[LINK] How the big music companies take music royalties for themselves

[Rick Welykochy]

Kim Holburn wrote:

> http://blog.tunecore.com/2012/03/the-global-songwriter-shell-game.html
>
>> The Global Songwriter Shell Game: Why The Major Music Companies Are Getting Your Royalties
>>
>> By Jeff Price
>> While the major music companies' revenue from music sales has gone down, they have a brand new increasing income stream: revenue generated from the sale of other people's music. In the past five years, hundreds of millions of dollars of songwriter royalties have been generated and never paid to the songwriter, or have been given to Warner Bros, EMI, Universal, Sony and others based on their market share- estimates put this new income at over half a billion dollars.
>> Once these companies get the money, they keep it and don't account to anyone.


On a related tangent (?) ... I just read "Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the
Record Industry in the Digital Age" which documents eight compelling reasons for the decline of
record industry over the past thirty years.

<http://www.amazon.co.uk/Appetite-Self-Destruction-Spectacular-Industry-Digital/dp/1847371361>

Beyond royalties not being paid, the record company execs were out and out criminals
over the past thirty years, with the payola scandals of the 60s and racketeering and
market manipulation in the two decades after. And even beyond that, they were blinkered,
blind to the emergence of digital media and stubborn to the point of destruction. I might
even throw in "greedy" after reading the book!


>> Artists deserve to get their royalties: it truly should not be this hard.

It is not hard, just impossible when there is no will to part with the money.


cheers
rickw



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Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services

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