contract keeps you out of anyone elses hands for the duration just in case.

Fear the Parrot!

[gunnk (463227)]

If Jimmy Buffett has his way (and looks like he is attracting some takers), the RIAA has more to fear from J.B. than from P2P. Check out this article [sfgate.com] on Buffett leading the charge against the big labels. With CD's cheap and easy to make, the RIAA and the big labels that make it up are going to have a harder and harder time justifying their existence. They can keep blaming P2P, but they'd better wake up to the fact that they can't keep treating their artists and customers like dirt -- the artists and customers CAN and WILL get together with or without them. I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore -- from Fruitcakes by J.B.

Re:Wait a minute...

[tmark (230091)]

Moreover, if they're really getting shafted like they think they are, why doesn't such a glittering roster of blue-chip stars get together and finance their own record company, where they can control things ? SURELY, together they could do something like Spielberg/Katzenberg/Geffen did when those guys cut out their middlemen ?

It does make one wonder. We're not talking about dime-store independent artists here.

Easy

[Quasar1999 (520073)]

Take a look at P.Diddy (or whatever the hell he calls himself), he's sold millions upon millions of CDs, and yet he was dropped by his label for spending more money than he was making. Lavish demands... I agree the RIAA is evil, but these artists aren't that much less evil themselves... Especially the POP/RAP superstars... they are insane when it comes to their spending habits...

Re:Easy

[SirSlud (67381)]

Yeah but you can thank suburban white CD buying 18 year olds for demanding the image and lifestyle you describe.

They don't do this stuff in a vacuum - the image sells, so blame your kids for wanting a Puff Daddy instead of a De La Soul, or wanting a Wu Tang instead of a Del tha Funky Homosapien.

There are plenty of positive, concious rappers out there who do not condone the "thug life". But the CD buying public drives the demand for the thug life .. thank the protected coddled white masses in the 'burbs and the execs who market the image.

Re:Easy

[Daniel Dvorkin (106857)]

Yeah. Nothing like walking by a yuppie bar and seeing a bunch of rich white guys standing around outside and saying things like, "Whazzat? Watchoo sayin?" "Yo, I said, Wassup, bitch?" "Mofo, I'm gonna bust a cap in yo ass!" Makes we want to drag them down to the nearest ER (where I used to work) and shove their faces in a convenient pool of blood. "That's 'wazzup,' you idiot."

Re:Easy

[schon (31600)]

It's "Imma bussa cap in yo ass!"

Anyone else get Jar-Jar flashbacks when they read this?

Re:Easy

[SirSlud (67381)]

Major Label rappers who promote positve messages (and can be found in the stores you list):

De La Soul
Tribe Called Quest
Black Eyed Peas
Common
Mos Def
Talib Kwali
The Roots

The list goes on. That was my point. There are lots of positive rappers, but blame the marketers for not trying to sell it to you and the kids for not being interested in searching for a truth outside of the allure of gansta rap.

As a slight aside, something that irks me about the dismissal of Gangsta Rap as having no redeeming value .. anyone who watches The Sopranos has no right to diss Gangsta Rap. Thats not to say that you value the Sopranos, but I want to make it perfectly clear that ALL cultures glamoize the criminal underworld. Both portray a glamorized, clean-cut interpretation of seedy underworlds; the only difference is that The Mafia seems to have some sort of romance that people identify with, where as most folks cant identify with the romance in the gangsta life. Thats not to say that there is any, since I cant find the romance in The Mafia culture, but hey, thats just my take. Selling and glamorizing the criminal element is not something the rap culture came up with - hell, the roots of rap are in positive social change (read up on HipHop Culture if you have time on your hands), but as usual, the commercialization of something tends to support the perversion of any positive message.

There's plenty of good rap out there like there is plenty of good Nu Metal bands out there. But like food, the better it is, the less people will like it, and thus the less it will be promoted into the public conciousness.

