4 ms·

Artists have historically made little money on the music itself, turning instead to franchising and concert tickets to really bring in the big bucks. This isn'

Artists have historically made little money on the music itself, turning instead to franchising and concert tickets to really bring in the big bucks. This isn't the best article for explaining it, but it's better than nothing. http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/9-ways-musicians-actually-make-money-today-20120828/perfume-19691231 http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/9-ways-musicians-act... Why are songs on the radio played for free? Because copyright in music actually hardly matters. "Real fans" end up buying piles of merchandise or going to concerts anyway. (Disclosure: I pay for Google Music. I don't pirate music, and don't advocate it. But it can hardly be construed as "hurting artists.")

anon1234321 10y ago
How about hurting the record companies, who front most of the capital for artists, pay them salaries, etc.
- pyre 10y ago
  > pay them salaries You must not know much about how the recording industry works. The record companies "pay" artists by giving them lending them money, the payments for which are deducted from their royalty percentage (e.g. the record company take 90% of the cost of the CD, and the artist gets 10%, then the "loan payment" comes out of the artist's 10% royalty).
  - anon1234321 10y ago
    What you think of the terms between artists and labels is not really relevant to the matter at hand. No one is forced to sign with a big label. If you want someone's money, then you have to be willing to play by their rules. If the contract terms are too one-sided, then other labels would undercut the competition by offering better terms. This is what happens. But again, totally irrelevant to YouTube's massive copyright heist. There's no justification for basing your business model on copyright infringement. No justification for having an asinine takedown system that doesn't change the fact that the top result will be yet another illegal copy of the video you just spent forever trying to get taken down.
    - effingwewt 10y ago
      It's incredibly obvious you have a dog in this fight and are incredibly biased. It's well known almost every recording artist gets screwed, and that it's easier to fight fans than their bosses. Take what you've written about startup youtube, and applied it to TODAY'S youtube, but flipped it to be 100000% anti-consumer, you'd be on the right track. Thanks to your record companies, I can no longer broadcast my gameplay if the game itself has coded-in music, because my video will get flagged as stolen content. If I'm recording a 3 hour video, and a friend walks in and his ringtone goes off and happens to be 4 secs of a song....I now have my entire video removed for content theft, though I've never done such a thing. This all happened thanks to the Viacom lawsuit[1], which forced youtube to be the most pro-recording industry, and anti-consumer popular site ever. Now, an automated bot trolls everyone's videos for any knid of match, and if flagged the video is automatically taken down unless you file an appeal. In other words, guilty until proven innocent. Unless you are a record label, then it's innocent until proven guilty. Did you miss the Family Guy fiasco[2], where they used a 7 year old video of Nintendo gameplay footage in the show, the bot saw it as "Fox Owned", and had it removed for copyright infringement. The youtube era you describe was for a few months-years. We've been dealing with the bullshit youtube became EVER SINCE. Forgive me if the complaints of a record company insider (in whatever capacity you may be), falls on deaf ears. This is reminiscent of Lars Ulrich complaining about Napster and the internet in general. Only even he admitted he was wrong about that. [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-viacom-lawsuit-idUSBREA2H11220140318 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-viacom-lawsuit-idUS... [2] https://consumerist.com/2016/05/20/fox-swipes-youtube-clip-of-video-game-for-family-guy-then-demands-copyright-takedown-of-original/ https://consumerist.com/2016/05/20/fox-swipes-youtube-clip-o...
      - anon1234321 10y ago
        I actually have exactly zero skin in this game. I'm no fan of current copyright law, with it's ridiculously long terms. I'm posting from a throwaway because trashing Google, one of the biggest employers in the US, is a career-limiting move.
      - Angostura 10y ago
        > It's incredibly obvious you have a dog in this fight and are incredibly biased. Because you disagree with him, apparently.
- tehrei 10y ago
  FUCK the record companies. If I were in a room with Cary Sherman, Hitler and Stalin and had a gun with one bullet, I'd throw the gun away and kill Sherman with my bare hands so it would take longer.
Angostura 10y ago
> Why are songs on the radio played for free? Because conventional radio airplay acted as advertising. Wanted to listen to the song when you wanted to? You had two choices - sit by the radio with a cassette recorder, fingers posed over play and record, or buy the record.

