Unpaid Artists: unbelievable list
p2pnet.net News:- SoundExchange used to be part of the Big Four Organized Music’s RIAA, its raison d’etre supposedly being to collect and distribute royalties.
Then in 2003 SoundExchange became ‘independent,’ introducing a DIY search site called PLAYS (Performance Log Archive of Your Songs).
These days it claims because of it, “thousands of artists” are “united” in receiving “a fair price for the licensing of their music in a new digital world”.
And members include small, medium and large independent record companies, as well as the major label groups and artist-owned labels, it says.
But there seems to be a slight problem. An unbelievably huge number of people on the roll aren’t receiving a fair price. In fact, they aren’t receiving anything at all, as the SoundExchange Unpaid reveals.
It’s a staggering, mind-boggling list with the names of a ton of performers, dead and alive, who haven’t had their money.
They date back to World War Two songstress Vera Lynn and move forward through famed gospel singer Mahalia Jackson to Eddie Cochrane, Booker T & the MGs, Georgie Fame, JJ Cale, Don McClean, Wang Chung, and the like, to such as the Adolescent’s Orquestra, the Dutch Radio Big Band, Eve’s Plum and Flesh for Lulu.
It’s an incredible list and it crashed Firefox three times before we copied the code so we could check it out.
And if the artists named don’t ask, apparently, SoundExchange gets to keep their kash.
Stay tuned.
(Thanks, Cello)
Also See:
became ‘independent,’ – SoundExchange search site, December 11, 2004
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September 22nd, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Maybe one day people will get it.
Artists and songwriters, whether they have signed a “give up every right in exchange for nothing” or not are mostly never paid royalties and when paid it is a fraction of what is due.
Recently I uncovered that a song that belonged to my family was being licensed under a wrong songwriter’s name. The wrong songwriter was paid, by a major music publisher, 14 cents (US $) for the sale of about 10,000 records. For several years the publisher had been paying 14 cents for about the same amount of records, 10,000. 14 cents would have been the proper amount for about 4 records.
From my personal experience as a music publisher, the music industry, publishers and record companies are just a bunch of thugs.
If SoundExchange does not pay artists (and sonwriter?), they are just following industry practices.
That about says it all.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
September 22nd, 2006 at 2:48 pm
“…RIAA, its raison d’etre supposedly being to collect and distribute royalties.”
There’s a reason these scumbags call themselves the recording INDUSTRY association of America, NOT the recording ARTISTS’ association of America. And we all know what it is.
September 23rd, 2006 at 5:07 pm
The RIAA wages a very self-righteous war against “theft” of copyrighted material by alleged downloaders, but it seems that their outright theft of cash from the artists they supposedly represent (and to whom they have a fiduciary duty) isn’t such a bad thing at all.
Here’s an amazing opportunity for an enterprising lawyer who wants to make huge money with a class-action lawsuit: sue the RIAA in the name of all the unpaid artists!
September 23rd, 2006 at 5:09 pm
The RIAA wages a very self-righteous war against “theft” of copyrighted material by alleged downloaders, but it seems that their outright theft of cash from the artists they supposedly represent (and to whom they have a fiduciary duty) isn’t such a bad thing at all.
Here’s an amazing opportunity for an enterprising lawyer who wants to make huge money with a class-action lawsuit: sue the RIAA in the name of all the unpaid artists!
September 23rd, 2006 at 5:33 pm
Several years ago, I was publicly critical of SoundExchange at a music conference. John Simson, the executive director, tried to call my bluff by asking, in front of witnesses at the conference, for my help in finding the artists for whom they had collected money. I have a well-earned rep for finding money for artists, so finding artists for money that was already there sounded like a snap.
It turned out I called John’s bluff. For a year, I bugged SoundExchange to get me started on the detective work, and they never even responded to my calls and letters. Finally, after I had given a newspaper interview where I was critical again, and JUST BEFORE I was about to serve on another conference panel, he called me.
