p2pnet.net Feature:- We published The Music Lovers’ Manifesto in May, 2003. Much of the material is now common knowledge, thanks to appearance of sites such as DownHill Battle, but much of it bears repeating.

“We’ve seen many recent articles on RIAA/Music Industry lies about music piracy,” the author (who for good reason, asked to remain anonymous) told p2pnet, “Yet, none of them explain why this is happening.”

His heading reads, ‘ … buying CD’s hurts the musician and supports tyranny”. All CDs, we asked?

“What’s interesting and, I think, not well known, is that many of the indie labels are the same – or worse – about giving artists royalties,” he said.

“Often, indie labels don’t give out any royalties at all. What can happen is: the label gives the band a certain cut of the produced CD’s at wholesale, then the band makes all their money touring and selling the CD’s at their shows. And the money from CD’s sold in stores goes straight to the label.

“I kept the reference to CDs general mainly because it’s frequently very difficult to determine if a CD was put out by a major label (not forgetting that each of the major labels has tons of subsidiary labels that they bill as ‘independent’ and package as such) and, unless you’re buying an Aimee Mann CD (for example) from her website – in which case it’s pretty clear she’s getting all the profits – almost none of the money you spend on a CD at the store makes it to the artist.”

Now read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Why buying CD’s hurts the musician and supports tyranny.

The music industry is in turmoil. The rise and fall of Napster has unearthed the ugly nature of the record labels and their congressional lobbying group, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Since the successful annihilation of Napster the corporate record labels have begun bombarding us with propaganda against other file sharing services. Once we understand just why the music industry is afraid of the Internet, it becomes clear that the industry is not fighting against piracy. It is, in fact, desperately fighting to maintain the financial wealth it garners from the exploitation of musicians.

Despite the industry’s PR campaign about lost revenue, a simple look at the SoundScan numbers during Napster’s lifetime reveals a steady increase in album sales (this fact can be found on the RIAA’s own website, under ‘Market Data’). CD sales continued to increase even when the economy started to sour, and this increase continued until near the instant that Napster went offline. In effect, Napster was one of the best things to happen to music in a long time – and this makes perfect sense: the more music people were exposed to, the more music people wanted to buy. The music industry also appeared to have the perfect marketing tool in that they wouldn’t have to do any marketing – the good artists would sell themselves. And as far as piracy was concerned, Napster was perfect in that regard, as well. The simple fact that it was peer to peer meant that it was virtually impossible to download a complete album of any consistent quality. Every track was recorded from a different source, different bit rate, different audio levels, etc., making downloading a complete album that resembled the quality of a purchased one extremely difficult.

So, given that Napster improved album sales and could have been a great marketing tool, why were the corporate labels so eager to shut it down? The answer is simple: they saw it as a threat to their control over the musicians.

We must begin to look at this from the perspective of the highest people in the industry – the Tommy Mattolla’s (who has recently been forced out of his power seat), the Clive Davis’s, etc. These are intelligent and powerful men, and they make millions of dollars on the musicians they exploit. And without this system of exploitation, their power and unlimited wealth would come to an end.

Here is how the exploitation works. When an artist first signs to a major label, visions of millions of dollars and thousands of screaming fans allow them to sign their freedom away on a dotted line. A typical contract goes something like this: the artist forever loses all copyright and control over any music recorded during the length of the contract; the artist loses the final say over what songs end up on the album; the artist loses the right to say what his music can and can’t be used for (e.g., suddenly, the artist’s most cherished song can be used to sell long distance, or SUV’s); and, finally, the musician signs away these rights to future recordings. But the most telling piece of freedom the artist loses is when he signs away the ownership to his own name. That thing that makes a band a band, makes a rapper a rapper, even an individual an individual, now belongs to the record label. Recall that Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol precisely because Warner Bros. owned his name.

