Post by soundboy January 14, 2008 (11 of 60)
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threerandot said:
In the case of The Dixie Chicks, Sony was not compensating them appropriately for the sales of their CDs. The Chicks won. After that, Sony has been really nice to them.
I remember Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks commenting getting less than $0.30 per copy for the 15 million copies sold by Sony Music in the US alone. And this was as a artist, songwriter and producer on those 15 million copies.
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Post by soundboy January 14, 2008 (12 of 60)
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pelley said:
That's absolutely maddening! What a handicap for both pure SACD and hybrid SACD. Who is responsible for this being the case? RIAA? That really seems crummy to count a hybrid multichannel disc as 3 separate "copies." It's not like they can be physically separated. I don't mind paying a couple bucks more for a SACD, and I certainly want the artists to be justly compensated. But wow... that is really a distortion of reality.
This article will give you an idea what hybrid SACD is up against....
http://www.highfidelityreview.com/news/news.asp?newsnumber=12618871
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pelley said:
That's absolutely maddening! What a handicap for both pure SACD and hybrid SACD. Who is responsible for this being the case? RIAA?
No, the Harry Fox Agency. http://www.harryfox.com
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Post by tiggers January 14, 2008 (14 of 60)
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Claude said:
Besides the higher SACD mastering and manufacturing cost, there is the odd situation in the US that royalties to the songwriters are due for every layer of the disc (i.e. 3 in case of a multichannel hybrid), which reduces the profit compared to a CD or LP version.
I'm thinking that there are two main reasons why new SACD's seem to be coming from outside the US anymore (Genesis comes to mind). The above is one of them. The other is, as I understand, that there is no longer any major production facilities in the USA. The biggest production facility is in Austria.
As ironic as it may sounds, it may take going BACK to Stereo/MC only SACDs (no hybrid) to make sales figures more attractive. Which I hope is not the case as I really like Hybrid SACDs and would be willing to pay the extra $1-2 to have that option.
On a side note:
I went to buy a dual-disk at Borders once with a coupon for any single CD for 13bucks or something like that. "sorry sir, this counts as more than one CD"???? I couldn't believe it.
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Post by soundboy January 14, 2008 (15 of 60)
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tiggers said:
On a side note:
I went to buy a dual-disk at Borders once with a coupon for any single CD for 13bucks or something like that. "sorry sir, this counts as more than one CD"???? I couldn't believe it.
Do you mean DualDisc?
Since it's not really a CD and thus not carrying a CD logo, I don't think your coupon will work on this level either.
Hahaha!!
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Post by Dan Popp January 14, 2008 (16 of 60)
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threerandot wrote (post #10):
[1] Music Publishers really play a kind of game of extortion in a sense. They can ask for whatever they want. And it doesn't matter if you even use only one second of music in a show or to create a disc. They have laws backing their position. [2] The RIAA in its "infinte wisdom" thought that suing people for downloading would be a really neat idea. Now look at how despised they are. They need to change with the times and recognise who their market is.
...
[3] This is one of the things that is driving CD sales down. Consumers are finding out how shifty record companies are and learning about their unsound business practices.
three, pardon me for inserting the numbers in [brackets]. I'm searching for a way to respond to individual points that doesn't frighten a certain poster here.
1. "They can ask for whatever they want." Certainly. And you can "ask whatever you want" for your labor. We don't have to pay it. This is called the "free market," and for all its real and perceived injustices, it works a lot better than socialism.
2. The "despised" RIAA doesn't seem to bother the millions of people paying a dollar a pop for their iTunes. Most people understand that stealing is wrong, and the RIAA wasn't doing anything but trying to stop people from stealing. I'll admit, the saga had a bit of a David-and-Goliath narrative attached to it - that big, bad Whateveritwas attacking little Johnny in his bedroom. The little fella just wanted to download God Bless America - he didn't even know it was wrong! (sniff)!
3. Your speculation about those cheesed-off consumers boycotting CDs is interesting, but I don't know anyone who's participating. iTunes, ease of copying CDs, and uninspiring product probably have a lot more to do with the decline in CD sales than does the self-righteous indignation of consumers. (And I sincerely hope that none of those anarchists who shouted the absurdity "music wants to be free!" are now claiming to be upset at the conduct of record companies!)
