stories filed under: "royalties"
As The RIAA Lobbies For More Royalties For Itself, It's Fighting (And Losing) Over Having To Pay Royalties To Songwriters
from the what's-good-for-the-goose... dept
The RIAA is in the middle of a big fight for new royalties (i.e., a performance rights tax) on songs played on the radio, going on and on about how anyone against those fees are "stealing" from them. Yet, when it comes to the royalties that RIAA members have to pay to others, suddenly those are worth fighting against. As you hopefully know, there are a few different copyrights related to music. There's the copyright on the recording itself, which is usually held by the record label. But there is also the copyright on the song or composition, which can be held by a music publisher or the songwriter.For whatever reason, while there is a compulsory license setup for anyone doing a cover song, such that if you cover a song, you don't have to first get permission to do so, but you just have to pay an agreed upon rate, which is usually set by the Copyright Royalty Board (a group of judges who more or less pick a number out of a hat). There are all sorts of problems with having a group of judges trying to randomly set prices on royalties, but it is how the system is set up. What's amusing is that after a recent Copyright Royalty Board ruling on cover songs set the rate higher than the RIAA liked, the RIAA went to court to get those rates changed. A district court turned the RIAA down, and now an appeals court has done the same.
In both cases, the court rules against the RIAA, pointing out that, even though the RIAA doesn't like the ruling, the CRB is well within its legal mandate to make both decisions. To be honest, I actually think the RIAA is correct that these rates and the reasoning behind them are ridiculous and not at all sensible. The ringtone rate, in particular, is particularly egregious, and make it difficult for creative business models that embrace things like free ringtones to exist.
However, I find it to be quite hilarious to see the RIAA arguing so vehemently against these rate rulings, when it's demanding similar rulings on its own behalf. Apparently, the RIAA really only supports such rates when it gets to collect them. When it has to pay out, suddenly those royalties are a problem. Funny how that works...
Filed Under: copyright, copyright royalty board, royalties
Companies: riaa, sga
Australian Artists Upset That Australian Tourism Campaign Crowdsourced Images
from the overreact-much? dept
Reader mick writes in to alert us to a group of photographers in Australia who seem absolutely livid that the government's latest toursim campaign sought to crowdsource photographs that could be used as part of the campaign. To me, that seems like a perfectly reasonable idea -- in fact, a good idea in engaging people and getting them to take part in the campaign. But the problem comes from the fact that Tourism Australia asked people to let it use the photographs for free. That's when a bunch of groups went ballistic:The National Association for the Visual Arts, the Australian Copyright Council and the Arts Law Centre of Australia are protesting the conditions.Let me get this straight. Even though the whole thing is completely optional, and photographers, who don't like the terms, have every right to just not participate, they're pissed off that others can participate -- of their own free will -- by letting the Tourism campaign use their photographs freely. If the photographers don't mind the terms, why should others? The reality is that these groups are trying to stomp out amateur competition. This whole hissy fit is about limiting the market to professionals, and keeping the amateurs out.
They are demanding the agency relicense any photographs used in the campaign to pay royalties to the artists.
Arts Law Centre of Australia chief executive Robyn Ayres says the copyright rules set a "worrying precedent".Of course the creative industries play a huge role in the economy and culture. But what does that have to do with willing participants letting the Tourism campaign use their images for free of their own free will?
"The creative industries play a huge role in our economy and our culture," she said in a statement.
"Refusing to license these photographic works in an appropriate way sends a message that it (government) does not value creative work in the same way as it values other economic assets."No, it shows that the Tourism group realizes that some people are more than willing to contribute their works for free for reasons other than direct payment.
Filed Under: agreements, australia, crowdsourcing, free, royalties, tourism
Australian Gyms Dumping Pop Music After Massive Increase In Royalty Rates
from the backfiring... dept
Last year, we wrote about an effort by the Australian performance collection society, the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA) to massively boost royalty rates played by gyms, who often use music in exercise classes. This followed a similar effort with massively boosting rates at clubs and bars, which led those clubs and bars to stop playing covered music. It looks like the same thing is happening in gyms as well. Reader Shadzzy sends over news that the Australian Copyright Tribunal (who knows what they were thinking) has approved the massive boost in royalty rates. Where gyms used to have to pay $0.968 per class, they now have to pay $1 per participant per class. That's a massive increase, and makes it impossible for many gyms to pay those royalty rates.What it means, of course, is that the music is being played less. The gyms are looking for alternatives, because it simply doesn't make sense to pay tens of thousands of dollars to promote music to its members. PPCA is, of course, in denial. It's claiming that people are complaining about gyms not playing popular music, and that fitness centers who won't play popular music at such extortionate rates are treating its members "with utter contempt."
