Re:Record Companies shouldn't copyright music (Score 1)

I agree that what really needs to be tackled first is the way the record companies own the music. Right now the industry is set up in a way that it is hard for anyone but the most well-known bands to make any money off sales of recordings. The standard kind of contract in the industry specifies that the artist will carry all recording and production costs, so that these are subtracted from any profits going to the artists. Only if these costs are met, do the artists start getting fairly miniscule cuts from sales. Add to this that the record companies retain the rights to the music and you have a very poorly structured industry, in which the vast majority of the poeople doing the creative work make almost nothing for their efforts. These types of problems, which are more pressing, should be addressed first, before forcing record companies into online distribution.

Imagine if the book publishing industry worked this way! You'd have so many fewer books published if authors were forced to pay for the book production costs before getting any share of the profits. And authors can sometimes get fairly decent percentages (20%) on hard covers, which I believe is a lot better than musicians usually get on recordings.