Re:Easy

[SirSlud (67381)]

By the way, as a musician who has played in:

Jazz Combos
Stage Bands
Rock Bands
Concert Orchestras .. and produces music at home, I can tell you straight up that *all* music, whether its terribly immoral gangsta rap takes talent. Some takes more than others (you seem to pick up on the fact that jazz is quite difficult, which is true) .. but rap easily takes more talent than most rock heard on the radio these days. Its an extremely unappreciated art, but as a classically trained musician who listens mostly to jazz and rap, rap is *not* easy. For proof, refer to every rap you've ever heard in a commercial or promotional campaign. It's a wholesomely misunderstood style, and most media houses producing music for campaigns have *very* difficult times reproducing the sound of authentic, good rap. Its like saying that playing the drums is easy; sure, hitting a drum is easy, but producing a sound with drums that people want to listen to for 5 minutes in a row is not easy, and takes time, talent, dedication, and hard work. Factor in the fact that all music must relate to a social sound and make reference to its place in the musical tapestry of a culture (ie, rock is awesome in Flynt, Michigain, but not awesome in India .. its all about referencing what people already listen to and want to hear), and you end up with the fact that nearly any musician who wants to make it must have a very deep and ingrained knowledge of what people want to hear and how to make that sound.

Thats all terribly OT, but this thread has made me some karma, so why not burn a little. :)

Re:Easy

[pyite (140350)]

Short anecdote: This June, I'm driving to Connecticut from Jersey in ridiculous rain. I stop at a Mobil gas station and go inside to get a coffee. It's dark, rainy, etc. I walk up to the door and look at the guy leaving as I'm going in. I go, "Mike?" He says, "Yup" and walks away. It happened to be Mike Gordon (coincidently look at my sig) from Phish, driving himself somewhere in a ragged T-Shirt and jeans. Now, here's a band that has untold gobs of money and yet still drive themselves around and don't really care what they look like. Here's also a band that gives away its music to any who would want to hear it. This is the kind of band the RIAA is scared of because they don't act greedy like the RIAA themselves.

Re:Easy

[Rader (40041)]

Cool that he didn't bother giving you the time of day

Time to seek alternatives.

[OrangeSpyderMan (589635)]

An interesting article by all means. Perhaps the time has come for all artists, new upcomers or old timers, to seek an alternative distribution model. I have often thought, considering the very slim royalties most performers receive from CD sales, that simply selling tunes direct to the customer on a website could put the power back where it belongs - in the hands of the people who have the talent.

You know...

[GearheadX (414240)]

In the modern business environment, with folks looking for corporations to decapitate and place heads on pikes so that they look busy, the RIAA's games just *might* get them into trouble...

Irony

[Lothar+0 (444996)]

Though accused of conniving tactics behind the scenes, Rosen publicly extends an olive branch to detractors. "I'm glad the artists are organizing," she says. "It's good for the industry. We want to resolve our disagreements and move on to other critical matters, especially piracy. We're on the same side in 99% of the issues.

But isn't your piracy of their talent 99% of the problem?

Clear Channel / Payola

[floppy ears (470810)]

Labels sidestep payola laws by hiring independent promoters to lobby and compensate radio stations for playing certain records. Opponents say this quasi-legal system stifles creativity and limits diversity.

The Clear Channel / Payola problem is one of the most serious issues in the music industry today. It is one of the primary causes of the crap that's coming out of the major labels.

If you haven't read it, you should check out Salon's great series [salon.com] on this issue.

Michael Jackson

[by Anonymous Coward]

Michael Jackson's recent high-profile leap onto the bandwagon was met with skepticism. In rallying support for his financial grievances against Sony Music, he asserted, "If you fight for me, you're fighting for all black people."

Sorry, I may have missed something. Why the link between Michael Jackson and black people?

Re:Michael Jackson

[PainKilleR-CE (597083)]

I think the real hypocrisy lies in the fact that his label went to bat for him when MTV refused to play black artists in the early 80's. They threatened to pull all of their videos if they didn't play his. Of course, at the same time, this shows that the labels can and do have too much influence over what does and does not get played, and if it had not been getting played because it sucked (as opposed to a racial issue), there'd be a very big problem with the label doing that.

Re:Since when do WHITE PEOPLE determine...

[nathanm (12287)]

...who is black? I assume you must be white because you are an Anonymous Coward, hiding in anonymity like a KKK member in a hood.

He may hide, but I'm not anonymous, neither am I a racist.

