why no (crimson) downloads?
Feb. 5th, 2009 01:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
acroyearRobert Fripp's Diary for Tuesday, 3rd February 2009:
Robert Fripp's Diary for Wednesday, 4th February 2009:
The problem: all of those contractual obligations are almost entirely based on physical album sales. Hard, concrete product. The physical CD is the unit of commerce, per typical manufacturing ("old school") mindset.
[side problem: just like the movie industry, the music industry has some very clever accounting tricks they can pull such that a million selling album doesn't actually make a profit. These same tricks were used, according to Pete Jackson in a now dropped lawsuit, by Newline in claiming RotK hadn't made the profit Jackson was sure it had from following the sales reports in the press. And even here, it's not that Newline was directly picking on Jackson: they simply were a studio operating as they always do in this case, because they really have no other way to operate. Bureaucrats are what they are, and companies like that hire bureaucrats. Honest dealings are simply inconceivable, and I DO mean what I think it means. Above, "STL" == Second-Tier Lawyer, whom DGM had been dealing with for 15 months before finally getting in touch with someone in the authority to do anything other than stall.]
So where does a download fit into this? How does the download of a single song fit into the business contract model where an entire album is the unit of commerce in the contract. Where does an online sale even of a whole album fit in, when the unit of commerce was a physical cd (or lp or tape, depending on how old the contract was)?
Where does the artist actually get his due when, as in the case of Canada, the labels are given a cut of all blank media on the assumption that the media will be used for piracy, even when it isn't?
These are the reasons why I can not trust the industry, in its current form, to properly handle any "download for free, and pay in one-time tax/fee" model, which they think is their only solution given that DMCA really has not done what it set out to do (and rightfully so - you screw with my fair use rights and damned if i'm going to call your bogus law legitimate). The only model the labels have for such an arrangement is one they've already cloned (thanks to the DMCA) with online radio: pay us, and trust us.
This they learned from ASCAP and how they handle broadcast and venue site licenses. And how do they handle it? Pick some arbitrary standard, like "radio air play", and divvy up the money based on that. Thus, it doesn't matter if you're an online radio station that only plays rennie-music - all the money you pay Live365 goes to "I Kissed A Girl" - the songwriter(s) and the label - even the performer doesn't get that money, 'cause the label has, as pointed out above, no reason to connect that revenue with the artists.
You wonder why some rennies don't want their music on online radio stations like ren-radio? that's why: unles it really increases cd sales later (it won't, only live performance does since that's where the most cds are sold in that market) or increases live gigs (it won't, 'cause that audience already gets them at the festivals), there is nothing financially to gain. the money goes elsewhere.
So too, anything else where the label gets all of the money without any specific accounting of actual usage: they have to make it up from the only standard they know, and because it is a standard they have so distorted beyond anybody's real listening habits, it then distorts the distribution, forcing a handful of hitmakers to get all of the money.
Until the industry can show me proof that they have come up with a new and accurate accounting system that actually gets the money of online sales to the artists (and they have no interest in doing so, since they can claim for eternity to be bound by existing contracts that ignore this market, so the money is all theirs), I refuse to consider any alternative mechanism for giving the labels money.
Naxos's solution to this (we pay a generous one-time fee, but we keep all residuals beyond what ASCAP takes) may utterly suck, but at least it's honest.
One of the topics addressed with Mr. Boss was a telephone comment to David made by the STL: why wouldn’t you want us to download your material? David had mentioned this to me in our kitchen-discussion upon my today afternoon-arrival. The answer/s flew back…and the next day...(along with some nice pictures of the rarity that is snow in southern England...)
1. It damages our business & business model.
2. S/UMG have used unapproved masters.
3. You may sell it, but we don’t get paid! We have received no accounting for any of the downloads.
All of which constitutes, I suggest, constructive negligence.
This is the short version, quick guide to a large & systemic structural flaw within the current music-industry-download model.