"We've seen a groundswell of discontent from gym members and fitness instructors who've been ordered to use cover music."I would imagine that those members would find having to get a massive increase in their membership bill creates a much bigger "groundswell of discontent," and would find that it's actually PPCA that's treating everyone with "utter contempt," by making the situation worse for everyone. The musicians PPCA "represents," now get their music played significantly less. Gyms have to offer a "worse" overall service, and members get a somewhat worse experience. The problem is that PPCA (and the Copyright Tribunal's) view of what is a reasonable royalty rate is simply out of line with reality. But since the entertainment industry has been able to set up this system where the government sets the price, and the industry influences those setting the price, then it gets to set rates that have no connection to reality.
Steve Albini Explains Why Royalties Don't Make Sense
from the get-paid-for-your-work dept
Beyond being a world famous musician, engineer, producer and journalist, Steve Albini has long been pretty outspoken about the music business itself -- and while I don't always agree with him, I appreciate that he speaks his mind and often presents his arguments in ways that make me think and reconsider some of my own positions. herodotus points us to the news of some comments Albini recently made at a conference about the music business, with a great quote about the focus of so many on royalties:"Royalties are a means to pay producers in the future -- and in perpetuity -- based on record sales," said Albini, who is also a music journalist. "If a band does a show, blows a whole bunch of minds and a bunch of people become fans and go out and buy millions of records, the producer gets paid. I think that's ethically unsustainable.I'm guessing that we'll get a fair amount of disagreement in the comments, but I think it's a point worth considering. So many creative industries get really hung up on royalties and collective licensing and other aspects -- when those are basically lottery tickets, relying very much on what other people do, not on the work you actually do. And it leads to this entitlement mentality that we see all the time, where certain content creators feel they need to get paid every time their content is used -- even if they didn't do any additional work on it. This is what all the ongoing legal battles about collective licensing and royalty rates are about. This is what the Hollywood writers' strike from a few years ago were about. They're ongoing attempts to keep getting paid over and over again for one thing you did in the past. Most jobs don't work that way -- and that's the point that Albini is making.
"I don't think you should pay a doctor extra because a patient doesn't die. I think the doctor should be busting his ass for every patient. I don't think I should get paid for someone else's success."
Now, some will argue, of course, that the entertainment industry is "different," because it involves more speculation: no one knows if the content you create will be a hit, so the concept of royalties is a way to deal with that. But that assumes a rather static market, and pays little attention to the entitlement mentality that it creates. If you have a hit, charge more for future work -- rather than focusing so much on getting paid over and over and over again just for that one piece of work you did in the past.
Filed Under: copyright, royalties, steve albini
Because Only The Record Labels Are Supposed To Get Away With Not Paying Their Musicians...
from the bad-timing dept
So lots of people have been submitting versions of the story about how Pink Floyd is suing EMI, claiming that EMI isn't paying the band what it owes for iTunes downloads. I'd avoided posting this, because it's basically the same contractual dispute we've seen from other acts, where they claim that their labels are accounting for iTunes downloads improperly in order to avoid paying the bands. This story is as old as the recording industry itself. The labels have always worked hard to avoid actually paying bands anything.But what made it worth mentioning is that the lawsuit has come out at just about the same time that the record labels are now hilariously trying to claim that radio stations are "pigs" who refuse to pay musicians. In one of the more juvenile pranks out there, a lobbying group supported by the labels is going around with a giant inflatable pig, mocking radio stations for "refusing to pay musicians for their work ."
You would think that the record labels would be smart enough to avoid making an argument that could so easily be turned against them. How about before you go blame the radio stations for not paying the labels to promote your acts, you start out by paying money to some of your top selling acts who claim they've never seen a dime in royalties. Given the labels' propensity to blatantly lie to artists about how much they're owed, you'd think the last thing they'd want to do is call attention to who is "refusing to pay musicians for their work."
Filed Under: radio stations, royalties
Japanese Collection Society Wants To Charge You For Tweeting Lyrics
from the you-can't-be-serious dept
One of the earlier fun things on Twitter was the lyric of the day bot @lotd. Basically, if you sent a Twitter message to lotd, it would automatically repost the lyric for other lotd fans to read. Neat! But is it copyright infringement? Well... we've seen claims that lyrics online need to be licensed, and there have been a few discussions around whether or not you can copyright a tweet, but would anyone seriously try to collect royalties on Twittered lyrics?Apparently the answer may be yes. Reader Anshar points us to a story claiming that Japan's collection society JASRAC is putting together plans to collect royalties on Twittered lyrics. Honestly, the whole thing sounds so ridiculous that I'm hoping the original report is coming from the Japanese version of The Onion (please, someone tell me that's the case). But this is JASRAC we're talking about -- which attacked YouTube quite early on for not stopping all copyrighted songs from appearing on the site.