To cut to the chase, after several more months of delay, Simson offered to send me the list of everyone they hadn’t found. There was just one condition: I had to promise not to tell anyone about the list. I couldn’t even call Ice Cube’s manager and say “Do you know there is money for your client sitting at SoundExchange?”
In other words, the official SoundExchange stance is “we have a list of people for whom we have money, but we don’t want to let them know they are on it.”
This is completely consistent with their PR spin that they have worked very hard for years to find these artists and still have nearly 9,000 they can’t find, and 1,900 labels, too. Somebody should contact the folks at Fat Possum. I’d sent them an email because they obviously aren’t answering their phones.
But, frankly, it is time to pay attention to the “man behind the curtain” on all this.
SoundExchange is doing a great job. It is excellent at the function it was set up to do. Collecting and distributing money isn’t their reason to exist, and if you look beyond that, you’ll see an efficient and effective organization doing exactly what it’s founders want it to do.
SE sits astride the main pipeline of money running from Internet and satellite broadcasters on one end and copyright holders and artists on the other. When you know who runs SE, you see it as a smart move by the RIAA to maintain some control over distribution, and the monetization of distribution, of music.
SE negotiates the license fees for these uses. In essence, they get to exert control over what we hear from Satellite and Internet stations by being the entity that negotiates how much the piper is going to be paid, and who gets to pay him.
Looking at SE as a distribution control device, it works PERFECTLY before the first licensing dollar is received, or the first royalty pennies are paid out. As an organizational function, paying people is secondary to keeping the RIAA in the distribution game. It’s almost a distraction from their main goal, and they could do the job as well, or even better, if they weren’t collecting and distributing license revenue at all.
Take a step back and look at the larger picture.
The Internet destroyed the labels’ control of distribution of recorded music. You’ve got the Internet, not just to download stuff, legally or not, but to listen to streaming broadcasts of just about any type of music you choose to hear. And the key words there are “you choose.” There are no programming directors limiting outlets to a tight play list based on what the major labels have spent to influence them.
The Internet is an endless smorgasbord. And the RIAA ignored the party until it was too late.
And because the smorgasbord was already up and running, they graciously “volunteered,” through SoundExchange, to be the guys sitting at the front door, selling tickets. They also sit at the back door, selling tickets in the form of license fees to the people bringing the musical food in.
Quite a racket, and completely legal.
The RIAA is truly the only organization to which SE is accountable. It isn’t accountable to the Library of Congress or the Register of Copyrights, which gave it essentially monopolistic control of the field. Sure, you can elect to go with Royalty Logic instead, but the default position is SE, and that’s where all that nice unclaimed money is, which, in mid-December, is going to defray SE’s costs of operations, including the legal fees incurred to maintain the control of the licensing process. No one outside the SE board room knows how much license revenue they take in, or how much they pay out to artists and copyright holders.
As for the side benefits of not finding people, I figure there’s about $4 million in those “unfound” accounts. Nobody knows for sure, because SE isn’t telling. It’s like that plot gimmick in “Office
Space,” where the unhappy employees set up an account to catch all those fractional cents from rounded off transactions. You don’t notice the pennies until they pile up. And if they are piling up in your vault, like they are for SE, then so much the better for you.
It’s the same reasoning why labels don’t spend a lot of time making sure their royalty accounting is accurate. There’s nothing in it for them.
It is also why labels love to exploit back catalog. The royalties earned by single tracks on oldies compilations are rarely enough to justify an artist conducting a full blown audit, so if there are errors and omissions in favor of the labels (and there are), all those insignificant amounts start to pile up.
And remember, the guys who set up and ran the royalty accounting systems at the labels are the guys behind SoundExchange.
So we shouldn’t be surprised at what has happened, and we shouldn’t be surprised at the spin SE is putting on its own failure to find people. Because it really isn’t failure. It’s successfully screwing artists, which is something the members of the RIAA have been very, very good at.
