Music Banter - View Single Post - Downloading your music vs buying your music

Gavin B. · 06-24-2009, 01:16 AM

If an album or song is out of issue I don't have any ethical problem with downloading it a file sharing website.

I rarely purchase a compact disk anymore for a couple of reasons. 1. The retail price of a cd is grossly overpriced and 2. I'm running out of space to store my record collection. I have nearly 1000 gigs of storage space on my computer and currently have around 75,000 songs on my computer. My computer is hooked up to my sound system and I can rip, burn, remix, dub, crossfade and do mash ups of songs all on my computer. I prerecord my radio show and broadcast it via Shoutcast so I don't even need to leave home to do my show anymore.

Digital downloads of albums are about half the price of a compact disk and you can find a wider range of music in digital modality these days. Indie record stores are a dying breed in the United State and stores like Borders and Best Buy have scaled back on the number of titles they carry because of shelf space. The good part about digital music is it doesn't cost the retailer anything to carry slow selling titles, so you can find a lot of titles that are out of issue in compact disk form.

I download music at AltNet, Amazon and Rhapsody and YouTube. The YouTube stuff is free because I convert the videos into MP3 form and there's no law against downloading videos, therefore converting them to MP3s after the fact is not against the law either. I had a horrific experience with iTunes and will never purchase another music file from them if my life depended on it. iTunes uses spyware and malware in the Digital Rights Management (DRM) software which literally destroyed the hard drive of one of my computers and none of the iTunes software works as advertised.

I happen to know a great deal about how royalty points are distributed and can tell you that file sharing is not stealing very much income, if any, from the artists who make the music. The entire campaign of the major labels to brand file sharing as thievery is bogus because the biggest music thieves are the major record labels who don't pay royalties to their artists.

Roger McGuinn once told me he never received a penny of royalties for any of the Byrds recordings on Columbia Records. The Byrds had seven albums that sold more than a million units in the Sixties and early Seventies and McGuinn told me that with the exception of a small advance to make each album, none of the members of the Byrds saw a penny in royalties for any of their albums. McGuinn now makes his own albums at home, on his own label, and has negotiated a 50/50 split on royalties with any retailer that carries his music. Roger told me he's making more money on royalties now than he ever made when the Byrds were the top selling American rock group.

Most of the royalty money is distributed on the basis of a complex point system which the record label negotiates with each perspective artist. Here's how it works:

Usually an artist can be offered anywhere between 10 to 20 royalty points depending on his/her credibility etc. The second royalty source is "mechanical" royalties. These are royalties payable to the songwriters. Last time I checked the statutory rate was around 7 cents per song (possibly changed again by now). A songwriter who writes 100% of an album's worth of let's say 10 songs will therefore make 70 cents per album sold. This is payable from record one. It is therefore extremely beneficial for artists to write the music they record!

Anyway, the only real drama with mechanicals is that labels somehow get away with paying artists only 75% of the statutory rate, which means labels are effectively witholding 25% of the copyright income. There is absolutely no reason for them to do this apart from the fact that they have always got away with it! This is one thing I would like to see changed. Very successful artists can usually negotiate 100% of stat. New artists, very very rarely.

Let's go back to our "artist" royalties because this is where ALL the problems really lie. Let me explain what the problem is really all about.

Let's say a major label has just signed your band "The Ahmesh Conspiracy" and offered you an exhorbitant amount of money. Your attorney has negotiated an artist royalty of 15 points. Traditionally not bad for a new artist. Here's the way it works...

Every single promotional penny spent on promoting your record, be it video costs, indie radio promotion or retail programs etc, is recoupable from your royalty points in some way, depending on how your contract is set up. Some things are charged to the artist at 100%, some 50%. What this means is that in order for you to recoup let's say $100,000 in promotion, the record company will have to receive income almost 10 times that amount before you clear that recoupment. (Don't forget, you the artist don't see a penny until your recoupment is clear).

How is this so? When $100,000 of income goes to the record label, only 15% of that goes towards your recoupment. You are recouping at a snail's pace because you are recouping at 15% of the pie! That means that realistically, you can never really make money because if records are selling well, the label will continue to spend X amount of promotional dollars which in turn gets recouped at the 15% snail's pace.

Under this system Columbia Records wasn't sending McGuinn a royalty check every quarter, rather Columbia sent him a bill for recoupable costs that the Byrds owed Columbia Record for studio time, distribution, promotional and touring expenses and other incidental expenses.

In some ways the digital music revolution has liberated the music artists. Now anybody with a digital mixer can record an album and artists no longer need to purchase studio time. Digital music doesn't require equipment to press an album because the entire physical production of an album can be done at home. Nor does digital music require a distribution network to ship all the albums to various stores across the nation. And finally an music artist can do his own promotion via internet retailers and social networking sites.

Record labels have pretty much outlived their usefulness to recording artisits in the digital age and my best advice to any aspiring musician or musical group is to produce, record, distribute and promote your own music because contract with a major label is a big swindle.

