26 Jan
2004
26 Jan
'04
11:10 a.m.
Ironically,
being a member of the 'royalties police', supposedly
defending the interests of musicians, is probably a more
lucrative career than actually being the average musician. I'll
bet it offers a regular salary, and you get to spend most of your
working hours in bars...
But not, usually, when they're jumping - mostly it involves going
round bars, shops and hairdressers and anyone else who plays music
in public, trying to find the manager/owner, and getting them to
sign the form and pay for a sticker in the window. The collecting societies publish their operating
expenses and are
always under pressure to reduce them. But most have ratios well
under 50%.
Just a hypothetical example - I don't have any real figures on this.
I'd guess that it would be a significant overhead though, given that
a hairdresser won't be paying much.
the original
copyright holder was the composer, and when he sold the copyright,
the price paid by the purchaser was in expectation of future
cash-flow.
I don't think musicians have usually focused on copyright or licensing
issues until they realise they have been screwed. In the early days,
it's all about getting your record out.
And in Germany, the copyright can't be sold.
That's good news for Germans, but I was talking about dead Americans!
Plenty of famous UK bands from the 60's lost copyrights, including
the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and the Kinks.
By far the biggest influence on distributions is
radio-plays,
because the broadcasters pay by far the largest amount to the
societies. Radio stations' restricted playlists don't help.
I'm in total agreement with you here. What I don't understand is why
supposedly non-commercial public broadcasters like BBC Radio 1 have
commercial playlists - my best guess is that it helps guarantee label
co-operation when getting access to artists.
The system is
weighted against minority music.
Or to put it another way, against the majority of musicians...
The societies are collectives; musicians own and
control them.
Perhaps institutions eventually develop their own agenda. Maybe it's
that the highest grossing artists have things set up the way they
like, so why change them?
As far as
DJ'ing goes, I think the answer will be automated
collection of real-time statistics.
That's an awful lot of data matched, as you point out earlier, to
not a lot of money. Sampling ( er.. statistical) saves the cost of
universal data collection. Radio station play logging is already
automated - the collecting societies have been investing in the
technology for some time now.
Sure, but in a highly regulated radio market like the UK, the number
of DJs must exceed the number of radio stations by a large factor.
Anything that improves the present system is good. I
just think the
better strategy is change from within rather than either tearing
down the old or attempting to create a new Utopia isolated from the
old.
The problem with change from within is that if organisations like MCPS
are totally resistant to libre licensing, then it just won't happen
there. I'm very interested in discussing the issues with MCPS but the
reverse is not the case, judging by their responses to my emails and
phone calls. They've also got a grip on CD pressing plants in the UK,
who won't make a CD without an MCPS licence.
Cheers
Daniel