Big Music digital download row
p2p news / p2pnet: It’s a dog-eat-dog world among the korporate kartels and over in the UK, the Organized Music heavies are at each other’s throats. Again.
And it’s all over who gets which piece of the royalties milked from the paltry corporate digital downloads —- after the Big Four have skimmed the cream off the top, of course.
“Britain’s songwriters and composers hit back last night against the major record labels in their legal battle over royalties on digital downloads of music,” says the Independent Online.
“The British Phonographic Industry, representing the big music labels including EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Time Warner, is trying to halve the royalties that songwriters can claim on each 79p (about $1.40) digital download from 5p to 2.5p.
“But yesterday the Music Alliance – a joint body representing some 44,000 songwriters and composers through the Performing Rights Society and the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society – lodged a counter-claim, demanding an increase in royalties to between 7p and 9p per download and challenging the record companies to divulge how much money they are now making from the online music market.”
The report says digital downloads represent, “only a fraction of the market at present” but are “forecast to grow into a multibillion-pound industry”.
In truth, the digital market doesn’t, for the moment, even exist.
Apple’s iTunes, the only corporate entity with any kind of presence in the world of online music, isn’t a ’service’ at all. Rather, it’s an iPod sales tool dressed up to look like one. And the awesomely discredited Sony BMG, Warner Music, Vivendi Universal and EMI, the Big Four members of Organized Music, are wholesaling each lossy, low-fidelity mp3 to their hapless clients from anywhere between 65 and 80 cents (and possibly higher). This in turn means the likes of Apple are forced to charge a dollar and more for each formulaic download.
And the labels want even more.
Little wonder that 99.9, and then some, percent of people who get their music online, aren’t buying. Instead, they look to the free and independent p2p networks.
Organized Music’s answer? Try to sue ‘consumers’ into consuming.
“The Music Alliance says that if the BPI succeeds in its case, then its members will receive 40p to 50p from every digital download, whereas songwriters and composers will get less than a tenth of that.” Says the story, adding:
” The BPI has been joined in the action by seven big digital downloaders including AOL, iTunes and Napster as well as the four mobile operators, Orange, T-Mobile, Vodafone and O2 which also take a cut from digital downloads.’
The venal dispute is slated to go before the UK Copyright Tribunal next autumn, adds the Independent.
Also read:-
Independent Online – Musicians hit back in downloads dispute, December 3, 2005
sue ‘consumers’ – First RIAA p2p file share trial, December 2, 2005
December 4th, 2005 at 6:13 pm
I say give the artists and composers all the royalties then they pay the music industry for promotional services rendered.
December 4th, 2005 at 6:33 pm
yup, or, let the artists make their own sites with d/l capability, and charge 30 cents per track, it would make them produce better stuff and the cartels wouldn’t get a cent, plus the “chart” thing would be fairer, after all, no-one will pay for the rubbish tracks, or bands “made” by the cartels.
Lots of bands are “product” now, and I’ll lay money that they can’t even play!..
Bri.
December 4th, 2005 at 8:14 pm
“Britain’s songwriters and composers hit back last night against the major record labels in their legal battle over royalties on digital downloads of music,”
This statement is wrong. Who hit back are organizations that allege to represent songwriters and composers but in reality are publisher dominated organizations. In Britain I am not certain if songwriters are properly paid by the publishers and if the accounting is transparent.
The subject is taboo here in my country, Puerto Rico. It is also taboo in the USA. It is taboo here because songwriter think that if the speak up, the little money they receive will be further reduced or because they feel helpless.
In th USA the accounting for Puerto Rico songwriters is totally worthless and hidden and as a result most songwriters and composers hardly get any of the money their songs have earned. Our composer Pedro Flores was one of the more succesful composers, world wide. He died broke and no one (well, I know) knows where the millions of dollars his songs earned wound up
The American government doesn’t give a damn about this accounting even though that same accounting is used to (not) pay taxes.
The Puerto Rico government also fears looking into the music publisher business because as a colonial government it is scared to question whatever is American.
