The RIAA Doesn't Like Paying Lyricists

baptiste writes "I came across a story in Wired News that on first glance had to be a joke. The scary part is, its not. The RIAA is looking to start their own MP3 streaming services, but they are also trying to stiff the song writers who hold copyrights on the lyrics. The RIAA doesn't want to pay the songwriters royalties on streamed copies of songs and has petitioned the U.S. Copyright Office to settle the matter. I highly recommend you read the petition - if you didn't know better, you'd think it was from Napster or MP3.com. The irony is almost too much."

Read the DOCUMENT

Read the note. The RIAA will pay copyright holders, it's asking which versions of copyright law apply to digital music downloads and broadcasts. Apparently, there are several subversions of copyright laws, including ones that deal with performances, recordings, recordings sent by electronic means, etc etc. The problem is, that under some of them, if interpreted strictly, they'd have to pay the copyright holders money for even incidental copies that never reach a consumer, such as copies cached in multiple servers that are there to facilitate downloads and broadcasting, but not necessarily meant to be a product in and of themselves. For such 'incidental' copies, the RIAA is asking the US Copyright Office to issue a ruling to either develop a new area for copyright, or determine under what area that digital broadcasts and DLs fall. It is the current legal grey area WRT to royalties that is holding up music delivery by the industry. Lord knows, if you assume one thing, and then it's later ruled to be different, you face lawsuits. So the RIAA is not moving forward with digital broadcast plans over the internet till the USPTO rules. Geez, READ people.

Musicians will regret...

"This may be the ultimate solution for artists and online stations to go about. Some artists should think about releasing an online version of their songs prior to committing to anyone like RIAA, ASCAP, etc., this way their songs become more popular, people enjoy their music before its been monopolized, and artists can then leverage more rights from RIAA, and the others, and if those agencies don't like it, the artist (now popular from releasing a net based song) can then press and distribute records on their own, which many successful artists have done."

Exactly. Musicians will regret ever signing up with the RIAA members. I can see the class action lawsuit coming now... "The RIAA is stifiling our (the RIAA member artists) ability to get exposure in recently very important XYZ online music video stream/audio stream/forum. We are asking for 123 dollars in compensation."

That will make me smile. :p Heed this warning, independent artists. Don't Do It! Don't sign that RIAA member contract. You Will Be Screwed, and in the cold. It's your stuff, Don't sign away exclusive rights.

Re:Promotional Aspects

There was an article in Salon Magazine about this very thing just a couple of days ago. It talked about how entrenched "pay-for-play" has become, even despite the anti-payola laws of the '60s. It seems payola is "okay" as long as there is a middleman between the record label and the radio station. Let me see if I can find it . . .

. . . ah, here it is [salon.com].
--

Give 'em hell. er, feedback.

Contact the RIAA [riaa.org]
I sent them:
"
I read your petition to the Copyright office requesting that streaming music not require royalty payments to the artists.

I find this unfathomably hypocritical, after your lawsuits against MP3.com and Napster, Inc.

I will never buy another CD from an RIAA-associated artist or label for myself or as a gift until such time as the RIAA mends its ways, supports its artists and embraces the advantages of digital distribution with proceeds from tours.

Learn from history. Read Jack Valenti's arguments against Betamax, and notice the Blockbuster video rental store(s) on your commute home. I don't think the video industry was ruined.
"

Promotional Aspects

The RIAA's role as a "producer" of music is no longer usefull. CD's can be pressed cheaply, and with the advent of MP3's the marginal costs decrease even more. What they still over is promotion, on a huge scale.

Songs don't make it big because they are good, the make it because they are promoted. Technology has addressed everything else the RIAA does, with the promotion piece solved they'd go the way of the Dodo.

Unfortunatly, so far it has been other commercial companies that want to come in and replace them (Napster) which I'm not convinced gains us huge amounts. The infrastructure of music should be free, just as the infrastructure of a computer (OS). What's the next step to make it so?

