Comments on: RIAA At It Again

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 19 May 2006 00:37:05 +0000

I worked at the radio station in college and know that they got paid when we played a song, I had to turn in logs that were used for that purpose. The problem I always had was that the middle men made all of the money.

People don’t understand that even big money makers like the Beatles, didn’t really start making major bucks until they started their own label. A lot of the older groups and song writers don’t even own the rights to their hits, they get nothing when they are played.

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Thu, 18 May 2006 21:50:51 +0000

If the people who were creating the music were getting more than a pittance, I might have some sympathy, but the only people really making any profit are the labels.

It has always been that way: musicians have been stiffed by labels since shortly after Edison first waxed a cylinder. While the AFM does a lot of routine work enforcing contracts on ordinary gigs at clubs, etc., their high-powered work… the reason I pay my union dues with a smile… involves protecting whole classes of musicians of whom the labels routinely take unfair advantage. A couple of years ago, we had an episode locally in which Tejano groups were being badly treated by a small in-state label. The union eventually brought the label to fairer terms, though it does not always come out so well.

Listeners may not think of it, but musicians and the recording industry are very nearly natural enemies. As listeners become the labels’ new enemy, maybe they’ll realize what musicians have experienced for about a century.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 18 May 2006 15:14:39 +0000

If the people who were creating the music were getting more than a pittance, I might have some sympathy, but the only people really making any profit are the labels.

I don’t doubt in the slightest that performers are paying royalties to the labels when they perform their own music on tour.

By: Len Cleavelin

Len Cleavelin — Thu, 18 May 2006 12:02:45 +0000

Gave your link (to CNet) a quick read.

One of my NODWISH gifts to myself last year was a Pioneer AirWare XM2Go portable receiver (I have 3 XM radios in toto; I LOVE XM!–but I digress…). One of the AirWare’s features is that you can record up to about 4 hours of XM programming off the air, and listen later. OR…. you can in effect “rewind” the last programming you heard, and replay it instantly.

The Inno is basically an audio TiVo, and should be handled similarly.

I have no doubt whatsoever in my mind that the RIAA has so obsessed over trying to squeeze every last penny of royalties from the consumer that their brains have dried up. I’m sure they have someone in some think tank or laboratory somewhere trying to figure out how to make you pay royalties for every song you sing in the shower, or every song you hum while doing the dishes or mowing the yard. And from there, it’s only a short jump to figuring out a way to make you cough up royalties whenever you think of a song.

Those RIAA mo-fos should be the first ones lined up against the wall and gunned down when The Revolution comes….