ASCAP Says Apple Should Pay For 30-sec. Song Samples 463
CNet reports on a new money battle brewing between those who generate music and those who profit from selling it on the Net. "Songwriters, composers, and music publishers are making preparations to one day collect performance fees from Apple and other e-tailers for not just traditional music downloads but for downloads of films and TV shows as well. Those downloads contain music after all. These groups even want compensation for iTunes' 30-second song samples. ... Apparently, the music industry can't obtain the fees through negotiations. They have begun lobbying Congress to pass legislation that would require anyone who sells a download to pay a performance fee..."
So essentially they want people to pay (Score:5, Insightful)
Congress Laws - new Business model? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure if I presented a thesis saying that my new form of business model required passing laws in Congress requiring people to give me money at the mere mention of my product, I'd be laughed out of school.
And yet, this seems to be turning into a reality?
Maybe what we need isn't just a government that has its hands off of business, we need businesses to keep their hands off the government too.
Re:Somebody please (Score:5, Insightful)
No need to. They're digging it on their own.
They're really trying (Score:3, Insightful)
Enough is enough - Time to amend the Constitution (Score:5, Insightful)
Amendment XXVIII - Strike the following: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited
Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;". Replace with: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for Times not to exceed 14 years to Authors, or 25 years for Inventors, the limited Privilege to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
The actual time limits can be debated, but they need to be set in the constitution, not left to a congress that can be bribed with corporate donations.
Paying Twice (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Somebody please (Score:1, Insightful)
We don't have to aparently their dead set on digging it themselves.
How about every music store that lets you listen to the entire album if you want?
Their is NO WAY in hell I'd ever pay for an unknown artist without hearing samples and I'm sure I'm not alone, so they're just screwing themselves.
Re:Enough is enough - Time to amend the Constituti (Score:5, Insightful)
P.S.
I should probably explain: I think "Right" needs to be changed to "Privilege" for the simple reason that rights are timeless. They are an innate quality of being human and never expire. Therefore a limited-term copyright is not a right, but merely a privilege extended by the ruling government.
Re:They're really trying (Score:5, Insightful)
They really want to shoot themselves in the foot, don't they?
They don't have feet, they're an entity... what they need is to be sucker-punched in their Accounting department and then kicked repeatedly in the Legal until they promise to stop being a dick.
ASCAP needs a slap upside the head. (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be interesting if Apple did a test where they removed samples from say from the top 1000 songs, then provided 30 second samples for say 50 and calculated how much the 30 second sample actually generated in sales revenue.
The samples on iTunes allow people to figure out if they want to legally buy a song that actually generates revenue for the artists. If I can't sample what I'm deciding to buy, chances are I'd most likely go straight to limewire and get it that way, because these songs are non refundable.
All ASCAP seem to be doing here is encouraging more piracy, most people are generally happy to pay for media if its easy to obtain and its not a difficult process that you have to jump through endless micro payments, confusing license agreements and rights managment that is unreliable. iTunes is making it easy for artists to make revenue off the internet but that is just not enough it seems for those greedy bastards.
Re:Enough is enough - Time to amend the Constituti (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So essentially they want people to pay (Score:5, Insightful)
Were I Apple, I'd drop people who charged for it.
iTunes has gotten to a saturation point with so many artists that the ones who demand payment would just have to be the ones who afford to lose out on that market. iTunes doesn't *need* them, anymore, and neither does Amazon.
counterproductive: inures people to "infringement" (Score:4, Insightful)
These slippery slopes to vices happen all the time. I know lots of folks who would never/rarely drive drunk, but drive stoned all the time. Folks are so inured to breaking the marijuana laws (understandably) that they think nothing of driving stoned, but breaking alcohol laws still has some legitimacy behind it.
Ridiculous laws lead to disdain and apathy toward the legal system. You're just inuring consumers to the idea of "infringement" by making such ludicrous demands.
Re:Enough is enough - Time to amend the Constituti (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree its an issue, but something as trivial as copyrights should not be part of the very foundation of our country. Its not THAT critical.
Re:So essentially they want people to pay (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah it is pretty stupid to make Apple, Amazon, or other e-tailers pay for the 30 second samples used to promote songs. Oftentimes I have looked at an artist and thought, "I have no idea who this is," but once I heard the 30-second sample I recognized the song and bought the CD. What RIAA is basically doing is trying to block customers from discovering music which will ultimately hurt sales.
As for the music contained in shows and movies, RIAA already collects a piece of every DVD sale or VHS sale or TV rerun. It makes sense they'd want to collect a few pennies off the internet sale too. So I don't have a problem with it.
Re:Somebody please (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, duh: They don't want you paying for an unknown artist. They want you paying for their over-hyped sensation-of-the-week.
