Apple royalty skirmish ends in stalemate

Apple is not the villain here.

Apple is NOT a recording label! Those artists are paid by their *labels*, not directly by Apple. Those self-serving labels slurp up *70 percent* of each sale. Of that, less than a third ends up in their artists' hands. How is that *Apple's* fault?

Apple (and eMusic, etc.) invest a lot of money in their infrastructure: servers, bandwidth, graphic designers, copy-writers, online review moderators, etc., all have to be paid too. (And I doubt iTunes itself is cheap to develop.)

Why artists continue to grant online publishing rights to their labels I have no idea; any decent agent should have long-ago started negotiating directly with companies like Apple for online distribution rights. Let the record labels handle old-school media... and nothing else.

What's that I hear?

Does it amuse me that the people who actually create the music are getting less than 10% of the money? No.

I know some good friends who are in the music business, they may make albums, they may make music videos. Never shall their pen grace the legal paper of the Recording Ass.

Bluff

Like Apple was ever going to close iTunes... A win for common sense or a win for the corporate bully?

Eh?

The whole row is about the producers trying to hike up royalty payments for digital downloads above the rate which they get for CDs etc..

They're making a special case about downloads. Why should they get more when you're giving the public less? (they don't get a physical item, the music is lossily compressed, no album cover).

When the music industry starts complaining that they don't get any money from the sale of iPods then you know something is seriously wrong (ie. they're being greedy).

@jeremy - correction...

"Its only since the invention of the record player that money has been made from recordings, for the other 1000s of years in our history, the money was made from performance of music."

While it (must) be true that "Its only since the invention of the record player that money has been made from recordings", in fact before record players (and phonographs) music was sold on paper rolls played by player-pianos and before that as music sheets - and that is how the PUBLISHERS of music came to be so important. The whole royalty/publishing situation stems from the way that in the "old days" the songs were literally "published" as a transcription of the tune along with the lyric.

When recorded music came a long, actual local talent playing music in a local venue was seen as under threat (surprise) the various means than were put in place to try and redress the balance and make sure artists got paid in recompense have ended up with the creation of Sony/BMG et als.

So something went wrong somewhere eh?!?

What?

This isn't a story about about a one-on-one grudge match between Steve Jobs and Prince Philip.

I feel completely cheated.

@ Sean - get your facts right

"Why artists continue to grant online publishing rights to their labels I have no idea"

They don't.

Artists sign publishing deals with - hey, you may have heard of them - publishers. Often before they have signed a label deal.

If an artist signs a deal with a big publisher that is also owner by a label, it's because they think they're going to get the best return possible. What's wrong with that?

@Danny

"The story is about the Record Labels wanting to soak up even more $s for doing the same fuck all that they do in the case of digital music."

Not this story.

The Copyright Tribunal case was being argued by the publishers, for the separate copyright of public performance. Do you know the difference, or do you just get your "facts" from Boing Boing?

Apple saw its chance to lower costs by f*cking over songwriters. And you sided with the people who want to f*ck over songwriters.

You're a real hero. Give yourself a medal.