RIAA Completely Upfront About Screwing Musicians

 

Before today, I had only been about 95% opposed to the RIAA's extreme anti-piracy tactics. After all, artists do make a (very small) part of the profit from legitimately purchased music, and they deserve all they can get…unless, of course, they’re Metallica or another group of pretentious [insert noun of choice] that have a knack for generating excrement.

It appears, however, that I might not have any reason for keeping my opposition level below 100% for long, as the RIAA (along with Apple, Napster, and the like) has officially given up on feigning any concern for artists (you know, those people that are responsible for the part of the product we actually care about). The RIAA wants to take the absurdly low 13% royalties that artists receive now for digital sales and drop it down to less than 9%. Apple, Napster, and company are shooting for 4%.

If trends in music distribution continue (becoming more digitalized), we may someday reach the point where online revenue is the only income that artists receive from recorded music. If this is the case and the bullies get their way, then artists will be making practically no profit from album/track sales. That’s understandable, though, isn’t it? I mean, think of the huge investments record labels need to drop into the physical capital and labors involved with mass-producing digital music. Oh, well... I suppose there really aren’t any costs involved with that. As far as I can tell, all the cash is going into advertising and the pockets of executives.

While this looks like a bad thing for artists and those that support them, it might just be the beginning of the solution. If royalties are dropped low enough, artists will quickly see that giving up the vast majority of their profits isn’t worth signing on with the big labels. They’ll release material independently or through smaller, more reasonable labels. In either case, prices should go down and what money is spent will be more directed to those who deserve it. At least we can hope this is how it works out.