Techdirt: New Webcast Royalty Rules Will Line SoundExchange’s Pockets With Billions In ‘Administrative Fees’ — These guys never give up with these schemes to rip off the American public.
Yahoo, RealNetworks, Pandora and Live365 — have sent a letter to lawmakers pointing out that not only do they have to pay the inflated royalties, they have to pay SoundExchange more than $1 billion a year in “administrative fees” for collecting them as well. The new royalty deal levies a charge of at least $500 per “channel” on webcasters, which SoundExchange says is to cover administrative costs. For somebody like Real, that adds up quickly, since it says it served 400,000 unique channels to its subscribers last year. Furthermore, since they’re not royalties, there’s a good chance they’ll just line SoundExchange’s pockets rather than be distributed to artists.
found by Dennis Duffner
No, it won’t line anyone’s pockets. It will shut down many internet radio stations, thus depriving artists of the royalties they were getting from those stations under a more reasonable fee structure. Alas, in the minds of some, it is better to have no revenue by grabbing for every last penny, than to have moderate but continuing revenue with a reasonable fee structure.
Understand that? No, I don’t. But then no one has ever acused me of being representative of anything.
little d
The day were you can find little gems along the trash are gone, you’ll have to spend the rest of your lives listening to bubblegum pop premade to order thanks to the Idol franchise.
Down with the RIAA!
It will be a cold day in hell before I buy another CD. Fortunately, stupid actions such as these only serve to hasten their demise.
The story actually gets even worse. As we noted a few years ago, part of the deal is that SoundExchange and the RIAA get to keep any unclaimed money for themselves. Even better, SoundExchange can simply pretend not to be able to find the musicians (as they’ve done with a ton of big name musicians in the past).
I’m in the wrong business. Why waste time on research when you can line your pockets with “forgotten” money? P.T. Barnum is spinning at 33.3 rpm.
Here’s an easy read and interesting review of this moranic nonsense including comments from Stanford Law professor and copyright expert Lawrence Lessig:
http://www.kurthanson.com/archive/news/031607/index.shtml
What amazes me most about this story is that RealNetworks is still a going concern.
#1,
it is all about controll. You are correct that it is foolish and self destructive. but most greed is less about getting more, and more about getting more that the other guy. I have every faith that in twenty years we will all be pirating movies and music from the content creators themselves because they wont be getting any money from the legaly mandated distributers
Face it. The best way to make any money in this country is to become a middleman who contributes absolutely zero in terms of value added to any product or service. SoundExchange has found their niche.
Even worse part 2:
Recording artists who want to collect royalties from SoundExchange must also pay an administrative fee. Britney can easily afford it. But for most small independent artists the fee will exceed the amount of royalties they receive.
Effectively, SoundExchange has been given a license to steal royalties from all small independent artists.