anon1234321 10y ago

How about hurting the record companies, who front most of the capital for artists, pay them salaries, etc.

pyre 10y ago
> pay them salaries You must not know much about how the recording industry works. The record companies "pay" artists by giving them lending them money, the payments for which are deducted from their royalty percentage (e.g. the record company take 90% of the cost of the CD, and the artist gets 10%, then the "loan payment" comes out of the artist's 10% royalty).
- anon1234321 10y ago
  What you think of the terms between artists and labels is not really relevant to the matter at hand. No one is forced to sign with a big label. If you want someone's money, then you have to be willing to play by their rules. If the contract terms are too one-sided, then other labels would undercut the competition by offering better terms. This is what happens. But again, totally irrelevant to YouTube's massive copyright heist. There's no justification for basing your business model on copyright infringement. No justification for having an asinine takedown system that doesn't change the fact that the top result will be yet another illegal copy of the video you just spent forever trying to get taken down.
  - effingwewt 10y ago
    It's incredibly obvious you have a dog in this fight and are incredibly biased. It's well known almost every recording artist gets screwed, and that it's easier to fight fans than their bosses. Take what you've written about startup youtube, and applied it to TODAY'S youtube, but flipped it to be 100000% anti-consumer, you'd be on the right track. Thanks to your record companies, I can no longer broadcast my gameplay if the game itself has coded-in music, because my video will get flagged as stolen content. If I'm recording a 3 hour video, and a friend walks in and his ringtone goes off and happens to be 4 secs of a song....I now have my entire video removed for content theft, though I've never done such a thing. This all happened thanks to the Viacom lawsuit[1], which forced youtube to be the most pro-recording industry, and anti-consumer popular site ever. Now, an automated bot trolls everyone's videos for any knid of match, and if flagged the video is automatically taken down unless you file an appeal. In other words, guilty until proven innocent. Unless you are a record label, then it's innocent until proven guilty. Did you miss the Family Guy fiasco[2], where they used a 7 year old video of Nintendo gameplay footage in the show, the bot saw it as "Fox Owned", and had it removed for copyright infringement. The youtube era you describe was for a few months-years. We've been dealing with the bullshit youtube became EVER SINCE. Forgive me if the complaints of a record company insider (in whatever capacity you may be), falls on deaf ears. This is reminiscent of Lars Ulrich complaining about Napster and the internet in general. Only even he admitted he was wrong about that. [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-viacom-lawsuit-idUSBREA2H11220140318 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-viacom-lawsuit-idUS... [2] https://consumerist.com/2016/05/20/fox-swipes-youtube-clip-of-video-game-for-family-guy-then-demands-copyright-takedown-of-original/ https://consumerist.com/2016/05/20/fox-swipes-youtube-clip-o...
    - anon1234321 10y ago
      I actually have exactly zero skin in this game. I'm no fan of current copyright law, with it's ridiculously long terms. I'm posting from a throwaway because trashing Google, one of the biggest employers in the US, is a career-limiting move.
    - Angostura 10y ago
      > It's incredibly obvious you have a dog in this fight and are incredibly biased. Because you disagree with him, apparently.
tehrei 10y ago
FUCK the record companies. If I were in a room with Cary Sherman, Hitler and Stalin and had a gun with one bullet, I'd throw the gun away and kill Sherman with my bare hands so it would take longer.

Angostura 10y ago

> Why are songs on the radio played for free? Because conventional radio airplay acted as advertising. Wanted to listen to the song when you wanted to? You had two choices - sit by the radio with a cassette recorder, fingers posed over play and record, or buy the record.