We might not be able to deal with this side of things right now, but we, as individuals, can do something to make sure SoundExchange does a better job of keeping its public promises. If you know any recording artists on the list, let them know. The first check, even if it is retroactive to 1996, isn’t going to make them rich, but it is their money. It doesn’t take a lot to register.
September 24th, 2006 at 12:37 am
I’ve just emailed them to let them know.
I wonder if their names will be removed from that list….?
September 24th, 2006 at 4:51 am
Why?
For one thing, the RIAA wouldn’t be a defendent.
For a second thing, the RIAA doesn’t represent artists, they represent labels.
For a third thing, the labels do not have a fiduciary duty to their artists. They never had one, and they will fight to the death any attempt to assert one. Take a look at what happened to that “royalty reform” legislation in California that came close to establish fiduciary duties on labels.
And last but not least . . .
The money is already there. Why pay a lawyer a third to collect what SoundExchange is ready to pay out. For a class member to collect from a settlement, they would have to come forward to be identified, and that’s all they have to do now.
Class actions involving recording artists end with the majority of artists getting screwed and their lawyers getting rich.
September 24th, 2006 at 10:48 am
It’s the same reasoning why labels don’t spend a lot of time making sure their royalty accounting is accurate. There’s nothing in it for them.
Royalty accounting if a pile of total fiction at the record labels, at the performance rights collectives and at music publishers. No one audits these organization’ royalty payments in their tax forms. Well, actually the tax forms have no royalty payment entries, thanks to the boys at the legislatures and the government tax departments.
The problem? Artists and songwrites are not really organized. As an example, songwrites belong to “associations” which are just fronts for the music publishers, and any artist that belongs to a musicians’s union will simply not be allowed to enter through the big label’s door, meaning no sales.
As to having money that cannot be paid to “lost” artists of songwriters, this money should be turned over to the government, as is done with the money in dead bank accounts. Jut as banks have no incentive to loose track of their customers or heirs, labels and publisher and others should not have an incentive to loose track of artists and their heirs, so as to keep the royalties.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
September 24th, 2006 at 11:14 am
“For a third thing, the labels do not have a fiduciary duty to their artists. They never had one, and they will fight to the death any attempt to assert one.”
But the labels, just like publishers and preformance rights organizations have CONTRACTUAL (and moral) obligation to pay. Now, what is the difference between a fiduciary and contractual obligation? None. Of course if your business model is based on making money by not paying debts, you are bound to fail as word spreads around, as I believe is happening, as artists and songwriters are each day more aware of the scam against them, thanks to the Internet in great part.
“The money is already there. Why pay a lawyer a third to collect what SoundExchange is ready to pay out. For a class member to collect from a settlement, they would have to come forward to be identified, and that’s all they have to do now.”
This misses the main point that has to be made. A class action shoudl result in a change in conduct of those that have to pay artists and songwriters and their heirs but do not pay because they have set up a system that facilittes/promotes the loosing track of artists and songwriters and their heirs so that profits are increased.
Theft if you ask me, and the theft may be stopped through a class action lawsuit. Of course this depends on the honety of the court system. I have very good reasons to suspect that there is litlle of that when it comes to movey vs. reason.
Rarael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
September 25th, 2006 at 3:52 pm
I see a few well known Canadian artists on this list – just in the “A”s so far.
I find it pretty hard to believe they can’t be contacted.
These artists are easily findable by performing a quick internet search.
I can find their websites and their contact info.
March 21st, 2007 at 7:44 pm
I just used SoundExchange’s website to send a letter to my Representative that SoundExchange is ripping off both Internet Radio station owners–many of whom are private citizens who don’t get a lot of money for their efforts–and artists by keeping the royalties and not going out of their way to send the checks they should be doing.
I don’t care if it’s “industry standard operating practices”…bullshit! SoundExchange deserves to be taken down a notch, and why can’t we use Goliath’s own bulk to humble them a bit? If you care about your favoirte recording artists, do what I did and use SoundExchange’s lobbying form to write your own letter telling the truth!