06-24-2009, 01:16 AM	#101 (permalink)
Gavin B. Model Worker Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 1,248	If an album or song is out of issue I don't have any ethical problem with downloading it a file sharing website. I rarely purchase a compact disk anymore for a couple of reasons. 1. The retail price of a cd is grossly overpriced and 2. I'm running out of space to store my record collection. I have nearly 1000 gigs of storage space on my computer and currently have around 75,000 songs on my computer. My computer is hooked up to my sound system and I can rip, burn, remix, dub, crossfade and do mash ups of songs all on my computer. I prerecord my radio show and broadcast it via Shoutcast so I don't even need to leave home to do my show anymore. Digital downloads of albums are about half the price of a compact disk and you can find a wider range of music in digital modality these days. Indie record stores are a dying breed in the United State and stores like Borders and Best Buy have scaled back on the number of titles they carry because of shelf space. The good part about digital music is it doesn't cost the retailer anything to carry slow selling titles, so you can find a lot of titles that are out of issue in compact disk form. I download music at AltNet, Amazon and Rhapsody and YouTube. The YouTube stuff is free because I convert the videos into MP3 form and there's no law against downloading videos, therefore converting them to MP3s after the fact is not against the law either. I had a horrific experience with iTunes and will never purchase another music file from them if my life depended on it. iTunes uses spyware and malware in the Digital Rights Management (DRM) software which literally destroyed the hard drive of one of my computers and none of the iTunes software works as advertised. I happen to know a great deal about how royalty points are distributed and can tell you that file sharing is not stealing very much income, if any, from the artists who make the music. The entire campaign of the major labels to brand file sharing as thievery is bogus because the biggest music thieves are the major record labels who don't pay royalties to their artists. Roger McGuinn once told me he never received a penny of royalties for any of the Byrds recordings on Columbia Records. The Byrds had seven albums that sold more than a million units in the Sixties and early Seventies and McGuinn told me that with the exception of a small advance to make each album, none of the members of the Byrds saw a penny in royalties for any of their albums. McGuinn now makes his own albums at home, on his own label, and has negotiated a 50/50 split on royalties with any retailer that carries his music. Roger told me he's making more money on royalties now than he ever made when the Byrds were the top selling American rock group. Most of the royalty money is distributed on the basis of a complex point system which the record label negotiates with each perspective artist. Here's how it works: Usually an artist can be offered anywhere between 10 to 20 royalty points depending on his/her credibility etc. The second royalty source is "mechanical" royalties. These are royalties payable to the songwriters. Last time I checked the statutory rate was around 7 cents per song (possibly changed again by now). A songwriter who writes 100% of an album's worth of let's say 10 songs will therefore make 70 cents per album sold. This is payable from record one. It is therefore extremely beneficial for artists to write the music they record! Anyway, the only real drama with mechanicals is that labels somehow get away with paying artists only 75% of the statutory rate, which means labels are effectively witholding 25% of the copyright income. There is absolutely no reason for them to do this apart from the fact that they have always got away with it! This is one thing I would like to see changed. Very successful artists can usually negotiate 100% of stat. New artists, very very rarely. Let's go back to our "artist" royalties because this is where ALL the problems really lie. Let me explain what the problem is really all about. Let's say a major label has just signed your band "The Ahmesh Conspiracy" and offered you an exhorbitant amount of money. Your attorney has negotiated an artist royalty of 15 points. Traditionally not bad for a new artist. Here's the way it works... Every single promotional penny spent on promoting your record, be it video costs, indie radio promotion or retail programs etc, is recoupable from your royalty points in some way, depending on how your contract is set up. Some things are charged to the artist at 100%, some 50%. What this means is that in order for you to recoup let's say $100,000 in promotion, the record company will have to receive income almost 10 times that amount before you clear that recoupment. (Don't forget, you the artist don't see a penny until your recoupment is clear). How is this so? When $100,000 of income goes to the record label, only 15% of that goes towards your recoupment. You are recouping at a snail's pace because you are recouping at 15% of the pie! That means that realistically, you can never really make money because if records are selling well, the label will continue to spend X amount of promotional dollars which in turn gets recouped at the 15% snail's pace. Under this system Columbia Records wasn't sending McGuinn a royalty check every quarter, rather Columbia sent him a bill for recoupable costs that the Byrds owed Columbia Record for studio time, distribution, promotional and touring expenses and other incidental expenses. In some ways the digital music revolution has liberated the music artists. Now anybody with a digital mixer can record an album and artists no longer need to purchase studio time. Digital music doesn't require equipment to press an album because the entire physical production of an album can be done at home. Nor does digital music require a distribution network to ship all the albums to various stores across the nation. And finally an music artist can do his own promotion via internet retailers and social networking sites. Record labels have pretty much outlived their usefulness to recording artisits in the digital age and my best advice to any aspiring musician or musical group is to produce, record, distribute and promote your own music because contract with a major label is a big swindle. __________________ There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff. Townes Van Zandt Last edited by Gavin B.; 06-24-2009 at 01:24 AM.