By Jeff Price
Here’s some news – the old school music industry has found a way to get your money – they actually steal it.
In the last 26 months, TuneCore Artists sold over 370 million units of their recordings and earned over $140 million dollars in gross music sales. There is another $100+ MILLION dollars earned by TuneCore Songwriters in mechanical and public performance royalties out there in the world waiting to be collected.
This money, YOUR money, is sitting with global performing rights and other copyright collection organizations. If the rightful owner of this money (meaning you) does not collect it, every penny of it is given to Warner, Sony, EMI, Universal and other entities.
The old guards were smart enough to actually lobby and create a shadow industry with these global copyright organizations to circumvent copyright law and funnel your money back to them. The industry even gave this money a quaint and mysterious name – “Black Box Money” – money that sits, unmonitored by governments, uncollected by the rightful owner, watched by the watchmen until, after some random period of time, it’s handed by these global copyright collection organizations to Warner, EMI, Universal, Sony and others based on their “market share.”
Yes, you read that correctly, they are taking your money. Whether you want to or not, you work for them.
And for those who could not find “legal” ways to take your money, they just outright steal it.
As TorrentFreak reported, on Friday, July 1st, 2011:
…more than 50 police, tax officials and staff from Spain’s Audit Office were involved in Operation Saga, the culmination of a two-year investigation into the dealings of Spanish music rights and anti-piracy groups SGAE and SDAE.
The complaint alleges that SGAE operatives set up companies and used revenue destined for artists to generate profit for themselves and their families, and that money bound for artists living abroad was diverted to personal Swiss bank accounts.”
These absolute bastards. And you think things like this are not happening elsewhere around the world? They are.
So now we have two types of thieves – the ones that legally steal your money and the ones that illegally steal your money.
It’s inherent in the system, it’s morally wrong, it makes me sick, and it’s time to change it. In addition to all the other usual TuneCore things, this year we are creating and building a system on behalf of TuneCore Artists and Songwriters to get you every penny, or fraction of penny, of your money from anywhere it sits around the world.
Think we can’t do it? We can. They said we couldn’t do it with distribution and we did. Now we have the transparency to see what’s going on behind closed doors, as well as the power of hundreds of thousands of you behind us to make certain this change occurs.
Want an example? If you write a song you get six legal copyrights. One of the six is called “reproduction.” This means each time your song is reproduced (meaning downloaded, manufactured onto a CD or vinyl, streamed on the internet, etc…), the songwriter must be paid a royalty called a “mechanical royalty.”
In the United States, if the song is under five minutes, the mechanical royalty is $0.091 per reproduction (a little less than a dime). If it’s over five minutes the royalty rate comes from a formula based on the number of minutes of the song. In the United States, if a song is bought and downloaded from iTunes, the “mechanical royalty” money is paid to the label and the label is supposed to pay the songwriter. (If you are not the record label, good luck getting accurate accounting.)
Outside of the United States, the mechanical royalty rate is a percentage of the sale price of a download. Your mechanical royalty money from a paid download or stream is given to a copyright organization called a “Performing Rights Organization” (also known as a PRO) or a mechanical royalty collection agency. There it sits until you show up to get it. And if you don’t show up, the major music companies get your money legally handed to them and they get to keep it. That’s how they built the system: archaic, byzantine, complicated and mysterious. How else could they get away with it?
Don’t feel bad if you didn’t know this money existed, most people don’t. They are counting on you to not understand the rules. Copyright law is complex and not exactly a general topic of conversation. Hell, most managers and some lawyers don’t even know this stuff. But the bottom line is this, unless you are a member of these collection organizations, or in a relationship with a collection organization that is in a relationship with this other collection organization, no one contacts you to tell you they have money for you.
And if you are aware of the rules around the six legal copyrights and know for certain that you are owed money, some of these copyright collection organizations make it next to impossible for you to get it. For example, ever sell or stream a song in Japan? Your mechanical royalty money is sitting with the Japanese PRO called JASRAC. Want to get it from JASRAC? Here’s an excerpt from an email they sent us when we asked how to join:
“JASRAC membership (requires) a base of activity in Japan (company registration, contact address, phone number and bank account in Japan) among other requirements.”
“…among other requirements”? Want to explain what those are instead of just letting us guess? You are sitting on our money after all.
To get JASRAC to give you your money, not only do you need to have “ a base of activity in Japan,” but you also must not already be affiliated with any other PRO anywhere in the world – this includes the three U.S. PRO’s: ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. Oh, and by the way, ASCAP, BMI and SESAC don’t collect mechanical royalties – they collect something else called Public Performance Royalties. You think this is confusing? It is. And these confusing laws and rules, combined with the old industry setting up an infrastructure to take advantage of it are what get you screwed.
How in the world do you know you are being cheated if you can’t understand or read the instructions!
This pisses me off. IT’S YOUR MONEY! Once again we have a bunch of worldwide bullies taking advantage of artists.
I started this company with the mission of making the world better for musicians and giving them a voice. With your help, we were able to change distribution. Now we are going to do it again. We’re going get this money for you and put it into your pockets. And if they say no (which they legally can’t) or if they try to screw around, we will sue them. Hell or high water, we are going to get your existing and future money.
You can bet on it.
