3 ms·
It's kinda funny how the big studios just said "oh streaming, that doesn't count" and they're mostly getting away with it.
by RobLach 3y ago
It's kinda funny how the big studios just said "oh streaming, that doesn't count" and they're mostly getting away with it.
- rus20376 3y agoI am not sure how apocryphal this is, but I once heard that music companies were trying to stick "breakage fees"* into contracts for digital distribution! *fees on the estimated number of physical units broken in transit and therefor unsellable
- bombcar 3y agoI mean error correction is built right into TCP/IP and someone gotta pay for those packets!
- HillRat 3y agoNot apocryphal, but not what you're thinking of -- breakage is essentially an unexercised contract right (like a gift card that is never redeemed), and in streaming it refers to the difference between an advance or minimum payment to a label from a streamer and the actual royalties -- like a $1mm advance that only garners $500K worth of royalties from listeners. The labels would often only pay out to artists and songwriters on the actual royalties and keep (or unfairly distribute) breakage, so artists wouldn't share in all the advance fees. This has been cleaned up AFAIK, but it was a pretty stark example of how entertainment accounting is used to play "heads I win, tails you lose" games with the people who actually create.