Re: [acs] Kristen T, copyright transfers
Title: Re: [acs] Kristen T, copyright transfers
Hi Michael
re: musicians making “bad deals”. The short story to why artists sell their copyrights is what you and others assume; it’s about access and, to a lesser extent, credibility:
1. access to financial resources that will advance you enough money to record in expensive studios, get tour support, etc. and actually manufacture and distribute the records
2. access to major retailers like Tower, Best Buy, Kmart. Unless you’re on a major label (or on an indie label distributed by a major label) your records aren’t making it into these stores.
3. access to the airwaves, namely commercial radio, which is 99% dominated by major label releases (see our study on radio deregulation about this particular access point at http://www.futureofmusic.org/research/radiostudy.cfm)
4. access to major print publications where your record will be reviewed, ads run, etc.
But even when you sign a major label deal and you have more access to these channels, there are no guarantees that all these things will come together and that another star will be born. There are SO many variables involved that even extremely talented and hardworking performers may not sell enough records to break even. Last I heard, major labels expect records to sell about 250,000 copies before it’s even close to a “success” financially. As a yardstick, in 2002 there were only 35 albums that went Gold (500,000 copies). So the statistical chances of success are still pretty damn slim.
FMC is always careful to note two things when we talk about major label contracts:
1. artists are free to sign these contracts under the advisement of an attorney, but that they should be very aware of what they’re giving up for these points of access — they’re giving up the control over their copyrights in perpetuity, across the universe, etc. etc. That being said, artists that signed contracts even eight or ten years ago would never have been able to predict the creation of Napster et al that would have such a drastic effect on how their works could be distributed. So we should be careful about pushing these artists into the “you made your bed, now lie in it” camp when it would be a lot better in my opinion to create better payment systems now that help everyone and that don’t replicate the flawed structures of the past.
2. there are thousands of musicians and artists that don’t sign major label deals, and in many cases continue to own their copyrights, that are doing just fine — touring, recording, putting out records on their own or on indie labels where contracts are usually a lot simpler, if they’re used at all.
I’m as hopeful as others that this type of exchange — copyrights for access— will change in the future and that more artists will be able to be self-reliant as the points of access themselves evolve. We just need to ensure that compensation models are fair for both creators and copyright owners.
Kristin
************************************
Kristin Thomson
Organizer, Future of Music Coalition
http://www.futureofmusic.org
Ph 215.351.9923 Cell 267.971.3088
************************************
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-Benjamin Franklin
On 12/14/03 2:00 PM, "Michael O'Hare" <ohare@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It occurs to me that the practical problems of songwriters and performers' copyrights becoming practically worthless because of difficulties in pursuing their receivables through subsequent trading of works, or against intransigent labels, has some resonance with the issue of graphic artist's resale royalties (the laws that forbid alienation of 15% (more or less in different statutes) of a work's appreciation on first sale). Following a single painting through collectors' hands over the years may or may not be easier than following a song through mergers and purchases; at least the painting is physical and has to be somewhere.
But the big problem here may be the advisability of musicians' and songwriters' retention of copyrights rather than making one-time sales. Alan L. Feld, Mark Schuster and I did a destructo job on the resale royalties scheme in our book (Patrons Despite Themselves, 1983) because it forces a transfer of risk from parties generally well-positioned to bear it (wealthy collectors) to parties who should not (poor artists), and I think that analysis is still sound. Resale royalties requirements actually restrict artists' options while pretending to give them something: you have to believe that a painting less 15% of its future appreciation will sell for the same price as it would with that appreciation included to like the scheme, except as a sentimental or symbolic gesture to artists. (Of course it's essential to recognize that a law like this obliges nothing; it's a prohibition against certain kinds of deals, like rent control.)
I have a sense that entirely aside from the way we collect royalties or might, something is wrong with the market structure, rules, or conventions by which recordings and performances are arranged that causes artists to make bad deals, and I'd like to hear more about this. My (notional) going-in perspective is that artists are grownups who make business arrangements that seem best to them and that those deals should be respected in general: what am I missing here, and what could be done about it? I can conjecture (monopsony power of labels, etc) but facts are better.
I know it's important to distinguish four cases in this kind of analysis:
(1) an artist early in his career who hopes his new work will sell like hotcakes and make lots of money, but for whom the statistics of the market strongly predict a different outcome
(2) an artist already successful and marketable, with professional help (lawyers, agent, manager, etc etc) who can bargain for a high-value total package, however it is allocated between now and maybe later
(3) the artist in (1) having become (2) years later, who wishes he hadn't made the decisions that looked wise at the time (Rauschenberg at the Scull collection auction, watching paintings he had sold for a few thousand selling for hundreds of thousands and almost coming to blows with the collector, is the famous image of this situation in the art world).
(4) the artist in (1) whose career never took off and wishes he hadn't made the decisions that looked wise at the time.
The (4)'s presumably outnumber the (3)'s manyfold.
And as defense against the confusion of (3)'s and and (1)'s, I offer Will Rogers' immortal restatement of the second law of thermodynamics:
"It's easy to make money in the stock market. Just buy some stocks, and if it goes up, sell it. If it don't go up, don't buy it!"