the music industry

So, in one week the music industry has managed to get signatures from artists that are dead in support of a (retroactive!) copyright extension in the UK, and now the RIAA is trying to lower the royalties it pays to artists for “innovative” music distribution.

Let us get this straight – on the one hand they are saying ‘oh but the poor starving artists’ (you know, Sir Cliff Richard might stop receiving royalties from his hits from the late 50s! Horrible! What about the upkeep on his villa on Barbados!). The extension is so important that even some deceased artists support it.

On the other hand the labels are saying that for ‘innovative’ music distribution – read that as in ‘digital’ – the artists should receive lower royalties, so that the labels get to keep a bigger cut. It makes total sense, right? The distribution costs are practically zero, as a consequence the justification for the record labels as a middleman is becoming, well, let’s say ‘questionable’, so the artists should get a smaller slice of the pie.

Music industry logic at its best.