Because being able to create and throw away those sensations-of-the-week is what keeps the record companies in business: It's their advertising, their handling, and their contacts that make that possible. If you start buying artists you've never heard of because you like their music their entire business model goes out the window.
Tired of the re-definition of performance. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a performance if I ...
Play your CD
Hear your Song on the Radio
Look at your album jacket
It's a performance if:
You come to my house and play,
Hold a concert
Play on a street corner or a subway
Everyone in the chain of production needs to quit pretending that somehow, each time that CD is played, they have put in a personal appearance. // rant off
Performance as defined above is the method the bulk of working musicians actually make money. The RIAA just doesn't want to admit it.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Isn't this an issue for the movie and TV compan (Score:3, Insightful)
What amazes me is how many "groups" representing recording artists there are. It's ludicrous. First you've got to please RIAA, which claims it's doing it to protect the artists, then you've got the publishing companies that will nail your ass if you print any of the lyrics, then you've got ASCAP, which also represents the artists. No wonder the industry is sinking.
What's going to happen at the end of the day is that Apple and other online music services are going to make their own damned labels, woo over artists, maybe even start doing their own A&R, and either start selling their own stuff at a discount or start hiking the prices for all RIAA/ASCAP/who-the-fuck-ever, and when someone comes at them with a complaint about anti-competitive behavior, they can always point at demands like this "Hey, these guys effectively demanded we raise prices".
What the fuck (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's how I see this conversation going.
ASCAP> Give us lots of money!
Apple> You're already getting lots of money.
ASCAP> We want *more* money!
Apple> No.
ASCAP> We *demand* more money!
Apple> No.
ASCAP> If you don't give us more money, we'll take our music off your service!
Apple> No you won't, and we both know it.
ASCAP> WAAAAH GIVE US MORE MONEY
C'mon. If they wanted the extra fees so bad, they'd take their music off. Obviously they don't - they just want the government to step in when their own demands for money fell flat.
Why don't they make their own music distributor? Oh, that's right, because that takes work, and they don't want to do work. They just want free money.
I feel so sorry for them.
Re:So essentially they want people to pay (Score:5, Insightful)
iTunes doesn't *need* them, anymore, and neither does Amazon.
O RLY? Do you realize how many individual artists ASCAP represents?
ASCAP is a membership association of more than 360,000 U.S. composers, songwriters, lyricists, and music publishers of every kind of music. Through agreements with affiliated international societies, ASCAP also represents hundreds of thousands of music creators worldwide.
ASCAP is home to the greatest names in American music, past and present - from Duke Ellington to Dave Matthews, from George Gershwin to Stevie Wonder, from Leonard Bernstein to Beyonce, from Marc Anthony to Alan Jackson, from Henry Mancini to Howard Shore - as well as many thousands of writers in the earlier stages of their careers.
ASCAP represents every kind of music. ASCAP's repertory includes pop, rock, alternative, country, R&B, rap, hip-hop, Latin, film and television music, folk, roots and blues, jazz, gospel, Christian, new age, theater and cabaret, dance, electronic, symphonic, concert, as well as many others - the entire musical spectrum.
The majority of mainstream artists (or their publishers) are members of ASCAP, iTunes and Amazon are all about catering to mainstream culture.
Re:So essentially they want people to pay (Score:4, Insightful)
No, simply pass along the charge. "You want to check whether this is the right song before you purchase? Sorry that will be 10c on this song". Let's see how sales go, shall we?
Re:So essentially they want people to pay (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like it's time for an anti-trust investigation!
Re:Isn't this an issue for the movie and TV compan (Score:3, Insightful)
So the ASCAP enforcement of performance payment went into place to ensure that companies like Disney, who made a mint on artist content, had to pay for it. The idea that they're using it now to try to get additional profit from people who are trying to decide whether to buy a song is just ridiculous.
Re:So essentially they want people to pay (Score:5, Insightful)
Whaaat? 360,000 composers, songwriters, lyricists, and music publishers in the US ALONE.
What does that mean? That there are perhaps MILLIONS of such people world wide?
I don't know about anyone else, but when there are that many "artists" clamouring for money, and I'm seeing so much derivative, boring crappy "art" being produced by them, I'm thinking they can kiss my pink shiny arse.
I mean, it's not as if music makes the world go round. I'm sure we can lose a few of these people and not notice any difference.
Re:counterproductive: inures people to "infringeme (Score:4, Insightful)
I hear you - I really do - but if marijuana were legal and regulated, but driving stoned were prohibited, I bet we'd have more stoners but fewer stoned drivers on the street. Make respectable laws and people will respect them.
Fair Use anyone? (Score:1, Insightful)
The Purpose of these samples is to both promote the sales of these tracks and to help the consumer make an informed decision regarding the purchase.
The "amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole" is small enough that it is in not a reasonable substitution for the whole product.
The "effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work" is generally going to be positive, allowing countless people a chance to sample the music to find out if it's something they'd be interested in, when there would have been little chance of them making a blind purchase.
