From the article “The Isle of Man Government are currently proposing a Broadband Tax which would allow unlimited downloads from any source online with the proceeds going to the record companies”
Smart idea from the Manx on that one. I’d pay an extra, I don’t know, $15 a month in net fees if that meant that I could jam my hard drive full of whatever I wanted.
I know it’s better than nothing but would $15 adequately cover the lost revenue, how would the revenue be divided? Would indies be screwed?
I may be wrong, but I think that back in the '70s, they put a tax on blank cassettes to give revenue to artists to cover home taping.
Canada has done it since 1998.
$15 from every single broadband user a month is quite a bit of money. I certainly don’t buy a CD every month anymore, so that $15 would be like my purchasing one CD a month. If you could get that revenue from every broadband user out there, plenty of whom might be like me, then it’s $15 you weren’t getting before.
Not that I’d be a proponent of this idea, but I’m surprised that the labels haven’t horned in more on bands touring and merchandise income to offset the losses from material music purchases.
“Commonly known as “multiple rights” or “360” deals, the new pacts emerged in an early iteration with the deal that Robbie Williams, the British pop singer signed with EMI in 2002. They are now used by all the major record labels and even a few independents. Madonna has been the most prominent artist to sign on (her recent $120 million deal with the concert promoter Live Nation allows it to share in her future earnings), but the majority of these new deals are made with unknown acts.”
From the NYT.
For a huge multiplatinum artist I can see where some deal like that would be beneficial, Madonna isn’t an artist anymore but a corporation unto herself, but signing new bands like that is fucking horrid. I hate music labels.
What, you thought suddenly they’d decided to file down the fangs and turn to more wholesome (although, necessarily, still nightly) pursuits ? (The RIAA I mean, not the BBC 
)
And to now go full circle, this story is doing the rounds.
This is true of software and movies still but not as true for music. Music is harder to find by nefarious means than it used to be now that things are getting away from gnutella networks and towards bitorrents. And certainly the quality is fine - the only issue is DRM, which amazon and itunes both have pretty much evolved past already.
It seems to me it must cost them a large fortune to support all those lawyers. With the economic downturn being what it is, they probably can’t afford to pay them and still pass anything on to the artists. They are going to have to stop soon.
I was under the impression that most bands don’t make their big money from album sales anyway, but from touring.
I don’t think this is true of most bands but I suppose it depends what level you’re at. I think many bands tour to sell their album(s) and merchandise. From personal experience I’ve made more money playing live than from selling releases but my releases have been small scale, limited runs and I’ve never tried to promote them other than using myspace and my gigs.
Bands can control a lot more about their tour than they can on their CD sales. For example, most CDs cost the same but big name bands charge more for their tickets. In some cases, they charge a lot more.