AfterDawn: Tech news

British pop stars want more power in the digital age of music

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 04 Oct 2008 6:28 User comments (11)

British pop stars want more power in the digital age of music This morning 60 of Britain's largest pop stars announced they are forming the Featured Artists' Coalition , a group that will seek out greater control of the artists' music in the digital age.
Robbie Williams, Radiohead, the Verve and Kaiser Chiefs are just some of the members included in the Featured Artists' Coalition.

In a claim that many artists have been making for years, the group says it wants the artists to actually retain control over their music instead of the record labels having those rights. The group claims that artists are usually left out of the cut when their songs are distributed digitally, whether it be online or through mobile services.

"It is time for artists to have a strong collective voice to stand up for their interests,"
said Brian Message, co-manager of Radiohead and the singer Kate Nash. "The digital landscape is changing fast and new deals are being struck all the time, but all too often without reference to the people who actually make the music."

Jazz Summers, manager of The Verve, added that the group would "seek to improve the treatment of artists within the business and campaign to update laws and practices that better reflect the new music landscape."



"Digital technology gives artists the opportunity to control their future — this is the time to seize that opportunity."

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11 user comments

14.10.2008 21:06

The CP works you the creator are less than sht and must sale your creation off as so the company may take it and make money from it, unfortunately then as now the company is the middle man and the distributor thee do not mix well as it puts the burden of selling the product.

If CP creators kept most of their rights to CP works they would have to spend some money on advertising and distribution, which is fair since they would be getting more money as they own their creation and merely contract out the leg work to big media.

For new groups this means a lean on profit to pay for a set distribution price(say 50% on CDs for the first 100K or so until the money spent by the music company is paid once paid the music industry gets around 30% of the price that can be negotiated later).

Basically why is the middle man king and the person that creates the peasant until it takes off where they are merely upgraded to nobelmen beholdant to the Kings of industry?

24.10.2008 21:21

CP=RIAA

34.10.2008 21:25

Originally posted by Leningrad:
CP=RIAA
big industry copy rights are older than that :P

45.10.2008 01:47
varnull
Inactive

Just a little ting probably not many people know about the music business and it's treatment of artists.

You sign a deal for xxx number of products with some small town subsidiary of a larger company... They chuck you an advance to make the product (which they then own outright). Supposing it's a big hit everything is great and you get your 0.001% pittance in royalties.. after they have taken the advance back. Lets say because of their ineptitude or their desire to push a manufactured act into the airtime instead of you, you end up doing a tour where your product isn't in the shops.. and where it is, because of no promotion/publicity it sells no copies.. You then owe them the advance, and they have the power to stop you selling your music (which by the way YOU have actually paid to make with their loan) to make something back on your investment..

Since when has that been fair?.. and it's why I let a 5 year/4 album deal slide by recording nothing else.... If I want to release my music in digital form I have to BUY BACK the rights.. even though the advance was eventually paid off in full.

That's what all this is about.. not really anything to do with copyrights or IP.. The way I see it is this.. It's like I borrow money from you to make something.. Then you sell it and take back from my cut the amount I borrowed plus a handsome profit.. Then you keep on making from it without me being able to do a damn thing about it for ever and ever and ever. Even if you decide it is no longer commercially viable you can sell it to somebody else who can make and make out of it... without my say.. or you can sit on it. All the time depriving me.. the person who has paid for it and created it having any chance to make anything but the pittance originally agreed from it...
I have a supposedly defunct record company on my case right now for releasing a couple of live recordings of my songs online for free.. They think they are entitled to their cut of nothing... and are making legal rumblings.. I will be happy to see them in court and we will have it out about who actually owns the songs I have written, played and recorded. Their lawyers have already had my site pulled by the hosts (and it bloody cost ME for that hosting too), depriving my few remaining fans of the opportunity to download the poor quality live recordings.. Hope they have very deep pockets, because I haven't.