This probably won't happen

The RIAA and ASCAP/BMI - the songwriters' organizations, have had this strange relationship forever. A lot of what we know as the concept of intellectual property came from them dealing with each other and with broadcasters and such. Each has a sort of domain over which it has near-caveat authority to set prices and pay artists: When you buy a record at the store, the money goes back to whoever made the record, but not the songwriter or lyricist (unless they performed on the album and are owed a piece of the retail net). In the case of the recording artist/company, the important intellectual property is the performance placed on the album, that's the copyright that they sell to make money.

For ASCAP/BMI/(I forget the third), the important copyright is the sheet music and lyrics. They gained power in the early 1900s with the advent of radio, since songwriters wanted to be paid per broadcast. Anyway, they didn't have computers then, so they just have a flat fee for each radio station, bar w/jukebox, nightclub, elevator, etc. They just listen to a station for 6 hours, then multiply that over a year, and that's how they determine how much to pay an artist. So the little bands you liked in college never make a dime, but Britney's songwriters a rolling in it.

It gets real dicey in nightclubs: who owns the performance? ASCAP charges the nightclub a flat fee and then pays the bands using the same proportional setup they use for radio broadcasts. Again, no computers, and no exact counts of who gets played how much. It's all statistics, and the low end gets cut out consistently. The bands at a little club like the Middle East probably never see a dime from the songwriter's fee. They get paid for the performance, though, which belongs to them (any record made from it is their copyright).

This streaming media stuff is a real problem for us as webmasters/computer filesharing types as well as for the courts. If you stream the music, you're broadcasting a written song, but if you transmit it for HD storage, you're distributing a copyrighted recording. Thus you are going to get billed twice, and the RIAA and ASCAP/BMI are going to try to bill each other.

Like Clay said in his interview here the other day, the likely long-term outcome is that bands that write their own music will hire engineers to produce their records and then just let ASCAP deal with the licensing, cutting the RIAA out of the licensing business altogether (ASCAP would manage both copyrights, the song as written and performed).

In the short, term, though, these record companies (who are the RIAA) aren't going to give up so easily, and this is just them starting to open their eyes to the internet's potential re: their products. They'll probably lose this case because of the quasi-broadcasting nature of music file distribution, but ASCAP's fee isn't so high, and the RIAA will certainly find a way to leverage what they have while they still have it.

-jpowers

So they were never interested in musicians' rights

So, all this time, whilst we all knew they were talking crap for other reasons, when the RIAA were claiming that Napster et al had to be shutdown because otherwise the starving artists wouldn't be able to eat, they weren't /even/ trying to protect the value of recording contracts. We all know that many musicians sign away almost all their rights and are paid in a lump contract sum, but now it turns out that the RIAA really doesn't care in the least about their rights.

Can they really not be done for perjury for talking crap in court all this time? (Answer - nope, they have expensive always!)...

Bazzaar model promotion

When I was in Chicago, the underground use this thing called DJ to promote music. The story goes like this:

Each week, the DJs will go to record stores to listen to whatever new record that comes in. Then they decide which one they will play and play them to us, evaluate the reaction from the crowd and decide whether to play it in the future.

So that means ther DJs replace the power of RIAA? Not really. Remember that the key to monopoly is that high cost of entrance. It costs a lot of money to start a huge record label and shoot MTVs, build studios. But it takes only a man with a pair of ears to be a DJ. The consumer decides which DJ they will follow by thier own opinion. If they don't like this DJ, they go to another club. If they like the songs, they will ask the DJs where the song come from and buy them. (This is how I am introduced to music from Wubble-U, Suicide commando, etc.)

One may argue that the record shops control what the DJ listens to. Well. not really. the DJs usually goes to stores with one thing in mind - get better quality music to keep thier own job. The bazzaar style evolution again works in this case.

