By Jeff Price
An artist’s copyrights should be respected. The choice to charge or give away his or her creations should be up to the artist, and the artist alone.
When you cut through all the press releases and rhetoric of the RIAA, it boils down to getting the legally required licenses and paying the people (or entities) that control the copyrights to the songs and recordings. I could not agree more.
One of the many problems I have with the RIAA is not their supporting this fundamental principle, but their tactics and blatant disregard for anyone who is not one of their members. Suing grandma and college students is probably not the best idea. Pretending the world has not changed and everything should stay the same makes no sense. In addition, in many cases their positions and actions stifle revenue while slowing the growth and consumption of music. But what gets me most upset is this:
The RIAA wraps itself in a flag of respecting and paying copyright holders, both principles I adamantly agree with. However, as they sue, lobby, and legislate to assure the rightful copyright holders get paid, the members that make up the RIAA knowingly take hundreds of millions of dollars of other people’s copyright money.
Here’s how they do it:
Each time a song is downloaded, streamed, or publicly performed, the songwriter is owed a separate royalty. In 2009, of the more than €7.152 billion earned globally by songwriters (about $10 billion U.S.), 95% of the songwriters did not get their cut because: (a) the places that had their money didn’t know whose it was, or (b) the places that had the money DID know whose it was, but made it impossible for the rightful owner (earner?) to collect it. When the rightful owner does not pick up this money, it’s given to Sony, Warner Bros, Universal, EMI and others based on their market share. These leading music companies, and the entities that give the money to them, know full well this is not their money, but they take it anyway.
Is it deliberate? No. When the old industry created a byzantine labyrinth loaded with archaic, and now out-of-date rules, they had no idea of what the future would bring. They certainly didn’t predict it would legally funnel them hundreds of millions of dollars of other peoples’ copyright money. But this is the end result, and they are abundantly aware of it. Sadly, there is absolutely no legal reason for them to change the system (and since when did morals count?).
Why are the world’s songwriters not in an uproar? Two reasons: (1) Knowledge. Copyright rules and laws are complex and boring. Many do not know they earned money, let alone know that it’s just sitting out there in the world waiting for them to collect. (2) Lack of transparency. No one tells songwriters the complete story; where their money is, how it flows, and, most importantly, how much they should expect to be paid each and every time their song is downloaded or streamed anywhere in the world.
There are no more excuses for this.
In the old music industry, lack of transparency came from literally not knowing. For example, you could know how many CDs you shipped, but you could not know how many of them sold. In today’s digital music industry, the only reason you don’t know something is because someone is choosing not to tell you—I can assure you they have the information.
So, songwriters are kept in the dark, rates are not disclosed, roadblocks are created to stop people from being able to get to their money, condescending “experts” pat the artist on the head and tell him or her to just focus on writing music and don’t worry yourself with this confusing “business” part of the industry. The end result: songwriters’ pockets are picked without their even knowing.
As just one example, in addition to the $200 million dollars TuneCore customers earned from the sale of the recording of their songs, there is another separate $50 million or so dollars they earned but did not get.
At some point something’s got to give—you can’t expect to take 95% of the world’s songwriters’ money and not have someone finally do something about it.
On Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011, the change will come…
-Jeff
