p2pnet news | Music:- "The RIAA claims that it wants to help musicians, but here are a few facts that most people don’t know," posts University of New Mexico student Marco Gutierrez in the Daily Lobo.

He continues >>>

Every CD recorder has a $2 surcharge built into the price that goes directly to the RIAA. Also, artists received not 1 cent of the money from the Mp3.com settlements of approximately $158 million to the labels.

Also, every music CDR, since the Audio Home Recording Act was enacted, has a hidden tax built into the price. This is supposedly to pay the artists for home recording. Who collects the tax? The RIAA under the auspices of the Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies.

But there seems to be no artist in the U.S. who has received 1 cent of this money. Internet and peer-to-peer networks are becoming a big issue in our lives and are bringing about change in the way people do business. Record companies should realized this and change their marketing models.

The CD is becoming obsolete, as the cassette and vinyl did. Now is the time for new ways of making music – new ways in which the record labels probably won’t fit.

Maybe, but catflap quotes Matt Philips, a spokesman for Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s BPI (British Phonographic Industry), as saying in the UK, at the least, "We do in fact sell more CDs than we did ten years ago, and I suspect there’ll be a lot of albums sold on CD [in future] as well."

Really?

Accurate numbers are hard to come by, but back in 2004 p2pnet ran a story which included a cost break-down for a typical major-label release listing at $15.99.

It went like this:

• $0.17 Musicians’ unions
• $0.80 Packaging/manufacturing
• $0.82 Publishing royalties
• $0.80 Retail profit
• $0.90 Distribution
• $1.60 Artists’ royalties
• $1.70 Label profit
• $2.40 Marketing/promotion
• $2.91 Label overhead
• $3.89 Retail overhead

$1.60 Artists’ royalties? hmmmmm.

Sony Music Entertainment, Sony ATV Music Publishing, Warner Music Group, UMG Recordings, Universal Music, EMI Music Publishing, BMG Songs, Careers-BMG Music Publishing, BMG Music and the Harry Fox Agency must, "ensure that the artists and their descendants will receive the compensation to which they are entitled," said then New York state attorney general Eliot Spitzer, ordering the labels to return $50 million to musicians they had under contract, p2pnet posted in February, quoting another 2004 story.

We went on >>>

At the beginning of the ’90s, after selling millions of records for Warner Bros’ Atlantic Records, [Sam] Moore [of 'Soul Man' and 'Hold On! I'm Comin' fame] thought about packing the Music Biz in," but, "instead of finding a comfortable nest egg, he found, barely a goose egg," writes Edna Gundersen in USA TODAY.

That was years ago and surely in 2008, Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG will have straightened out their royalty payments. Right?

Nope. They’re still calling their own customers "thieves" and "criminals" as they try to sue them into buying ‘product’ and while they do that, "More than a dozen recording artists, including the estates of jazz legends Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan and Benny Goodman, have launched a lawsuit against Universal Music Group, accusing the music giant of withholding royalties," says the CBC, going on:

"The suit alleges that the company ‘pervasively and systematically breached’ agreements with the musicians by using false accounting to conceal their true earnings dating back to at least 1998."

Now the musicians say they’re owed at least $6.07 million, "plus unspecified punitive damages and legal fees," says the story, adding:

"Les Brown, Dick Hyman, Patti Page and Jerry Murad are among the other musicians included in the lawsuit."

That’s just one example of the Big 4 screwing the artists who’ve made then so very, very rich. There are plenty of others.

But the multi-billion-dollar labels claim they’re being "devastated" by evil, file sharing students, so that means terrorizing them.

"There is no room for negotiation with the RIAA," says Gutierrez, adding:

"Many students are wrongfully targeted, and most of them are settling for several thousands of dollars because they fear even bigger legal costs or fines down the road," :

"What is the RIAA going to say to the thousands of kids who had to drop out of school to make the association richer? ‘I’m sorry, but I believe they have enough money’?

"There is no doubt that music is culture and that students should have access to all kinds of culture. The record companies are asking us to pay a lot of money for our music, an amount that most students cannot afford, depriving us of what should be our right."

Slashdot it!

Also See:
Daily Lobo – RIAA must stop targeting students at universities, March 26, 2008
a lot of albums sold – BPI admits CD sales booming!, March 25, 2008
typical major-label release – $10 music CDs?, October 14, 2004
p2pnet – Musicians sue Universal Music, February 19, 2008

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 7:29 am and is filed under RIAA News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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