This is one of many problems that up to now no one system has properly handled. Other problems with all current royalty payment schemes include the public domain (routinely, royalties for these are collected), locating and making payments to heirs (usually “lost” on purpose), transfer of copyrights (usually done as a trick to reduce songwriter royalties), payment to multiple songwriters and artists on a single recording, foreign royalties (an unsolvable headache), clerical errors (some of which are intentional to avoid payment), etc.

Here are some ideas and their pitfalls:

a. Require all downloadable files to have a copyright number, royalty distribution and playtime time lentgh data embedded. Of couese this would be a “big brother” act, where the government would tell people what programs to use to make the files.

b. In the copyright registration database include the royalty distribution information (who gets what). For example, for a song recording, the distribution may be 1/3 songwriter(s), 1/3 artist, 1/3 label. If the song is in the public domain, the songwriter share goes to the public. Fine, if there was no such thing as “unmovable bureaucracy” that plague all governments.

c. Make copyrights not transferrable. For example, if an artists dies, the artists income goes to the public. A real tradition breaker.

d. Distribute the money so that frequency of downloads x time length are considered. For example, a 30 minute symphonic work has a higher royalty income per download than a 3 minute song. We should note that the frequency could be manipulated by a stakeholder by downloading (and then esrasing) the same song thousands of times on the same computer to increase royalties.

e. Deposit the money into “lifetime number” accounts. For example, in the USA they would have the social security number of the account holder. Make payments when solicited by the account holder at a local bank. Of course, this does not solve the (pay to) foreign royalties problem.

Now, will legislators of any country make the necessary changes to their copyright laws, let alone agree on a simple universal world wide system of copyright payment rules? Impossible.

Or is the problem, for music, so complicated that an entirely new, revolutionary scheme for compensating authors and musicians and recording studios be needed? Sure thing.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

Once again ,
How does an artist or group, that is not signed to a major
label, and does NOT want to be associated with the majors,
( A true Independent ), get the priveledge of sharing this
virtual shelf space, and get a share of that mandatory
fee ??

They don’t.

Radio, The Sequel