As I remember, this statement was made at the National Action Network HQ. Are you going to debate that the Reverend Al Sharpton doesn't know who is black?

Al Sharpton is an opportunistic vulture. Nobody's taken him seriously for several years. Besides, Michael suprised even Sharpton when he called Tommy Mottola a racist (see the MTV article [mtv.com]).

Race is not a skin color but an ethnicity. It's sad that this sort of message can be moderated as 'Funny' so quickly.

Race is entirely a social construct. There is only one race, the human race. We're all the same color, just different shades. It is easily possible to be closer genetically to a person of a different so-called race, than somebody that looks fairly similar to yourself.

Harm or revolutionize?

[AtariKee (455870)]

"Miles Copeland, chairman of Ark 21 Records, predicts that passage could significantly harm 'the entire music business because of the very visible complaining by a few successful recording artists. If the mega artists succeed with this effort, I feel strongly that it would be at the expense of those artists who have not made it yet.'"

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sure, it might be bad to an executive like Copeland, who relies on sub-talented "artists" like Britney Spears to generate income for that new yacht. But this actually be the wakeup call needed to actually *develop* new artists, rather than toss them out there like so many Big Macs for huge immediate profits.

The whole industry needs an enema, and I am very happy to see some *real* artists starting to voice their concerns. There may be hope after all :)

Original Steve Albini article

[Herbmaster (1486)]

You can read the original piece by the brilliant Steve Albini here [negativland.com], and probably lots of other places [google.com]. Thanks to some slashdot comment I read last week but have since lost.

Hmm, never thought of it like this...

[daoine (123140)]

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, once stated that the record business is the only industry in which the bank still owns the house after the mortgage is paid.

I never thought of it like this before, but that's really what happens. What's worse - there's nothing more frustrating than a band changing labels -- the old label still owns all the band's old music, which unfortunately means that they take some pretty good stuff and stick it in a basement somewhere. This is where Janis Ian's suggestion of letting artist re-release their out-of-print stuff would really be of use. Of course, that would require the RIAA to give up some control...

Leann Rimes

[by Anonymous Coward]

Boy, did she get screwed.

First, her parents signed her up with Curb Records for TEN albums when she was 12. She grossed over $300,000,000 for Curb Records. That's right, a third of a billion dollars.

When her parents got divorced, her mom got to ride horses with the WalMart heirs, her dad lives in luxury, and Leann has enough to buy herself a used car.

There are laws that are supposed to protect child stars from getting fucked like this. There isn't a single honest judge to enforce them, though. Leann is suing her dad, her label, and probably her mother, agents, and promoters. It's the judges that will do her in.

Pay back Bo Diddley!

[Rader (40041)]

...Soul legend Sam Moore and other artists are suing record companies and the AFTRA Health and Retirement Funds (a separate entity from the union) for pension benefits. Atlantic, which has sold Moore's music since 1967, never deposited a nickel into his pension because of convoluted formulas tied to royalties. Not surprisingly, labels are balking at paying roughly 20,000 artists up to 30 years of back pension and health benefits.....

I wonder if this includes the artists who died penniless. (Back pension to the widowed families)

What would be nice is if they could reverse the law that lets the Big-5 keep the copyrights forever. Retrieval of copyrights back to the family of deseased artists could be a form of income for them.

Although it's possible the Big-5 think of these as revenue for themselves, the fact is, they sit on them without re-releasing songs because it's not "profitable" to them. These families have smaller overhead, and it could be profitable for THEM.

Re:Pay back Bo Diddley!

[Rader (40041)]

Not measly contracts than an artists signed, but law regarding copyrights that have changed dramatically in the last century.

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,48625,0 0. html

Copyright has bloated from providing 14 years of protection a century ago to 70 years beyond the creator's death now, he said, and has become a tool of large corporations eager to indefinitely prolong their control of a market. Irving Berlin's songs, for example, will not go off copyright for 140 years, he said.

Ahh, Hilary - always good for a laugh.

[schon (31600)]

OK, accepting the old razor about ascribing actions to ignorance instead of malice, I have to wonder why Hilary Rosen is head of the RIAA, when she's so woefully clueless about the business.