Robert Fripp's Diary for Wednesday, 4th February 2009:
The challenge is not to be become cynical: for the artist, cynicism is death. Cynicism is where we allow what is lowest in all of us to triumph over what is highest. The role of the artist in popular culture, after all, is to call on what is highest in all of us, to remind us of what is Real & Good & True in humanity, but which we forget. When we forget our realities & qualities, this is expressed in behaviour: we live lesser lives than we might. This, in turn, reinforces, in our culture & media & business lives, less than the creative, conscious & sensitive living that is properly human behaviour.I agree with the downloads assessment. There way an album contract works is that the label/distributor pays an up-front "advance" on the idea that the album sales will make up that amount. When the album has sold past that point of profit, all additional royalties (in the movie industry, they're called residuals, but the effect is the same) go to the artists at a percentage cut (usually 12, from which the producer and engineer may also take a cut, as do ASCAP fees which may not go back to the artist, depending on how the contract with them was written).
The problem: all of those contractual obligations are almost entirely based on physical album sales. Hard, concrete product. The physical CD is the unit of commerce, per typical manufacturing ("old school") mindset.
[side problem: just like the movie industry, the music industry has some very clever accounting tricks they can pull such that a million selling album doesn't actually make a profit. These same tricks were used, according to Pete Jackson in a now dropped lawsuit, by Newline in claiming RotK hadn't made the profit Jackson was sure it had from following the sales reports in the press. And even here, it's not that Newline was directly picking on Jackson: they simply were a studio operating as they always do in this case, because they really have no other way to operate. Bureaucrats are what they are, and companies like that hire bureaucrats. Honest dealings are simply inconceivable, and I DO mean what I think it means. Above, "STL" == Second-Tier Lawyer, whom DGM had been dealing with for 15 months before finally getting in touch with someone in the authority to do anything other than stall.]
So where does a download fit into this? How does the download of a single song fit into the business contract model where an entire album is the unit of commerce in the contract. Where does an online sale even of a whole album fit in, when the unit of commerce was a physical cd (or lp or tape, depending on how old the contract was)?
Where does the artist actually get his due when, as in the case of Canada, the labels are given a cut of all blank media on the assumption that the media will be used for piracy, even when it isn't?
These are the reasons why I can not trust the industry, in its current form, to properly handle any "download for free, and pay in one-time tax/fee" model, which they think is their only solution given that DMCA really has not done what it set out to do (and rightfully so - you screw with my fair use rights and damned if i'm going to call your bogus law legitimate). The only model the labels have for such an arrangement is one they've already cloned (thanks to the DMCA) with online radio: pay us, and trust us.
This they learned from ASCAP and how they handle broadcast and venue site licenses. And how do they handle it? Pick some arbitrary standard, like "radio air play", and divvy up the money based on that. Thus, it doesn't matter if you're an online radio station that only plays rennie-music - all the money you pay Live365 goes to "I Kissed A Girl" - the songwriter(s) and the label - even the performer doesn't get that money, 'cause the label has, as pointed out above, no reason to connect that revenue with the artists.
You wonder why some rennies don't want their music on online radio stations like ren-radio? that's why: unles it really increases cd sales later (it won't, only live performance does since that's where the most cds are sold in that market) or increases live gigs (it won't, 'cause that audience already gets them at the festivals), there is nothing financially to gain. the money goes elsewhere.
So too, anything else where the label gets all of the money without any specific accounting of actual usage: they have to make it up from the only standard they know, and because it is a standard they have so distorted beyond anybody's real listening habits, it then distorts the distribution, forcing a handful of hitmakers to get all of the money.
Until the industry can show me proof that they have come up with a new and accurate accounting system that actually gets the money of online sales to the artists (and they have no interest in doing so, since they can claim for eternity to be bound by existing contracts that ignore this market, so the money is all theirs), I refuse to consider any alternative mechanism for giving the labels money.
Naxos's solution to this (we pay a generous one-time fee, but we keep all residuals beyond what ASCAP takes) may utterly suck, but at least it's honest.