Unfair.. and in any other business illegal. I should sign up to this too.. But I'm very disillusioned by the whole shitty affair right now.. Music industry can rot in hell for all I care. Pirate everything.. pay no money for anything ever again!!

55.10.2008 01:53

varnull

Well the problem is they buy on the whims of the advance, and that is a bad deal for both it forces the company to put more than they really should put into a publication trying to artificially force it to be a hit.

A smaller advance is a contract stating that they will be the main publisher for X amount of of time and the publisher will do so many copy's in that time frame if you want more copies produced soemone is going to have to pay and its should never be with ownership rights of the media.

IMO you cannot detach the CP creator from the work.

65.10.2008 02:28
varnull
Inactive

But they seem to manage it with the "take it or leave it" type of deals they put on the table.

Don't ever try to find out who holds the rights to some of your product.. Sony hold the rights to 6 of my songs... and some others so far are proving untraceable.

75.10.2008 02:45

Originally posted by varnull:
But they seem to manage it with the "take it or leave it" type of deals they put on the table.

Don't ever try to find out who holds the rights to some of your product.. Sony hold the rights to 6 of my songs... and some others so far are proving untraceable.
Well of coarse they equate IP(or properties of the mind if you will) with physical goods that can be bought and sold from one owner to the next. The whole process has ben refined to ensure the middle man maxim profit and only share money with those its has to.

When one focuses so much on one thing you lose sight of everything else.

Screw the CP owner they are proctored under enough laws as the main distributor of for profit works, the CP creator/originator should be protected more as they are the whales being made oil out of.



The mad profit driven media industry parreles itself alot look at the game industry high cost to keep up with some imaginary precontexuailized graphic way point that lowers quality and forces pubs to band together to sell more crap to keep up with publishing the music industry is the same buy up songs to do the douche bag dash to market saturating in it CDs and maybe DVD videos the radio stations are pretty much a arm of the music industry theres no fee there to have it played TV ad spots... since when? they spitting out cds faster than they can reasonably pay for them then ad on anything spent on advertising or video and that just adds to the debt to profit ratio of the song/album and now to finish it off do this with hundreds/thousands of bands in order to stay ahead of the debt bubble.

If the process shared the burden of further publication with the artis and set limits how many discs it did at a time and try to keep profit balanced with debt the industry would be better for it because all the bad sht no one really likes will be pushed aside because the artists wont have enough profit to pay for further publication past a certain point.

85.10.2008 14:06
jony218
Inactive

Quote:
British pop stars want more power
they don't want more power they want more "cash". Cash upfront.

I guess the 5 percent they get per cd isn't enough. This is only going to cause an increase in the cost of a cd for the music lover. Instead of complaining they need to tour some more, instead of 6 months do a 9 month tour. They can also save money by doing a bus tour instead of flying first class sipping fine french champaign.

95.10.2008 14:30

Quote:
Quote:
British pop stars want more power
they don't want more power they want more "cash". Cash upfront.

I guess the 5 percent they get per cd isn't enough. This is only going to cause an increase in the cost of a cd for the music lover. Instead of complaining they need to tour some more, instead of 6 months do a 9 month tour. They can also save money by doing a bus tour instead of flying first class sipping fine french champaign.
Meh only the richer ones are able to do that, the rest not so much.
Also you are forgetting that the industry as made things the way they are and the artists generally have lil say in it.

107.10.2008 05:49

Right on!

1110.10.2008 09:16

Thanks Leningrad, Zippy left me in the dust.

varnull, I am all for artist getting paid as long as the CP doesn't get any. I love seeing the artist leaving the 'dark side' for 'the light'. I am sure the CP will do what they can to hurt them.

They used to be much worse in the 50s. They would pay a lump sum of a few grand for complete rights to a tune. Even after making hundreds of millions on the tune they still can't afford to sell a low quality RRMed copy for less than a dollar. I am waiting for a CP hack to defend the SOBs claiming a dollar a tune is a tremendous bargain by extrapolating the price of a single over 50 years.

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