In particular, is this gem:

"While the record company could keep an artist under the old contract, they never do," RIAA chief Hilary Rosen says.

Uhm, yeah.

Tell that to Tom Petty.

Or John Fogerty.

Or Prince.

Or many others.

I'm sure they'll get a good bellylaugh out of it.

riaa/freedom of speech

[jukal (523582)]

have you ever read the "freedom of speech [riaa.org]" page at RIAA [riaa.org].

I find this rather sarcastic:

In difficult times, it is easier and quicker to look for handy scapegoats than to search for viable solutions. Banning certain kinds of music is not the answer. RIAA continues to fight hard on both federal and state levels to block well intentioned, but seriously misguided, efforts.

But banning certain kinds of delivery mechanisms is the answer? That seems like a well intentioned, but seriously misguided effort. Instead, they should maybe search for a more viable solution.

Copyright reform

[tmark (230091)]

Interesting how 'copyright reform' gets thrown into the excerpt of the original post, when the real issue of copyright reform referenced in the source article has NOTHING to do with the kind of copyright/IP issues that are normally argued about here. A regular reader might assume that these artists share more with the P2P/IP sympathies that characterize much of the opinion on this site than they actually do.

Yes, they're arguing with the RIAA about copyrights, but these artists are striving to reassert their OWN ownership over copyright, and you can bet that the majority of them will seek to protect their copyrights as vociferously and aggressively as they can.

Life, Fairness, and the dollar

[Vodak (119225)]

"It's about profit, profit and more profit that always comes at a cost of principles. The predicament the record industry finds itself in is of its own making. They've alienated consumers and artists, and whether the rights movement succeeds, the house will fall under its own weight."

Welcome to capitalism.

Most shocking part of article

[stratjakt (596332)]

"We're on the threshold of a whole new system," says Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. "The time where accountants decide what music people hear is coming to an end. Accountants may be good at numbers, but they have terrible taste in music. I don't know how I'm going to get paid, but I'd rather go out into the brave new world than live with dinosaurs that are far too big for their boots."

Someone UNDERSTOOD something Richards SAID!?

He talks like Prince writes.

Keith Richards

[tmark (230091)]

I'd rather go out into the brave new world than live with dinosaurs that are far too big for their boots.

Anyone else get a laugh out of the fact that Keith Richards is derisively calling anyone a dinosaur ??

Tactful wording.

[altgrr (593057)]

"And these renegotiated deals don't tend to tack on a lot of extra albums or dramatically increase the artist's obligation"

Which is to say that they could tend to tack on a few extra albums or moderately increase the artist's obligation, in addition to tacking on a lot of extra albums and/or dramatically increasing the artist's obligation in a smaller proportion of cases.

What it comes down to is this: If they're conning the artists who have been in the business a long time, they're hardly going to tell it to USA Today straight, are they?

Whose Fault Is This?

[goldspider (445116)]

"Industry studies point out that for every hit the business scores, it loses $6.3 million on albums that tank. Fewer than 5% of signed artists deliver a hit."

That's not the artists' fault, so don't make them pay for the labels' poor decisions. It's the fault of the labels for signing every jackass garage band it 'discovers' to multi-album contracts.

Perhaps they'd lose less money (and maybe make some?) if their tastes and qualifications were a little more discriminating.

Re:Whose Fault Is This?

[altgrr (593057)]

Or, to put it more bluntly, stop overpromoting sh!t. IMHO, it'd work a lot better if they were banned from subsidising and promoting any tracks, and just let the radio stations decide what they want to play, while releasing the track simultaneously to radio stations and the public, so Joe Public doesn't get fed up of every new track before it's even released.

How about this for a ridiculous contract term?

[droopus (33472)]

I was a record producer for fifteen years and got out of the business because it simply sickened me. Here's an example:

Artists are paid a points royalty on sale of master recordings (while songwriters are paid publishing royalties on the sales of songs). 15% (15 points) is quite a good royalty for a new band, or even one with a hit under their belt.

But does that mean 15 points off all sales? Nope.

It means 15% of 90% of the worldwide gross. Why 90%?