According to the report, JASRAC said: "We want everyone to recognize that Internet is not your private place," in defending the plan to charge royalties for such lyrical tweets. No, it's not your private place, but that also means it's not the industry's private place to automatically demand the right to collect money any time anyone utters a snippet of a lyric. Japan's copyright law is a lot less well developed than the US, and it doesn't really have fair use within the law (notably, Japan has been a big supporter of ACTA).
Either way, if this story is true and not just some joke (please, please, tell me it's a joke), it's really quite ridiculous. People tweeting lyrics are not harming anyone by any stretch of the imagination. They're fans. They're encouraging more people to find out about a song or to remember an old song. They're not taking away licensing rights or revenue or anything. They're sharing lyrics, which is something JASRAC should be encouraging.
Filed Under: japan, lyrics, royalties, tweets
Companies: jasrac, twitter
UK Charities Find Out They Need To Pay Yet Another Music Royalty
from the uncle-scrooge dept
Just in time for the holiday season, SteveD alerts us to the news that PPL, Phonographic Performance Limited -- a separate UK licensing group, which collects for performers and producers (unlike PRS, which is for songwriters/record companies) -- is pushing forward with demands for charity shops to pay up for a license on top of the license they already pay PRS. In the past, the UK government exempted charities from having to pay the PPL license, but they've now removed that exemption, and like so many music collections societies, PPL didn't bother to consider how it would look to shake down charity shops, and apparently just drove forward with plans. Nice of them. This is what happens, of course, when you create the statutory ability to shake down anyone who plays music. That right just expands more and more, and the musicians and songwriters never have to actually give people a reason to buy: they just sit back and collect.More Creative Fiction In Warner Music Royalty Statements
from the going-backwards? dept
With Tim Quirk's story about his fictional royalty statements from Warner Music, more people are beginning to talk about these kinds of things. Bob Lefsetz points to another report of a royalty statement of an unrecouped artist (and former major label exec), David Bach, who notes with some surprise that on his last royalty statement from Warner Music, the amount the band owed had gone up. In other words, the royalties that the band had accrued had somehow decreased:In May of 2007, I wrote a post about the wacky world of record company royalty recoupment.Now, to be fair, Bach still says that he was happy with his major record deal, in noting that it was effectively an "unsecured loan" in that he doesn't lose his house if it never gets recouped. He conveniently leaves out the clear explanation that the label is still making money based on the wholesale price of the album, which is many times over what royalties are due to recoup the advance. He also leaves out the fact that while it was an "unsecured loan," it also involved him giving up basically all rights to the music created under that deal forever (or, as the industry prefers, forever minus a day). Not sure that's really that great a deal. With a real loan, you don't also give up the lender something to keep forever. That's not a loan, it's a transaction.This week (Nov.-2009) - I received another royalty statement.
Wow!...we've gone backwards!
In May 2007, we were unrecouped to Warner Brothers to the tune of $174,073.84
Now...our balance is up to $174,717.56!
Talk about "pushing forward back!".
How is this possible?
Good question!
Still, the bigger issue is this idea that the amount that still needs to be recouped has gone backwards over time. It again raises serious questions about how Warner Music accounts for what it owes bands, whether they're recouped or unrecouped. I recognize that accounting may be a boring topic, but it's an important one that Warner has contractual obligations to keep accurate. And... plenty of other businesses with similar challenges seem to be able to keep track of what royalties are owed to whom. Why can't Warner Music keep it straight?
Filed Under: accounting, david bach, royalties, tim quirk
Companies: warner music group
Warner Music's Royalty Statements: Works Of Fiction
from the too-much-joy dept
For years we've all heard the stories about how bad the major labels are at accounting for royalties they owe bands. There have certainly been a large number of lawsuits from artists claiming that this rather opaque accounting system is used to hide money from musicians, with various multi-platinum selling musicians claiming they never saw a dime of royalties from their albums, thanks to major label accounting. This is, of course, rather amazing in this day and age where technology allows for amazingly accurate accounting practices -- even for massively complex operations. But, then again, these are the major labels we're talking about, and they're often proud of their technical cluelessness.Still, it's quite interesting to see a blog post, sent in by Quentin Hartman and written by the singer for the band Too Much Joy, Tim Quirk. Quirk is in an interesting position. Having been a moderately successful major label artist who is now an executive at digital music company Rhapsody, he's seen different sides of the business -- and in his must-read blog post, he details the absolute fiction that is a royalty statement from Warner Music Group -- leading to the flat-out false claim that Too Much Joy earned a grand total of $62.47 in digital royalties over five years across their three Warner albums. You really should read the whole thing, as it's quite detailed about how the major labels view most bands on their roster.