To the label, the artist is no more then a servant who is there to do it’s bidding and to generate massive amounts of capital. In return, the label grants the artist a tiny cut of the wealth that he produces. When indentured servitude was a common part of life, the masters would sometimes allow their servants to go out into the world and work for wages, then the cruel owner (having done no work) would take all of the servant’s earnings as his own, possibly giving the servant a few cents for his long labor. This is the relationship of the artist to the major label. By being able to work away from his owner, the servant feels almost like a free man, and the artist enjoys the same false sense of freedom. The artist is able to do many things that makes him feel free, but these are just allowances provided by the master label. The artist can do drugs, swear, get arrested, etc., and the label says nothing – in fact, these things are encouraged because they provide free marketing. But until the artist completes his contract with the label he is still merely a servant.

In exchange for giving the label all these things, the artist gets in return a lump sum ranging from $100,000 to millions of dollars – which the artist has to pay back – to cover studio costs, manager fees, etc., and the label grants royalties from the sale of the album.

These royalties are calculated in ‘price points’ and typically amount to about 9¢ per album. Now, this deal seems pretty bad: the artist has signed away all the rights to his music, the ownership of his name, and, indeed, his freedom—in exchange for a loan and a few cents from each CD sold. Why would an artist agree to this? The answer is simple: choosing not to sign to the major label is in essence choosing not to be heard. Historically, the selling of records was a complex venture. It took visionaries to predict what would and would not be popular. It took record company promotion people who had personal relationships with local DJ’s to get a song played on the radio, and even then there was little guarantee. But, recently, the music moguls have found that the secret to making popular music is to simply maintain complete control of all the mainstream access the public has to new music. And unholy unions with the two major outlets of music – the radio and MTV – have accomplished just this.

In the last couple of years, the corporate labels have rejoiced because they no longer have to struggle with any local radio stations across the country for airtime; they now only have to deal with one corporation: Clear Channel Worldwide.

Clear Channel began its take over of the radio waves in 1999. Since then, it has acquired nearly 1,500 popular radio stations worldwide. No longer are radio DJs in control of what music is played on the radio, it is the corporate executives in Clear Channel’s corporate headquarters, located in Austin, TX, (the ones receiving huge kickbacks from the major labels) who control it. All one has to do is look at the ‘press room’ of the Clear Channel website to understand the horrifying corporate nature of music today.

In a recent interview with Fortune magazine Clear Channel’s founder and CEO, Lowry Mays (who was originally an investment banker before joining the radio business), states, “We’re not in the business of providing news and information. We’re not in the business of providing well-researched music. We’re simply in the business of selling our customers products.” Fraternity brothers who studied together at business school – not people who actually care about music – are now in charge of what gets played on the radio.

This is why the peer-to-peer revolution has the industry so terrified—and is also the reason they have fought so strongly to quash Internet radio. Suddenly, this new technology makes it possible for any musician, not just the ones signed to the corporate big wigs, to be heard by millions of people. The relationships the big wigs have been nurturing with Clear Channel and MTV have started to lose their value.

The corporate labels (Bertelsmann, Sony, Universal, Warner Bros., EMI) have decided to fight peer-to-peer technology with all their might. First off, they use the RIAA, which is the congressional lobbying group whose only purpose is to fight for the interests of these five labels. The RIAA has absolutely no vested interest in the rights of the artist; its sole purpose is to perpetuate the current system of exploitation. This group used the millions of dollars it received from the labels to fight Napster in court, and, of course, their millions of dollars won against the small Internet company.

Distorting its legal victory into a moral one, the RIAA began a campaign against Internet file sharing in which they labeled such activities ‘piracy,’ thereby accusing the majority of its costumers of being thieves. It was precisely when this campaign began that CD sales began to drop.

If Napster was good for CD sales and helped get musicians heard, why would so many artists speak out against it? For the same reason that a servant would try to protect his master when his master was in danger: their livelihood is caught up in the slave system.

Artists who are already established fear the collapse of the major label system because they worry that without it, they will suddenly lose the prestige and wealth they continue to accumulate. It is the fear of the unknown that causes artists to stand up for their cruel masters. It is also possible that these artists who stand up in favor of tyranny may not even realize they are doing so, they may actually believe the rhetoric that the industry has fed them.

