25 Feb 2003 | KM said...

And yet the RIAA clearly has a stick up its butt about this kind of music sharing.

Rightfully so. How many of you play music or are in a band that relies on royalties, etc.?

25 Feb 2003 | Darrel said...

Rightfully so. How many of you play music or are in a band that relies on royalties, etc.?

Oh jeez...who let this guy in?

Show me a new band making a living solely off of their label's royalties.

25 Feb 2003 | Darrel said...

And to further the discussion. If it's illegal to listen to other's music while online, is it illegal to listen to other's music when you come over to their house?

25 Feb 2003 | wayne said...

To further the discussion even more. I've been in bands and get royalties. It's not much, almost nothing, actually. Mostly because the albums barely exist, small label, zero commercial exposure, and we stuck-up the joint like a bar band of drunken idiots. All the usual excuses apply.

As far as band revenue goes CD royalties rank pretty low. To make $8.00 collectively as a band we had to:
a) Sell a $15 t-shirt either on the website or at a show.
b) Get 2 people into said show. ($10 each [+/- $2])
c) Sell 3 Bootleg CDs at the show. ($10 each)
d) Sell at least 8 CDs through label distribution ($15+ each)

Back in the day (2 years ago) Napster got a LOT of people in the club doors. The door take has always been the #1 moneymaker in every band Ive been in. Without Napster many of those people wouldnt have heard our tunes. They wouldnt have bought a shirt or a bootleg. CDs in the stores/Amazon are too expensive to gamble on unknown schmucks like me. That, and I am not on the shelves.

I dont speak for other musicians, just myself. For my small-time acts and endeavors the music is the art. The distribution of it is for people to enjoy when Im not around. The shows are for me to make a couple bucks playing my tunes that others enjoy hearing. I guess all Im saying is that its my experience that a CD is a vehicle for other revenue. If the money was in royalties The Rolling Stones wouldnt be touring.

Not that it's an excuse to steal. I think taking an album and not paying for it is wrong It is part of the money an artist makes. You should eventually buy it. But dont let Metallica fool you into thinking its their bread and butter. It's just half the butter.

26 Feb 2003 | KM said...

Show me a new band making a living solely off of their label's royalties.

Do you know what you are talking about? RIAA is upset over publishing royalties not mechanical royalties. Bands/musicians CAN and DO make a living off these royalties. So fuck off.

26 Feb 2003 | popo said...

popo

26 Feb 2003 | Don Schenck said...

Darrel ... it probably WOULD be illegal if left up to the RIAA.

:-)

26 Feb 2003 | bobo said...

a case study on royalty break-down for the artist.

everything i've read says tours is where artists make their money. but if no one's heard you, they're not going to pay $30 to see your show.

26 Feb 2003 | Dixie Chick said...

When Dan Rather interviewed the Dixie Chicks he brought up the fact that they have sold almost half a billion dollars in CDs and the girls' response was "I try not to think of that" and "I don't even have a million in the bank". They said that they have a great manager and their record deal was as good as they could get in Nashville. Most of their money comes from touring. I didn't hear anything about radio royalties so it must not amount to much.

You can see the interview on CMT: Wednesday, 8 p.m. ET/PT, 'Dixie Chicks Uncut' With Host Dan Rather.

26 Feb 2003 | Darrel said...

KM:

Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but telling me to fuck off ain't gonna educate me none.

Again, show me a new artist that can make a living off of royalties only.

And show me how listening to music that someone else owns is clear-cut stealing of those said royalties.

The evidence I've seen is that the bands see very little in the way of actual royalties from the album sales.

As for radio royalties, my understanding is that that is next to nothing. As for MTV, I've heard that labels typically have to pay to have videos shown.

Again, maybe I need some educatin'. Educate me.

26 Feb 2003 | James said...

You also need to pay to get air time on radios.

26 Feb 2003 | Steve said...

I don't know the music biz that well, but paying radio stations to get airplay has been illegal for 50 years, thanks to the big payola scandals of the 50s. There are other things that go on to try to get airplay, but in actuality radio stations are required to pay royalties on the music they play.

26 Feb 2003 | James said...

It's not payola in the classic sense, try this article for some info.

http://dir.salon.com/ent/feature/2001/03/14/payola/index.html

26 Feb 2003 | scottmt said...

Hey Scott, I'm in Ken Kozar's Usefulness class. Thanks again for coming by .. I can only hope there's work at a forward thinking firm like yours somewhere in my future.