Because in the 1940's (when the label business models we hate so much were established) lacquer records were still sold and many of them broke in shipment. A 10% "breakage allowance" was standard.

It still is. CDs don't break. But the labels, almost without exception, skim 10% off the top for "breakage" before even getting to recoupment. If IBM skimmed 10% off their earnings before issuing dividends the Board would be crucified. But music labels? No problem!

As for recoupment, the example given in the USA Today article is tame. I won't mention the name, but there is a band who has sold millions, for each of their more than five albums. But each time, video costs, recording costs, marketing/promotion costs, plane fares (for huge label entourages), hotel bills (for these same label execs) were all paid for by the band.

Sum total? They sold 35 million records and still OWE the label over 2 million dollars.

The system was devised in the 40's and has no place in the 21st Century. Hilary Rosen can whine all she wants, but the labels are truly in serious trouble due to their religious adherence to these ancient business models.

Re:How about this for a ridiculous contract term?

[droopus (33472)]

Ever read a recording contract? Let's put it this way, I had the opportunity to read hundreds, maybe thousands, and many (especially new artist contracts) are huge, incomprehensible documents that often are skewed in the direction of the label. No argument there: this is business. Get a lawyer.

But if you are a new band, with (what until lately has been) the ultimate carrot of commerical success dangled in front of you, it's difficult to not rationalize "I can make this work, after all, I just wanna get my soul, my music to my fans."

It's not till later, when the buzz fades, wisdom comes knocking and you realize that even if your fans love you, and you are selling lotsa records, that you are making no money, and subsidizing 85 (not an exaggeration) same-label bands that are not as fortunate/talented as you. It's only then that you think "hm. this might be as fair as I'd like."

True, you should have demanded better terms. But often, if a young band has the choice of signing an extremely rare recording contract (with attached advance check) or continuing to live on Friskies and ramen casserole in their parents' garage, the implications of mechanical royalty disbursment and ownership of masters in 20 years seem unimportant.

Let's try an analogy. You are on a NY street and see a guy selling brand new, shrink wrapped DV camcorders out of his trunk. People are buying six at a time. You say "hell, I'm down with this" and plunk down $75 for a cool new Bluetooth minicam.

You open the box at home and find a house brick and nothing else. You've been scammed. Ok, so you should have checked the contents right there.

But who committed the crime?

Maybe your business stinks

[Rader (40041)]

...Wayne Kramer, founder of punk's seminal MC5, felt some empathy for embattled record execs after he established his label, MuscleTone, last year.

"I have a new respect for how hard it is to run a label, and I know record companies lose money on most bands," Kramer says....

What the hell? True, I'm not an ex-punk band leader or label maker, but not being able to sell bad music in a 10 block radius shouldn't be a gauge.

Maybe some type of co-op is needed. A huge number of artists get together, and with power in numbers (and dollars) able to procure the cheapest marketing, distribution, and processing they can get for their dollars. Figure out the costs, and that's what you charge the artist to put out a new record. Profits can go to the artist, with maybe a small percentage going to the investment of the co-op. Merchandise, touring/concerts, part of the working equation. Make rMTv channel (r=real) to play their own videos. Crack into the radio stations market to play their own music only.

*sigh* Probably impossible to do with the monopoly in place.

But then again, maybe it has been done, and the RIAA = the co-op.

Fraudulent accounting...

[vsavatar (196370)]

While intentionally not paying royalties is obviously fraudulent accounting. The traditional system of applying overhead to jobs also needs to be eliminated because they're charging artists for idle time that's not the artists' fault, but the fault of the Labels. Take recording for instance. If a recording studio applies overhead based on the estimated number of studio hours they think they'll incur throughout the year, the overhead cost will be more per studio hour than if the studio applied overhead based on capacity of recording hours available which is the way it should be done. Artists should only have to pay for the time, labor, and materials it takes to produce their own albums, not the studio's idle time because they can't get enough business. While this will result in underapplied overhead for the studio and an increase in cost of sales, that's not the artists' fault and it shouldn't be their problem. The Labels and the studios need to find a way to bring their actual recording hours closer to capacity to get their profit margin back rather than overcharging the artists for it which is, unfortunately, still legal in the USA. This is why an album can sell 250,000 copies and still leave an artist owing money, because they're sticking it to them by overapplying overhead.