Also I'd like to mention that, on Napster, the ability to browse other people's entire collection also helps promote music. For example, when I searched for "Cuban" "Latin" music and accidentally ran into some flamenco music. i liked it much so I searched for the word "flamenco." What returned was some guy who had quite a few flamenco music. So I took a look at his entire collection, all of which are classical guitar and flamenco music. So that is how I found Christopher Parkening's guitar work.

The key is, as long as there is an easy entrance to music promotion, RIAA will no longer control what we hear.

Re:Promotional Aspects

Songs don't make it big because they are good, the make it because they are promoted. Technology has addressed everything else the RIAA does, with the promotion piece solved they'd go the way of the Dodo.

Actually the RIAA (the member corporations, really) don't even do promotion. They pay other people [salon.com] to do that. The business model of a major record label resembles that of the worst dot-coms in existence, only record companies are subsidized by taxpayers.

Re:radio

No. In this case they are talking about narrowcasting, similar to what MP3.com wanted to do. THey want to do things like stream albums, stream custom playlists, etc. All the stuff that they sued MP3.com for doing. However, you raise a good point - for some reason they are making online radio stations have a bunch of restrictions that offline ones do not, like increased licensing, disability to publish playlists in advance, not allowed to play more than 3 songs from one album in a certain period (4 hrs?). So yeah, basically evil. this time, however, someone is fighting back - the songwriters! Yeah!

This sucks! I've had it!

You know, this is pathetic. We are going to spend the next few decades arguing with these morons over rights, money, good vs. bad, consumer wishes, markets forces, etc. The one thing that strikes me funny is that us, the consumer, have had to defend and explain our reasons for copyright infringement. We've had to justify to the RIAA why we pirate music - we own the music, the artists make enough, the market demands it, etc.

And then I read the RIAA's reason for wanting to 'pirate' the same music - doing it the right way (the lawful way) would cost to much.

Well folks, that about raps it up for me. I'm going to continue to pirate music for one simple reason - it costs less. And that's all I'm gonna say.

For those of you who feel I'm stomping on the rights of artists - tough. If they're dumb enough to sign up with this two faced laughing pile of dogshit called the RIAA then they deserve it.

Re:Read the DOCUMENT

For such 'incidental' copies, the RIAA is asking the US Copyright Office to issue a ruling to either develop a new area for copyright, or determine under what area that digital broadcasts and DLs fall. It is the current legal grey area WRT to royalties that is holding up music delivery by the industry. Lord knows, if you assume one thing, and then it's later ruled to be different, you face lawsuits. So the RIAA is not moving forward with digital broadcast plans over the internet till the USPTO rules. Geez, READ people. This is not exactly a close reading, either. My understanding from reading the petition is that they'd like on-demand streams covered under existing broadcast royalty structure. Furthermore, they'd like (limited) downloads to be covered under their existing mechanical royalty structure. For those who might not know, "mechanical royalties" are those royalties paid in exchange for the right to turn a recording into a tangible object like a CD or 8-track tape. Broadcast royalties are your typical ASCAP/BMI dollars toward which radio stations and (radio-model) webcasters are paying flat yearly fees. See jwz's write up at http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/webcasting.html [dnalounge.com] for some detail. The RIAAs fights against mp3.com/Napster/et al. have always been about the control of the distribution channels. This is an extension of the classic political tactic summarized by "they who control the water supply controls the people". The issue of whether non-RIAA mechanisms are "right" or "wrong" is beside the point of the conflict, as many people have speculated that the RIAA just plain has a problem with alternative distribution systems. This "problem" is that their revenue stream is dependent on maintaining a consistent channel of commerce in which to place the works of the artists under their contracts, intercepting the money that is spent on recorded works. This, rather than the wellbeing of artists, is what the embattled online services threaten. So it comes as no surprise that they want to duplicate the function of these services, and those who determine the interpretation of copyright are not only aware of this dynamic, but are fully supportive of their desire to be the only legal gateway for this form of distribution. Increasingly, it seems the only way around them is to start over with a new distribution model that doesn't include them or any of their labels and consequently, artists.

