The Royalty Scam - New York Times
You must read this article. Billy Bragg brings up some interesting issues, and I think he's right on the money. This quote especially made me think:
"The claim that sites such as MySpace and Bebo are doing us a favor by promoting our work is disingenuous. Radio stations also promote our work, but they pay us a royalty that recognizes our contribution to their business. Why should that not apply to the Internet, too?"
The moral of this story: For years, the record labels have been making loads of money off of artists, yet sharing very little of the profits with the artists themselves. Along comes the internet, promising new avenues of distribution for artists, yet the artists still don't seem to be getting fairly compensated for their work! Mr. Bragg feels, and I agree with him, that we need to find new methods for artists to protect and be compensated for their intellectual property.
3 comments:
The more and more I read this crap, I think screw the labels. Do it yourself. Promote your own music. Find your own way. People are going to beg, borrow, and steal your music if they want to, whether you're "signed" or not. We all want to make a buck off of our creation, of course, but maybe the days of making "real big" money from music is over. The money will have to come from somewere else. I think we're missing something somewhere. Music and the arts in general started in the public domain, and it looks like its going to eventually end up there again. Am I crazy?
-Jason@PSB
I would just like to see artists make a decent living from their work, not necessarily get rich. We've seen so many artists over the years who have had huge sales but can't pay their bills anyway. That's because all the money was going back into the record labels to fund their numerous mistakes. I just think if we could cut out the labels, maybe we could find ways to distribute music and allow composers and artists to be fairly compensated!
True. Big distribution without big labels would make it easier. But with "album" sales down. I think independence on and through the use of internet distribution is where it's at.
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