Back to my ridiculous Warner Bros. statement. As I flipped through its ten pages (seriously, it took ten pages to detail the $62.47 of income), I realized that Warner wasn't being evil, just careless and unconcerned -- an impression I confirmed a few days later when I spoke to a guy in their Royalties and Licensing department I am going to call Danny.As you hopefully know, with a major record label, the band gets an advance to record the album. From then on, the label no longer pays the band anything. Even though the band accrues royalties on albums sold, those royalties simply go towards repaying the advance. Most label bands never fully repay the advance, and are thus considered "unrecouped." This does not mean (as record label defenders will claim) that such bands were money losers for the label. The labels still take their own hefty cut from any album sales. They just also hang onto the tiny fraction of album sales that are officially designated for the actual musicians.
I asked Danny why there were no royalties at all listed from iTunes, and he said, "Huh. There are no domestic downloads on here at all. Only streams. And it has international downloads, but no international streams. I have no idea why." I asked Danny why the statement only seemed to list tracks from two of the three albums Warner had released -- an entire album was missing. He said they could only report back what the digital services had provided to them, and the services must not have reported any activity for those other songs. When I suggested that seemed unlikely -- that having every track from two albums listed by over a dozen different services, but zero tracks from a third album listed by any seemed more like an error on Warner's side, he said he'd look into it. As I asked more questions (Why do we get paid 50% of the income from all the tracks on one album, but only 35.7143% of the income from all the tracks on another? Why did 29 plays of a track on the late, lamented MusicMatch earn a total of 63 cents when 1,016 plays of the exact same track on MySpace earned only 23 cents?) he eventually got to the heart of the matter: :"We don't normally do this for unrecouped bands," he said. "But, I was told you'd asked."
Basically, what Quirk notes, is that whether through malice or indifference (or a combination of both), the general major label attitude towards "unrecouped" bands is that the accounting is meaningless, so they don't even bother. That means they make massive mistakes -- such as the time Warner just happened to make a $10,000 mistake in Warner's favor, and then mocked Quirk for even caring about such a measly sum.
Now, when it came to digital revenue, for most artists, Warner apparently doesn't even bother to tell artists what their digital royalties are. They're unrecouped, so it doesn't matter in the minds of Warner execs. Quirk, by nature of also being an industry exec was able to (thanks to a chance meeting at a conference and 13 months of waiting) get Warner to agree to detail his digital earnings. But, because the band is unlikely to pay off the nearly $400,000 in "unrecouped" advance money, basically Warner did a slipshod job of it all. What this tells you is that Warner either has no serious accounting system to track this sort of thing or has mastered the art of obfuscating everything and purposely acting like their accounting department is run by six-year-olds. I'm not sure which is scarier.
Now, Quirk is reasonably clear that he's just as likely to attribute all of this to a combination of indifference and incompetence than to malice -- and there's nothing to indicate otherwise. But, you do have to ask how seriously anyone can take any of the ridiculous numbers that Warner Music Group or the RIAA toss around concerning the music industry and "losses" due to "piracy" and such, when it can't even put together an accounting system that can track (let alone accurately count) the most basic information that it is contractually obligated to both track and report. It also should highlight, for any bands who still actually think signing a major record label contract makes sense, how little regard major labels like Warner Music Group actually have for most of the artists on their label. As Quirk notes in discussing the $10,000 error:
When I caught this mistake, and brought it to the attention of someone with the power to correct it, he wasn't just befuddled by my anger -- he laughed at it. "$10,000 is nothing!" he chuckled.So, perhaps, the next time that Warner Music claims that it deserves $22,500 for a "pirated" song, someone will point out that according to Warner Music's own accountants, such numbers are really just a "rounding error" and there's no need to pay them. Somehow, I get the feeling that Warner Music will take a different view on such numbers about then.
If you're like most people -- especially people in unrecouped bands -- "nothing" is not a word you ever use in conjunction with a figure like "$10,000," but he seemed oblivious to that. "It's a rounding error. It happens all the time. Why are you so worked up?"
Filed Under: business models, music, royalties, tim quirk, too much joy
Companies: warner music group