This country is in such need of copyright reform... Actually, I take that back. We need to regress from our previous "reforms".
Re:Somebody please (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is why you go make it a law that everyone has to be paid. Then the unknowns have to take the money, even if it hurts them.
Re:So essentially they want people to pay (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but there have been numerous reports in recent months of digital sales rising as the sales of CDs fall. I think Apple's response should be to stop providing free 30 second commercials for the songs they sell, and charge copyright holders for this advertising, just as television, radio and print media charge for ads.
If individual rights holders do not wish to pay for this advertising, they can take the chance that potential buyers will find out about their offerings via other methods, like word of mouth, or the payola-sponsored airplay they get on Clear Channel stations.
This is very similar to Rupert Murdoch wanting to charge Google for helping readers (and potential targets for their ads) to find the stories they publish. Same solution - offer to continue indexing their site for a nominal fee. If they don't like those terms, cut 'em off for six months and see how they feel about it then (if they're still around).
Re:Congress Laws - new Business model? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm still puzzled as to why it isn't universally acknowledged that corporate political campaign donations are the purest form of bribery.
Re:Enough is enough - Time to amend the Constituti (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but the problem is this... who is it that can add an amendment to the constitution? Damn, it's the same congress that can be bribed with corporate donations...
Congress is made of men. (I'm speaking English here, let me run with it.) If they are not doing the will of the people, the people are not using enough boxes.
Re:Audit the current system first? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's pretend his story is true, and that he got less than 9.1 cents for some ridiculous-but-conceivable reason. In other words, take that inconsistency off the table.
If he's receiving a check for two cents, nobody is buying his fucking music. Why is it that he seems to believe he should be making "a bunch of money?" Would this horrible insult to his right to be rich for no reason be somehow mitigated if he had received a check for 50 cents from his one sale instead?
Re:Tired of the re-definition of performance. (Score:4, Insightful)
And they got it wrong - back in the beginning of radio. Doesn't mean we shouldn't fix it.
It was only a performance when it was "live in studio". "live in studio" is just a really long mic cord :-)
But recordings? give me a break - if the musicians didn't have to show up - it's not a performance.
The radio industry caved to ASCAP and the RIAA : read about the whole payola scandal back in the dawn of radio sometime. They were passing money around in loops as bad as Enron. Stations holding up RIAA for money or they wouldn't play their new hit wonder - RIAA holding up the stations for money or they wouldn't get the hits when the got popular - who's the losers - Musicians and Listeners....
Re:So essentially they want people to pay (Score:5, Insightful)
... Those acts would likely be paid both sync and performance fees [for tv and film]. But the person who writes the little-known background music heard during a fight scene may not see any sync money. That's because traditionally, composers of this kind of production music gave away sync rights in the hope they would make money from performance fees.
"This is really a fight about the future," [president and CEO of the NMPA] Israelite said. "As more and more people watch TV or movies over an Internet line as opposed to cable or broadcast signal, then we're going to lose the income of the performance. For people who do production and background music, that's how they make their living."
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to the public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
Life-Line by Robert A. Heinlein, 1939
I don't see the problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sometimes when someone is hellbent on causing their own self-destruction, and they want your help, you should give it to them! So if ASCAP wants a law that requires anyone playing a 30-second sample of a song to pay a fee, then let them have it! All the law will do is hurt their sales, which is exactly what they deserve!
Re:I don't see the problem. (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree, if they don't want people to be able to do that as I programmer I would be happy to comply, it's only going to hurt them. I'm just saying that dropping support for ASCAP-related music in iTunes would drastically hurt the sales in iTunes (which would hurt both Apple and the music biz). Since it's affecting Apple's bottom line I doubt they're willing to comply, which is probably why ASCAP hasn't been successful at negotiating this ridiculous fee.
I mean, it's fine if they want to charge people for performing their music, and it's fine if they want to charge people for downloading their music. But it's pretty ridiculous to try to add online music sales as one definition of "performing", because it's just not.
Re:So essentially they want people to pay (Score:5, Insightful)
Why drop the people? Just continue to carry the songs with no samples. A simple message "We're sorry but this artist refuses to let us serve you with a sample of the song before you purchase" should suffice.
They'll get back in line in no time when the sales plummet.
Re:So essentially they want people to pay (Score:3, Insightful)
EXACTLY.
Pop up a little text box that says this vendor will not
allow you to listen to a preview.
Problem solved. Buyers will run away from those artists as fast as they can.
Re:ah wait a sec - this is ASCAP! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's business. Men in suits sit around quoting business concepts at each other until they convince themselves they have a good idea.