Maybe I'm getting the wrong impression, but you seem to think that you personally have the mental and moral ability to determine what an artist should get paid for his work ("let's cap the royalties," - post #9). Again, in practice (e.g. in the Soviet Union) central control of wages and prices has had disastrous consequences.
There are certainly some problems with the "big record company/little artist" model, but as you noted, those are being dealt with as more choice - not more dictatorial control, but more freedom - is being made possible by technology.
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Post by Kani January 14, 2008 (17 of 60)
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Dan, let me first say that I share your liberal outlook but take a somewhat different approach to it. I agree completely that it is totalitarian to dictate centrally for what price citizens should offer their labor or their goods for sale. However this case is slightly different in that it deals with the odd concept of "intellectual property". Basically the idea here is that you can own an idea; that you can somehow prevent, by coming up with a certain idea or a certain string of information for the first, the liberal public by reproducing or facilitating this information to others. This is in my eyes a cancerous growth on an otherwise thriwing tradition of liberal thought. That as a private citizen you can be contractually obliged not to share information with others is an extreme libertarian position that takes economic forces as the central concern of liberalism. I take a somewhat different approach and consider the central concern of liberalism to be the preservation of a free public sphere open to any kind of idea, indormation or argument. There are limits to what basic freedoms you should be able to give up and just like selling yourself into slavery is problematic it is highly odd that our society should allow you to enter an implicit contract limiting your freedom of expression whenever you buy a product containing information that is someones "intellectual property". Artists should certainly be able to demand any pay for a service they perform such as recording, distributing or performing live. However in a liberal society they should have no right to control what happens to information or ideas once it/they are out there in the public.
This said I would encourage everyone to actually buy music they like rather than downloading it for free. That it should be legally possible to distribute music for free doesn't mean that we shouldn't as morally aware consumers support the scene that we are enjoying :-)
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Post by Sam January 14, 2008 (18 of 60)
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Dan Popp said:
Maybe I'm getting the wrong impression, but you seem to think that you personally have the mental and moral ability to determine what an artist should get paid for his work ("let's cap the royalties," - post #9). Again, in practice (e.g. in the Soviet Union) central control of wages and prices has had disastrous consequences.
Um, music royalties ARE capped. That's the reality today. It's funny that people are arguing about it without knowing this.
Or maybe someone got mixed up between music (composition) and recordings. There isn't any compulsary licensing of recordings, but that isn't relevant to this thread.
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Post by Claude January 15, 2008 (19 of 60)
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It's no use putting the whole concept of intellectual property into question.
The problem here is not copyright as such, but a rigid and silly application of remuneration rules to a new format.
Probably those who negociated those rules didn't think about their effects on multi-layer SACDs. But it's also unlikely that remuneration negociations would be reopened because of an irrelevant format (in terms of income) such as SACD.
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Post by Dan Popp January 15, 2008 (20 of 60)
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Kani,
Thanks for your thoughts in post #17. There is a difficulty for those who would make a distinction between intellectual property and other kinds of property. No one holding your view has been able to answer this question for me: what is the ultimate difference between stealing my car; stealing the money with which I will buy the car; and stealing my idea or song with which I will make the money from royalties to buy the car?
In the US (where, btw, the terms "liberal" and "conservative" are reversed from your terms), intellectual property is actually a foundation-stone of the government, the Constitution itself creating the Patent Office.
So, far from being a "cancerous growth," I would say that the right to intellectual property has always been, and is, a vital organ of Western Civilization, as well as one reason for its success. Many more life-saving and life-enhancing technologies come from countries where intellectual property is assumed, than from those countries leaning toward your view.
Finally, your ideal that "Artists should certainly be able to demand any pay for a service they perform" is at odds with the rest of your post, since, if consumers can have any recording for free, the recording is worth nothing. Scarcity and value drive prices. If it rained gasoline, gasoline would not cost $3/gallon.
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