We must now realize that the corporate labels and their lap dog lobby group will do anything in their power to keep this old system of servitude in place, and they have LOTS of power – billions of dollars – and they also have congressmen who will do their bidding. But in order for them to keep their power, they rely on us. Every time we buy a CD we are supporting tyranny. We must stop. We must stand by the musicians that we love— we can free them.

The RIAA wants to guilt us into continuing to buy CD’s with the audacious claim that if we don’t, we are hurting the artists. In reality, however, the opposite is true. There are many ways we can continue to support the musicians without financially supporting the corporate campaign against us.

Consider this: if we download an album or copy it from a friend, and then mail the musician five dollars, that would be as much as 50 times what that musician would make if we spent $18 for the CD! It’s up to us. We have the power to stop tyranny and all we have to do is stop buying CDs.

Get involved !

Below you will find links to source articles. Please read them and understand that this issue is much larger then the RIAA’s claim of piracy. The last page of this document contains a flyer that can be passed out or posted, should you care enough to get involved.

http://www.fortune.com/fortune/ceo/articles/0,15114,423802-1,00.html
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200304/msg00129.html
http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/problemwithmusic.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A57791-2003Jan15&notFound=true
http://www.boycott-riaa.com/analysis.php
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/02/19/clear_channel_deregulation/index.html?x
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40810FC39540C768EDDAA0894DB404482
http://www.ews.uiuc.edu/~zrosen/
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0411/p13s02-almp.html
http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=22610
http://www.riaa.org/MD-US-2.cfm

What you need to know about Major Label recording contracts:
1.Typical royalties paid to the artist come out to about 10¢ per album sold.

2.The artist loses ALL COPYRIGHT OWNERSHIP to his/her music.

3.All recording, production, mastering, and music video production costs COME OUT OF THE ARTIST’S royalties.

4.The label has total control over what the music is used for. The label is free to license anything they own to whoever they want. (Think about it next time you hear that classic song on an S.U.V. commercial)

What you need to know about Clear Channel:

1. Owns the majority of radio stations in the U.S. (over 1500).
2. Receives huge payments from the 5 major labels to play major label owned music.
3. Has direct ties to the Bush administration and actively censors artists who do not support their rightwing politics. (I.e. Clear Channel has stopped playing the Dixie Chicks)

Why would an artist sign to a major label?

1. Without the major label’s connection to Clear Channel the artist has NO CHANCE OF EVER BEING PLAYED ON THE RADIO.
2. Without the major label’s connection to MTV the artist has little chance of ever getting a video played.
3. Often the artist is wooed to the label by a large advance (sometimes in the millions of dollars), but the artist has to pay this money back to the label.

File sharing Facts:

1. File sharing gives equal exposure to ALL musicians regardless of corporate sponsorship.
2. CD sales rose steadily until AFTER Napster was taken offline (check SoundScan numbers) – CD sales only began to drop once the labels began calling the majority of their customers thieves.
3. The major labels began to reduce the number of releases BEFORE the Napster hearings – EVEN THOUGH CD SALES WERE RISING.
4. Independent artists are currently SELLING BETTER THEN EVER BEFORE.

Why are the major labels are so scared of file sharing? Because the labels know that the only thing they can offer new artists is the chance to be heard on Clear Channel and seen on MTV. File sharing allows any artist to be heard by potentially millions of people, this has the corporate labels terrified. They are willing to go to any lengths to stop us from hearing independent artists. Recently the RIAA has sued a Michigan Tech student for sharing music with other students. The total amount in damages the RIAA sought from this single student was a whooping 97 billion dollars! (the case was eventually settled out of court)

Every time you buy a CD you are supporting a system that exploits musicians and STEALS their intellectual property. Stop funding the persecution of fellow students! Stop giving money to huge corporations who take 99% of the money that rightly belongs to the musician! If you want to support musicians, consider downloading or copying their album and mailing them 5 dollars (that’s fifty times what they would make if you paid $18 for it!).

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 29th, 2004 at 3:43 am and is filed under Uncategorized. 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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