news.cnet.com — Songwriters, composers, and music publishers are making preparations to one day collect performance fees from Apple and other e-tailers for not just traditional music downloads but for downloads of films and TV shows as well. They contain music after all.
Sep 17, 2009 View in Crawl 4
lilrabbitfoofooSep 17, 2009
Repeated from below, since it answers your question.When artists started releasing albums on the Internet, the RIAA studios decided to fight back...by locking up all the new artists in contracts and then NEVER releasing their work. There are hundreds of bands locked up on shelves right now because the big 5 studios don't want these artists to compete with "their" manufactured product.
Closed AccountSep 17, 2009
Thumbs up for "Pull the other one, it's got bells on it."
hamletlereSep 17, 2009
By your own statement, these artists signed a contract with the studios. If they had just started releasing music on the Internet by themselves, though wouldn't have a problem.Like them or not, the record labels do perform a valuable service that most bands need: promotion. Without that, it's very hard to rise above the noise of all of the competing bands. Yes, the artist could do the promotion themselves, but I'm guessing that it is very time consuming and tedious (although I wouldn't be surprised if record labels suppressed competing promoters), which would really cut down on the artists ability to make new music.I don't like the big labels and their current methods and attitudes, but too many people think all a band has to do to be successful is play well, and that there is no place for this sort of "middle man".
chrishbSep 18, 2009
Greed, one of the seven deadly sins.
applebyterSep 18, 2009
I thought the RIAA wanted to END piracy and NOT make it stronger!!
heavywaveSep 18, 2009
Sadly all over countries follow. Here in Australia you can't legally copy a DVD unless it's broken (no idea how you are supposed to do it), thanks to Australian movie industry.
heavywaveSep 18, 2009
Smaller labels do it too. And when the contract is over they suddenly lose all the master records.
tgfooSep 18, 2009
To be fair, it's not the labels, it's organizations like BMI and ASCAP, who represent song writers and collect and distribute royalties for them. This has nothing to do with the RIAA or the record labels. And yes, asking for royalties to be paid for a movie download (which is the same as buying a DVD) or a 30 second preview is ridiculous.
mscripSep 18, 2009
>> "Aren't the people creating the song the artists already? You put it like the artist is the most important dude here, while they are all equally important."If someone buys a John Mayer CD... they are buying it for John Mayer... not for Bill Smith the studio engineer.I was just pointing out that the artist, or singer, or whatever you wanna call them... gets paid very little per song or CD.Aren't we always complaining that the artists are getting screwed by the labels? That's all I was saying.