Music Royalties At All Time Highs

from the that-can't-be-good-for-the-RIAA dept

Whenever I get involved in discussions about online music and suggest that musicians don't need to make their money on CD sales (in most cases, they don't already - they make their money on live performances) people often bring up the question of how will songwriters make their money. After all, the song writers just pen the songs, but don't perform them. Well, it seems that maybe they won't have such a problem as song writing royalties from performance rights are at an all time high despite all the troubles the recording industry is supposedly in. That's because they do receive royalties from public performances of the music - and those aren't decreasing at all. Of course, the song writers are still complaining about how they're not making as much money as they used to, as they're making less from CD royalties. Well, that's what happens when business models change. Most people who create one thing don't get to sit back and collect cash for it for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, the article includes a quote that shows just how the industry views the internet. It's not about being a communications mechanism that lets everyone communicate back and forth. No, they see it as a one way medium to force content on folks who will pay them for it: "The Internet has not been able to grow as other broadcast venues of entertainment have grown." That's because it's not a broadcast venue. The faster the industry realizes this, the faster they'll be able to get past all the troubles they're having.
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  • identicon
    Jeremiah, 26 Jan 2004 @ 11:25pm

    royalties

    Just a quick note: the upsurge in royalty payments has to do with DVD sales and broadcast royalties (all those cable channels have been good for BMI's coffers). I'll hunt down this passage from my last BMI newsletter. Also, films have been doing boffo well this year thanks to LOTR giving people a reason to return to theaters. Hence, the pond of royalty money paid to copyright holders and publishers has swelled nicely.

    Nice catch.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Rob, 31 Jan 2004 @ 2:11pm

    but lars ulrich says....

    Lars Ulrich claims that bands don't tour to make money. They tour to sell albumns that make money. He also claims that most tours are lucky to even break even. So downloading mp3s is evil. By the way, I wonder if mp3s are popular outside of a culture that doesn't seem to care about quality. Somehow my brain can tell the difference between 1400+ bps and 128 bps. I get no adrenalin rush with that 3 digit bps crap.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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