RIAA sticks it to writers

[Herr Matzat]

RIAA sticks it to writers

Protection racket

By Nick Farrell: Tuesday, 05 February 2008, 8:15 AM

THE RIAA has long held that its court actions against P2P pirates were all about protecting the creative work of musicians and song writers.

However its agenda became fairly obvious yesterday when the record labels within the RIAA all agreed with Yahoo, Apple and Napster to lower royalties to songwriters.

Its argument is that music studios have suffered much from the switch to traditional records to digital media and they need the extra money. It should be songwriters who pay for the expensive court cases and the losses sustained.

The debate is about the "mechanical royalty", which are payments made for copies of sound recordings and music.

The RIAA wants the Copyright Royalty Board to reduce the rate to eight per cent of wholesale revenue. Currently the cash to be split between publisher and songwriter is about nine cents per song, according to the Hollywood Reporter. µ

Edited February 5, 2008 by Michael Matzat on a Plane

[Cactus Drags]

Download all your albums, go to gigs and buy t-shirts instead.

[Herr Matzat]

That dos not work aswell as some time ago, i don´t have the article on that one but companys get a bigger cut of that nowerdays.

[Cactus Drags]

Yeah, but it's still a better ratio than the CD sales.

Hell, give bands PayPal accounts and donate money to them direct, record companies can't steal that yet, right?

[Herr Matzat]

well, technicly they can, bands need to pay back the money they spend recording if i remember it right.

[YI]

Apparently...for a band of 'cult' noteriety (eg. Strung Out...I'm using them as an example as this actually came from the 'horses mouth') to go on a tour, playing moderate sized venues. If they're careful with money, they can come out with the same as big bands on 'extravagant' arena tours.

So therefore...go see bands live. And buy their merch. Although I'm not big on band t-shirts, as they're normally shit.

[Gabriel]

well, technicly they can, bands need to pay back the money they spend recording if i remember it right.

[YI]

It's the matter of having the 'disposable capital' available for them. Yes...they will make back the cost of recording the album and all that, once it's released, but they (probably...especially with newer bands) have that disposable cash available before the album is released, so therefore will not be able to fund the recording.

Also, there's the whole media aspect. In that for a band to carry out everything like PR, themselves will be painstaking, take a lot more time and cost a lot more.

[Gabriel]

I can still see the upside to being buttfucked by a corporate entity, but it really isn't as painstaking as it seems to do things yourself. It doesn't need to be the four or five guys in a band doing everything. You've got MySpace now, where if you're on a famous band's Top Friends List, you've got people checking out your page just because of that... or there's always networking. Oh what's that? Joe the Drummer knows a guy high up with the Colorado Avalanche? Well talk to them Joe and see if you can make a deal to play a song or two during intermissions, or before games or something.

Once you have the basic stuff down, all you have to do is leave the rest up to the power of the internet. It's so powerful. Bright Eyes would still be an unknown commodity if it weren't for the World Wide Web.

You just need to be willing to put in the work. I guess it's the lesser of two evils... do you want to work a little bit harder and earn all of your fans... or do you want someone to hand you a butt load of cash, stick their dick up your ass and market you as the next "Whatever band is popular in your genre", just because it's easier?