As a son of a deceased songwriter was a victimm of the shenanigan of music publishers I know what Iam talking about. Hundreds of my father’s songs have been exploited by publishers who mostly stole the songs and record companies that got licenses from the publishers that stole the songs and many record companies, Sony, with over 16 records, simply and unlawfuly included the songs, without licenses, in their recordings and never paid us (heirs) a single cent since my father died 12 years ago. And the legal system has been totally incapable of doing anything about it.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
December 4th, 2005 at 8:32 pm
The songwriters referd to in this article probably signed away all their ownership of the songs they wrote to the corporations and couldn’t offer them on their own download service if they wanted to (just a guess). New unsigned artists are doing it though.
December 4th, 2005 at 9:00 pm
Take notice new artists – if you sell your own work through downloads you get 100% of the sale.
I’m starting to feel like I have an idea what it would have been like to watch the dinosaurs after the comet struck.
December 5th, 2005 at 6:48 am
Things will change and it will. Just give it a little time, then one day when no one is expecting it to happen there will be some who have selling power of beates. Who never done a deal with the devil it self and get supper rich ie $Billionaire only because they keeped everything to them self. Also they start a foundadtion which helped and promoted such a idea with others.
What is needed is some easy software which creates a simple shoping site to sell tracks. Also if *DRM* has to be use it will also help them artises pay DRM technologies for the systems.
PS I dont much like beates stuff also I think idea of DRM is wrong but if it is need at least common joe the ablity to do it right in the first place.
December 5th, 2005 at 11:46 am
As always, the cartels aren’t getting enough of the pie. So where to steal from? Lets see, there’s the usual places. You know, the artists, the promoters, the labels, the middlemen, and the public.
Since the cartels aren’t releasing stuff with the frequency they used to, it means that everyone has to pay more to keep those fat CEO bonuses rolling in. So far they have managed to eliminate most of the middle men. Mom and pop stores are gone because they couldn’t compete with the price slashing granted the chain stores. Since they are planning as much as possible to go to digital, there will in the future be no need of pressing copies, no need of warehouses to hold them, no need of artists to paint, design, or photo covers, no need to move items from one part of the country to another; all that money now goes to the cartels in one form or another. Naturally piracy provides a ready whipping boy to blame.
Maybe they aren’t making enough profit because of how expensive it is to buy laws in so many countries at once. Then again, part of it could be the insistance that DRM be in all their releases and they aren’t charging so much for that license and now plan to. Then again it could be just that they are greedy boogers and nothing else needs to be said.
Or there could be one other reason. Since they are caught in this payolla scheme and 2 of the big four have been busted, it is very possible that playlists are being altered in such a manner that favorites for wannabees that the cartels would like to make aren’t as easy to scheme and bring about without the pay for play. Does this mean that custom made entertainers without knowledge of how to play music might be on the wane?
Another poster to this theme wonders if DRM is necessary. No it isn’t. This is a scheme to do several things. One is to limit your making backups. One is to try and make you repeat buy, something missing from the labels income since cds.
Lastly, Sony who was busted by New York Attorney General Spitzer for payolla has laterally transferred two high positioned employees to other jobs that Spitzer’s report named as high placed individuals who actively encouraged and knew of the payolla scheme and most likely approved it. Of course the informers were not identified fearing repercussions and the two individuals lawyer;s are saying their clients are innocent and the faceless ones should be man enough to say their names and surface for retorts and rebuttal. You just know that a corporation with Sony’s reputation would never stoop to retaliation.
December 5th, 2005 at 2:50 pm
In the Uk it’s fairly transparent. If you’re in the PRS, your publisher gets 50% of the royalty, and you get 50% paid straight into your bank account by the PRS. Then your publisher pays you your part of their 50% (the split depends on your deal, but you usually get at least 50% of their 50%), so the split is often at least 75:25 to the writer. You don’t have to sign up with a publisher (you can collect 100% direct) but you should because they help you get more money by getting your tunes on tv etc. It’s totally different to being signed to a record label…
December 5th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
In the Uk it’s fairly transparent.
Since I do not believe in miracles, and the person that claims that there is transparency is unknown (a music publisher? , a songwriter? ) and does not identify itself, this claim must be treated as plain propaganda which is not true, unti lthe transparency is proven by a tranparent person or organization.
BTW, the crooked American music publishers also operate in a big way in Britain. Will anyone believe that they are honest over there.
The days of naiveness are over, thanks to the Internet.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com