Fuck The RIAA

[Tono_Fyr]

As if their whole "oh, downloading is bad and lowers our profits" kick (which is entirely untrue, there are more than several bands that are personal favorites of mine that I wouldn't even know of were it not for downloading, and I'm the kind who buys albums) wasn't bad enough, they've gone and spit in the face of the only reason they exist: The artist.

Appearently, they still aren't making enough money to sate their lust for the greenback, so they're opting lower the rates of royalties that are paid to their artists who keep them rolling in the money that they have. This infuriates me, because I've always felt that they didn't give enough of the money they make to the artists. Sure, most of what an artist makes comes from touring and ticket sales, but as a matter of principle, the artist should get a little bit more money from the label, as the label would be kinda shit out of luck if it wasn't for them.

It's fucking bullshit.

Link:
http://digitalmusic.weblogsinc.com/2006 ... -payments/

Discuss.

[rubyeye]

Despicable, greedy organizations like this need to be eliminated. Like the Oil companies, these archaic systems vainly struggling to survive in a rapidly changing world, which will soon see them become extinct.

Artists forget the fact that they have the "real" power because without them, there would be no music "business". They need voice their concerns and rally together (with their fans) to fight this.

[requiett]

Does anyone else think it's fucking hilarious how alot of the albums the record labels manage always go on about "fightin' the power?"

[Otohiko]

In fact all of this crap has been around for a long time. I think I'll need to dig up some writings by Robert Fripp from the early 90's to illustrate some of this. Fripp (and others) appropriately compared music artists in the industry as a form of slavery. The artist has always been a commodity to the record labels. The ugliest offence, I think, is the fact that most record companies do this AND they actually hold the copyright for the music produced - no, not the artist, the labels not only get virtually all the money for the music, but they even own rights to it.

As Requiett said somewhere before, vote with your dollar. I don't buy stuff from RIAA labels.

[Flint the Dwarf]

but as a matter of principle, the artist should get a little bit more money from the label, as the label would be kinda shit out of luck if it wasn't for them.

Well, not really. Big labels know that they can sell crappy music, and there's plenty of crappy music. And there are always bands willing to sell themselves for less than they might be worth.

And the smaller, more discriminatory, labels actually do (well, in most cases) respect the artist. So it's just a matter of picking your label. Big labels can pick up an assload of bands, and pick a few to be their stars. When those bands are used up, grab another. They already make so much money, they can do basically whatever they want.