The Copyright Royalty Board has set rates that companies like Apple and Amazon must pay music publishers for each digital track they sell. And the rates, drum roll please, . . are the same as they were before: 9 cents per song. So everyone can breathe easy. iTunes won’t shut down! (Not that it ever was going to shut down, but it was a good story).
Faced with an industry in transition, with new rules being written every day, the three-judge panel opted to do nothing. And maybe that was the prudent thing to do. But by setting these rates for the next five years, the Copyright Royalty Board missed an opportunity to help put the entire digital music industry on a more rational footing. As I argued yesterday, instead of a per-track fee, the Copyright Royalty Board should have set rates as a percentage of digital music revenues. That way, the whole industry could have grown together.
Until all music becomes free, at least.
“Until all music becomes free, at least”
And until all musicians take up day jobs.
Wouldn’t a percentage effectively be the same as a flat rate, considering how the labels seem unwilling in most cases to let people sell music for below 99 cents?
No, a flat rate increase simply balloons the publisher/songwriter royalty advance.
I’ve never understood TC’s insistence that music will someday be free. It’s just not going to happen, guys.
Except when it does happen. Which for millions of people, is quite regularly. Saying there’s no free music is like saying there’s no illegal drug use.
There’s the world as the law says it should be. And then there’s the world we all live in. The best laws are the ones you can enforce. If society doesn’t agree with it, enforcement gets a lot harder.
Millions of people pay, millions of people do not. It’s a matter of ability to do so and personal/group values. The recording industry, much like the financial markets is simply reacting to the shock created by rapidly declining physical music sales, because this was the basis of a very profitable, high-margin business.
The major distributors made the mistake of not reading the pace of innovation correctly. They got hit hard by a trifecta of consumer CD burners, MP3 compression and the advent of P2P. If you spent the 90’s paying $15.00 and up for a CD & often multiple copies of the same album, it’s obvious why so many people think the music industry owes them something.
Some music will always be free, some music will be paid for, there will be free shows, some people will pay $200+ for a concert.
@Sean: I’m guessing you are being sarcastic. In which case LOL!!
Wait, if the rates are effectively 9 cents, does this mean I could setup shop and sell tracks for 10cents (1 cent profit)?
I thought apple paid about 2/3 of the $0.99 to the record companies so what does the 9 cent figure mean?
Paraphrased from yesterday’s article:
Apple pays 70 cents from each track sold to the record companies (which then pay the music publishers, the actual owners of the copyright to each song, their cut)
The new era of music distribution has grown. Hope it can inspiring musician to create more beautifull music
To get a license from labels to sell online permanent download is quite difficult or even impossible except if you are Itune or MTV that’s why you have so much P2P activity. All online shop should be able to sell tracks for permanent download if they pay 0.70 c per track like Itune does.
What’s going to happen to Pandora? Does that mean it’s in the clear?
What happened to the challenge filed that the CRB is not a legal entity because these judges appointment violated the Constitutional Appointments law? The Copyright Royalty Judges are “inferior officers” of the Federal government who, under the Constitution, can only be appointed by the President, by the Courts or by the head of a Department of the Government. They were appointed by the “Librarian of Congress” who is not the head of a department of Government but the head of a Support Division of Congress only.
I want to know what happened to the brief filed challenging their appointment? No one seems to know anymore about it. It was filed in late may, early June of 2008.
Oh and on your questions about the muscians making music available or music being sold online or even played online? Remeber this…
SoundExchange has given itself the power to collect royalties for bands who arent even members of the RIAA or SoundExchange. This means if a band records a song, puts it out online for play or download then SoundExchange has the “Right” to collect royalties for it for each person who hears it or downloads it. If the Band wants their money, they have to join SE and, after a modest fee of course, they get a small percentage. If they do NOT join, SoundExchange gets to “Keep” the money.
Is it just me or does this seem vaguely remeniscent of old style Mafia Protection Rackets?