Lyrics and sheet music..

Why should lyrics and sheet music (such as used for performances, etc.) enjoy copyright protection? This activity only squashes the free flow of culture and puts a financial burden on those who shouldn't have it. For example, back in high school, our marching band, choir, and orchestra had to pay lots of royalties for the music we performed. Because the school inadequately funded its arts program, there were sometimes limitations on what music could be performed. Here's a second example: Remember lyrics.ch? (That is before it ran into trouble) Any song you could think of had the lyrics available. It was a wonderful source for hobby musicians who wanted to learn the words of songs they were trying to figure out by ear. Of course, you can still find all those lyrics / guitar tabs out there somewhere if you need them, but now its a hastle compared to relying on one site with everything. Consider also the fact that stores, clubs, etc. must pay royalties for simply having a radio on for background music. (And this has included even "mom and pop" shops if they're caught by ASCAP). So what are we gaining by paying songwriters a few cents in royalties? Its certainly not making no-name composers rich, whose music is rarely featured. But it IS making crappy pop-music songwriters wealthy, because statistically their stuff is played the most so they get the biggest share of the ASCAP royalties pie. I think for once I agree with the RIAA..


They say that if you love something, you should set it free.
I guess alot of modern artists really hate their work..

Business As Usual

This is just business as usual for the organizations that the RIAA represents. They've been ripping off musicians and lyricists for years. Unfortunately, up until the advent of things like streaming media, the only way that artists could get well-marketed outside their home base was to play ball with these parasites.

Streaming media conceivably can allow musicians to market their product without RIAA member involvement. This is what really scares them.

You want to help fight the RIAA? Set up streaming servers and use them to help your local musicians market their work.

Not all that suprising

I've said from the begining that the RIAA wouldn't go through the trouble of fighting napster if it was just a matter of CD sales. They know just as well as we do that the people who download a song off napster wouldn't necessarily buy the CD if napster were not availible. The whole thing is that they want to compete with napster. They think that since they are the RIAA they can sue their competition into the ground, then get off clean and clear, because the artists side with them.

Re:spirit not letter

If this is the way you feel, then you (and all of Slashdot) should be selective in what you "pirate."

For example, if you think copyright should only be good for 20 years, you should make it clear that you are only going to pirate songs pre-1980.

Otherwise, you have anarchy with no clear message. And you will lose.

city of industry

But despite the united front against Napster, behind closed doors the relationship appears to have chilled. The argument is over what the recording industry should pay publishers for the right to stream MP3 files.

Actually its ASCAP [ascap.com] thats one of the biggest companies that pays monies to lyricists, composers, etc., so RIAA would have to deal with them before anything is even created.

On March 9, the copyright office responded to the petitions by opening a public comment period on the question of what kind of licensing digital streaming and downloading of music files should require. Once the office settles the dispute over whether a digital stream is really the same thing as selling someone a CD, then it may arbitrate what the royalty on a digital file delivery should be.

One can argue all day and night over the ethics of RIAA's actions, but most will fail when it all comes down to rights. RIAA has the rights to their controlled assets (music) and can do as they wish with it. Sure its ethically wrong, but has anyone seen any business that was fair? shittt... even the Catholic religion is shaky

Goldsmith thinks the industry's take-no-prisoners strategy may backfire. "They're pissing off the artists," he said. "If they piss off online radio too, what's to prevent a system that doesn't involve the recording industry at all? They're encouraging the development of an alternative relationship between producers and radio stations."

This may be the ultimate solution for artists and online stations to go about. Some artists should think about releasing an online version of their songs prior to committing to anyone like RIAA, ASCAP, etc., this way their songs become more popular, people enjoy their music before its been monopolized, and artists can then leverage more rights from RIAA, and the others, and if those agencies don't like it, the artist (now popular from releasing a net based song) can then press and distribute records on their own, which many successful artists have done.

L. Ron Hubbard's FBI files [antioffline.com] a la FOIA