They're executives, the way they work is by outsourcing their specialized thinking to others while they manage. I'm sure they honestly don't know how stupid they look. They read a report that mentions in passing the 30-second preview, they reel and can't understand why they're giving away content for free. They call in the secretary and set up a meeting with their iTunes lead. The poor guy tries to explain how obviously it's of enormous benefit to offer a preview. The MBA hears some engineer admitting that he's following his personal opinion in a matter of possibly huge importance to the company. The MBA looks for a real report done by Research with real numbers and tables and projections that confirms the engineer's opinion-- and there are none. He assigns a team in Research to investigate the matter and recommend any disciplinary action against the engineer. Research consults Legal, they say they have no contract with iTunes for getting paid for their content when it's in a 30 second sample. They contact the MBA, give him a preliminary report that confirms his suspicions. He sets up a meeting with Apple to discuss future payment. MBA gets laughed out, MBA lobbies congress.
Re:So essentially they want people to pay (Score:5, Insightful)
I only wish Apple had the balls (Score:2, Insightful)
That would be amazing. Bonus points if they were really naughty and only charged those artists affiliated to this entity - and we all know Apple is perfectly able to directly sabotage anyone who gets in their way (i.e. Palm Pre syncing with iTunes).
Re:So essentially they want people to pay (Score:1, Insightful)
I find that people like Rick Carnes, are not the sharpest knife in the kitchen drawer. If he is getting $.02 checks, it means that he signed a stupid contract and/or no wants to buy his music.
In any case, for the last 40 years of my life, I could walk into a record store and listen to samples of musics, even whole tracks to decide if the record/cd (yes, I use to buy vinyl that way) is worth buying.
Either the music is compelling that I would buy it or it isn't. It is completely stupid that ANYONE should get any money so a customer can to get a clue if an "artist creation" is worth the exchange of money.
Should oil painter get a money if anyone looks into a window of an art gallery?
Would Rick Carnes suggest that no one should be able to look at the pages of a book in a book store before they decide whether they buy a book or not.
Carnes et al's thought processes have no social redeeming value... which I think that the Supreme Court rules was obscene and should not be publicly displayed.
It's not business (Score:5, Insightful)
It IS greed. There are successful businesses, and then there are businesses who care about naught but lining their and their shareholders' pockets with money. Time, time, time, and time again, history has shown that you can run a business that people like and make money, or you can be a greedy monster and make money. It works for some time, but will those businesses be around in 100 years? If you go around the world and look at some of the companies that HAVE been around for over a century (a lot of food companies have), you'll find that the workers there are typically treated well and are very happy.
It's the same as the old king analogy. As a king, you can rule with kindness or you can rule by fear. By kindness and you can have everything you want (and everything your prosperous country can produce) and will be remembered forever. By fear and you can have everything (only what your pitiful starving country can give you) and will be forgotten over the centuries. For some reason, a lot of leaders tend to choose the latter.
Re:So essentially they want people to pay (Score:4, Insightful)
If Apple suddenly dropped them, people aren't going to replace iTunes, their going to replace the musician. People are way to lazy to find another source for their music - especially when there are another 200 manufactured bands out there that sound exactly the same.
Re:So essentially they want people to pay (Score:5, Insightful)
See that's where ASCAP won the battle but lost the war a few years back. Anything Hollywood publishes TODAY, they will secure full distribution rights to before releasing.. movie, DVD, rentals, youtube... etc. After ASCAP shenanigans with things like "Freaks and Geeks" holding up DVD distribution because the studio "didn't pay for that", studios won't even add your song without the blanket contract in place so that the music rights tag along with all their other distribution rights. Music publishers went thru the same thing back the Napster days.... they won't publish an album on CD unless the songwriter and artist grant all the various digital rights as well. Publishing execs nailed these guys down in the last few years after being repeatedly sued and now the money tree is shut down while Apple is neatly flying high in the aftermath. ASCAP overreached, and was inflexible and difficult to deal with... they got shut down by careful paperwork. Now they want Congress to step in and create another new "royalty" because they're not getting a good enough deal on the ones they already signed.
Re:I don't see the problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
Presumably, if I had songs on iTunes, then yes, I'd get some fraction of a cent or something. ASCAP and BMI don't collect for everybody. You're thinking of Sound Exchange. ASCAP collects only for its members, as do BMI and SESAC. For any composers or publishers who aren't a member of one of those three performing rights societies (or any of the other similar groups in other countries), the person making the recording or airing it or whatever generally has to track down the composer and publisher through some other means.
The net effect of this sort of thing, if passed, would probably end up being (at most) a fraction of a cent per play of such a snippet, which translates to almost nothing for all but the biggest artists, but if it ends up causing previews to be less accessible, would translate to a huge loss for all but the biggest artists (who probably wouldn't see much difference). Thus, I'd expect the biggest artists to want these laws and everybody else to think there's not enough crack in the world. :-)
Re:So essentially they want people to pay (Score:2, Insightful)
Except Apple (or any other generic online music store)