Online music talks on the rocks
p2p news / p2pnet: It’s dog-eat-dog out there in the corporate music world, and two of its UK elements are still tearing at each other’s throats.
"Urgent talks between Britain’s songwriters and leading music labels over royalties on digital music are close to collapse, the head of the songwriters’ lobby group said yesterday," says the Times Online.
The Music Alliance (MA) works for some composers and songwriters and the dispute centres on who milks what from the insignificant corporate digital downloads, once EMI, Warner Music, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG have skimmed the cream.
"Composers and songwriters, the talent that underpins the music industry, currently earn around 5p from the sale of a download," it said last year.
The Big Four own BPI (British Phonographic Industry) and, "BPI proposals would see them earning 2p," says the MA. "In contrast, record companies keep 40-50p from the same sale."
The alliance was proposing that as of January 1, "composers and songwriters receive 7-9p per download, to bring their earnings in line with those they might have received in the past."
"The MA is also challenging the record companies to disclose how much money they are making from the online music market," says the Times Online. "The lobby group argues that selling music online is cheaper for the record companies than producing a CD and distributing it to record stores, so while costs fall and margins soar for online music, those who provide the music see very little of this benefit."
But, "some music industry sources insisted that this market has been created by the record industry and technology companies, not by composers. Some also say that the battle against piracy has been fought by the record industry and that it still faces fixed costs for producing CDs while also incurring costs in digitising music for sale online and promoting it."
Also See:
Times Online – Talks to avert row with music labels over digital downloads face collapse, March 21, 2006
underpins – BPI, Music Alliance war continues, December 8, 2005
March 21st, 2006 at 8:57 pm
“But, “some music industry sources insisted that this market has been created by the record industry and technology companies, not by composers. Some also say that the battle against piracy has been fought by the record industry and that it still faces fixed costs for producing CDs while also incurring costs in digitising music for sale online and promoting it.”
There you have it. Real songwrter are no longer needed. actually I suspected that already, as the latest songs on the radio seem to be mass produced by programmed workers who work cheap or for nothing.
Hey, but songwriters and their heirs are no longer paid anyway. Just ask the Cubans who want their songs back. Not paid “because of the embargo” against their coutry, since 1969 while the American music pubisher keeps n making the money. By nw all the songwriters are dead.
See here:
http://rafa_venegas.web.prdigital.com/cubaandpeer.htm
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com