Industry Led By Visionaries

[e2d2 (115622)]

"In the past 20 years, an industry that was led by visionaries and music lovers has become dominated by accountants, financial analysts and people who can't think ahead more than 90 days."

Sounds a lot like the software industry

The Last DJ

[matthewd (59896)]

A couple of weeks ago I got an email advertising Tom Petty's new single, "The Last DJ", mentioned in this article. Although I'm not even a casual fan, I checked it out anyway... Definately worth a listen for anyone opposed to the Clear Clannel-ification of radio and the trend towards pay-per-play. Hard to beleive his label let him put this song on the CD let alone promote it as his first single!

It seems the streaming version is gone but you might be able to request it at a local rock & roll station.

"The Last DJ"

Well you can't turn him into a company man
You can't turn him into a whore
And the boys upstairs just don't understand anymore
Well the top brass don't like him talking so much
And he won't play what they want to play
And he don?t want to change what don't need to change

CHORUS:
There goes the last DJ
Who plays what he wants to play
And says what he wants to say
Hey hey hey
And there goes your freedom of choice
There goes the last human voice
There goes the last DJ

While some folks said you gotta hang him so high
Cause you just can't do what he did
There's some things you just can't put in the minds of the kids
As we celebrate mediocrity
Our boys upstairs want to see
How much you want to pay for what you used to get for free

CHORUS

Well he got in a station down in Mexico
And sometimes it'll kind of come in
And I'll bust a move and remember how it was back then

CHORUS

There is an alternative for musicians . . .

[Gallowglass (22346)]

They could publish their own CDs. As an inspiring example, there is a Canadian musician by the name of Loreena McKenitt (an "eclectic Celtic" harpist) who started off playing in malls and now runs her own publishing outfit [quinlanroad.com]. She has sold almost ten million CDs without the help of any recording company.

So, who needs the RIAA?

I saw a documentary on the TV about her a year or two ago. As I recall, she said, "Once I realized how much it actually cost to produce a CD as to what the sale price was, I though I'd be an idiot to give away all that money." (This is not a direct quote from Ms. McKennit, just a vague recollection filtered through my cerebellum.)

The documentary showed her Quinlan Road offices [quinlanroad.com] where she employ 3 or 5 people.

The downside of this, of course, is you have to be able to run a business, and we all have some musician buddies to whom this does not apply! :-)

Would you still steal music?

[dtabraha (557054)]

Great article.
The RAC has a good web site: http://www.recordingartistscoalition.com/ [recordinga...lition.com]

Would you still share music illegally if the artist was getting the money directly?
I think the biggest reason that a lot of people laugh off issues about music sharing is because we all know that the people complaining about music theft are the company fat cats, not the starving artists. The individual artist really isn't that affected when people share their music.

Check the numbers.

The RIAA lists around 800 recording companies as members. There are probably around 1,000 artists per recording company.

Say Billy BadGuy hooks up with his 50 friends, each of which has 200 CDs that they have all ripped.
By some magical twist of fate, no two people have the same CD, so we have a total of 10,000 different CDs that exist on the network to be illegally shared.

(10,000 CDs * $16) / 800 recording companies = $200 per company

Realistically there are probably only about 20 recording companies that likely produced the majority of those CDs.

(10,000 CDs * $16) / 20 real recording companies = $8,000 per company

On the artists side of the fence, if we assume that we have 10,000 different artists:

(10,000 CDs * $16) / 10,000 artists = $16 per artist

Realistically there are probably a few repeats, let's say 1/4 of the CDs are paired up with one other from the same artist. That means that 2,500 CDs belong to 1,250 artists, and the remaining 7,500 CDs belong to 7,500 artists.

(2,500 CDs * $16) / 1,250 artists = $32 per artist (for 1,250 artists)

(10,000 CDs * $16) / 8,750 artists = ~$18.29 per artist (average for artists)

Pair all of this up with the average number of (signed) artists in the world:

(7,500 artists + 1,250 popular artists) / 800,000 artists = 0.0109375

That means that 1 percent of the artists are paying about $18 per 50 geeks sharing files, with the majority of them paying only $16.