Ethics aside. Some facts. personally I could care less about a M$ product, Apple user here. I'm sure you sign your soul to Bill Gates/RIAA in the EULA.

I read a Newsweek story about 3 degrees and followed the Slashdot thred (plenty ms bashing discussion), which pointed me to another story at News.com.

MS made a deal with the RIAA to include the "dj" software. Anyone really surprised? Think MS would buck the RIAA/MPAA? Heck no! We can only hope Apple will, and you know Linux is all over it.

It seems Microsoft took a rather unusual design approach. Read those articles, its intriguing. Think mtv's real world meets adolecent developers... really.

It was a pitch by a single employee as well.

Read the articles for some good info.

26 Feb 2003 | ek said...

I've never quite understood this MS hatred, why waste the energy? And for plenty of people MS makes products that are of tremendous value. Why people feel the need to equate Microsoft and Bill Gates with the devil is beyond me. Do you think that Steve Jobs is a saint?

As for the articles, at least according to the Newsweek piece, here's how MS persuaded the labels to agree to allowing the musicmix feature:

Threedegrees is also a fascinating experiment in how music can be legally shared over the Internet. After much negotiation, the labels OKd musicmix, once Microsoft agreed to somewhat hobble its features. (Playlists have a maximum of 60 tunes, and the songs wont play unless the original owner is participating.)

Are those restrictions really so onerous? Coming back to an example someone made above, when people leave a party they generally take their music with them, don't they (if they brought music in the first place, that is)?

Any why do you hope that Apple will "buck" the RIAA? Are you saying you want them to produce their own version of Napster? To what end?

26 Feb 2003 | Darrel said...

Apple isn't caving in to the argument that hardware/software needs to be the police of intellectual property. This is a good thing.

MS, on the other hand, is doing all it can to make MS *the* digital rights media platform.

Both are interesting strategies, and, for the most part, both are pointless if the RIAA would just wake up.

It's also interesting to watch Sony...who needs to make hardware that appeals to consumers (ie, no copy protection crap on the MP3 player) but also need to suck as much profit out of it's media assets as it can.

What to do? What to do?

26 Feb 2003 | Mathew said...

Wayne said "But dont let Metallica fool you into thinking its their bread and butter. It's just half the butter."

- It should be noted that Metallica has a much better record deal than most bands, having renegotiated after having early success, and now controlling their own music. So for them, royalties are a much bigger piece of their income than for your average major label band.

26 Feb 2003 | SU said...

From that Newsweek article:

After much negotiation, the labels OKd musicmix, once Microsoft agreed to somewhat hobble its features. (Playlists have a maximum of 60 tunes, and the songs wont play unless the original owner is participating.)

How is this different from internet radio? Ostensibly, the radio station itself is the "original owner" of the music and the music stops when they go off the air (i.e. stop participating). As for their playlists, internet radio stations don't have one per se they certainly list what has been played, but they don't preview what *could* be playing in the future.

26 Feb 2003 | scottmt said...

Hi ek: I don't so much waste energy on hating microsoft .. its just part of me :) They are terrific at doing business. And not many business men are Saints. Gates is a better businessman than Jobs, I think we can agree on that. pardon my dramatica.

I find the restrictions agreed upon under the DMCA to be just that : restrictions based on flawed law. The RIAA and its DMCA backed power is kind of scary to me.

SU: This is peer-to-peer. Thats a technical distinction anyway. Most internet radio stations are server based. As far as ownership rights I really don't know, like I said the DMCA is changing things, and its so technical and foggy.

28 Feb 2003 | Paul Watson said...

I wasted a lunch hour installing that 3Degrees nonsense. Then it did not work. Much fiddling later it works, but then people in the group spent their time hijacking the airwaves, playing what they wanted and changing the background to pr0n.

Also I am youngish (23) and while not quite the age group MS was targeting, not that far off. But I felt insulted by the Barbieness of the whole thing.

3Degrees is like Barbies Magic Van on LSD.

28 Feb 2003 | ek said...

That's a good point Paul. I think it's funny that a lot of big companies seem to think that to create "cool" products they just need to throw a bunch of kids together in an appropriately hip place and give them a bunch of money. Didn't work during the .com era and, in my opinion, still doesn't work.

Take the iPod as an example -- probably considered one of the coolest consumer electronics products on the market today. And yet it was not designed by a bunch of kids and has zero "Barbieness" (that's a great word! ;-).

This whole "designed by gen x/y/whatever" thing is just another gimmick. How about just getting a few people who are really good at what they do together and letting them do their jobs?

29 Dec 2003 | billig Handy said...

nice!