Now to poke at the RIAA's numbers some. They reported that they lost around 600 million dollars from 2000 to 2001 because of illegal file sharing. Using our above example:

$600,000,000 lost / (10,000 CDs * $16) = 3,750 occurrences

That means that the above example of 50 people with 200 unique CDs would have to have been repeated (uniquely) almost 3,750 times in order for the RIAA's posted losses to be correct.

3,750 cases * 51 people per case = 191,250 unique naughty people

(How many users are on SlashDot?)
On top of that, their numbers would fail again if any one of the almost 200,000 people bought any CDs based on what they heard on these networks.

Now any monkey with a keyboard should be able to sit here with these numbers and crunch out some figures, but in 99 out of 100 calculations, you're going to see this:

Recording Artists + Recording Companies = RIAA Monopoly

Besides all our fun number crunching, the article had some pretty good points.

"Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, once stated that the record business is the only industry in which the bank still owns the house after the mortgage is paid."

Not only do they still own the house, they can kick you out of it, sell it, and keep all the money.
Then when you try to buy a new house with a different bank, they sue your ass!

"...virtually all contracts renegotiated after a hit album added terms favoring the artist..."

Well that's a no-brainer. Think of it as a poor man with a $5,000 house that the bank is trying to repossess. All of a sudden he wins the lotto and has $500,000,000. You can bet that bank will be a lot nicer, hoping he will keep all of his money in their bank accounts.

"Artists know record companies are giving blood, sweat and millions of dollars to help them realize their dreams."

Wonderfully vague statement that should be fun to pick apart.
They neglect to mention that the blood they give is being sucked out of all the other artists that they've screwed over, and that the dreams they are realizing are for their own billion dollar mansions in La Hoya.

Artists know record companies have been screwing people out of their dreams for years.
To make another parallel, imagine that you want to buy a car so that you can go to work and make some money. So you go to your local GM dealer and find out that you have to pay them a bunch of money over a few years for the car. Ok that's not too bad, but wait...

• You have to agree to buy another 5 cars from GM over the next 10 years?
• You're not allowed to buy a car from any other manufacturer or they can sue you??
• You can't get any warranty that the car won't break down even driving it off the lot???
• You're not even allowed to test drive the car????

It's not surprising that independent artists end up happily riding horses for most of their career. Sure you might not be able to get on the expressway, but if your ass hurts from too much riding at least you can get off of the horse.

"You have record companies bought and sold on the strength of copyrights created by artists who sign away all rights in perpetuity to a faceless corporation."

Who knew Don Henley was so eloquent?

Re:source of bad music?

[jolshefsky (560014)]

One of the things to consider is that these contracts also limit the artist from changing at all. They have to play the same kind of music and still produce hits. They can't change styles, or replace members with someone who sounds different, or change the instrumentation of the band, or change the sound of the lead singer ... all these things can really stifle creativity.

Imagine if Vincent van Gogh got stuck in a contract where he had to produce 6-8 paintings but all of them had to look and feel just like Starry Night. The guy probably would have become depressed and killed himself.

Re:Financing Bands Through IPOs/stocks

[streetlawyer (169828)]

Yeh, brilliant. And then, after your favourite band sells a quarter of a million albums, they find that they're left owning ... well, nothing, because they sold off all the rights to their profits in the IPO. Then we get the same dull article about whiny stars who thought they could have their cake and eat it, except instead of "recording companies" insert "shareholders".

Re:An idea...

[paulbd (118132)]

whatever the record company is making from the sale of a CD, you can be sure that only a very small fraction of its costs are related to producing the CD itself. marketing, office staff, physical distribution, office costs, studio time, lost money on flops, ... the list goes on.

i'm not justifying any particular price for a CD, but demanding that because a CD is cheap to make means that recorded music sold in CD format should be sold for very little is incredibly naive. the price of the product is not just the price of making the final disc.

i'm also curious at the level of complaint about this particular consumer item, when exactly the same concerns and cost/price relationship exists for most other things that we buy, particularly clothes. i don't hear many people (especially on slashdot) talking this way about t-shirts and shoes, which cost very, very little to make but sell for at least as much as a CD.