Music industry next to write off writers

With the Hollywood writer’s strike tentatively wrapping up, it’s pretty clear that the effects… With the Hollywood writer’s strike tentatively wrapping up, it’s pretty clear that the effects it had on the industry were pretty devastating. People were out of work, a lot of good shows were put on hold indefinitely and a lot of crappy shows were forced upon the consumers. But while the television and film writers are finally getting what they want, the music industry could be in the same kind of trouble TV has been for the last several months.

According to The Hollywood Reporter – one of the major entertainment industry trade publications – the RIAA and several major online music retailers such as Apple and Yahoo are looking to lower the royalty rate that artists are paid by 30 to 50 percent.

The companies claim that because of the huge expenses associated with transitioning to digital media, they are in need of more money, and that music publishers and artists are getting more than their fair share while the record industry itself is hurting. So to rectify the problem they want to lower artist royalties from the traditional 13 percent to 8 percent, or about nine cents per song to about five.

And Apple and Yahoo, along with other online wholesale distributors, want to go even further and lower the royalty rate to a measly 4 percent.

If there’s one thing that should become clear from this, it’s that all that business about the RIAA trying to protect artist rights by prosecuting illegal music downloaders is ridiculous. This makes it pretty obvious that the only thing the RIAA and other companies are interested in is their own bottom line, at the expense of both artist and consumer welfare.

These changes are currently being lobbied to the Copyright Royalty Board, which over the course of the next few months will decide what the new mechanical royalty rate – the percentage paid to artists, publishers and record labels – is going to be.

If the record companies and digital distributors get their way, not only does it explicitly clarify the greed and unfairness of those companies, but it could also affect the quality of the music that we listen to. According to David Israelite, the CEO of the National Music Publishers’ Association, the quality of music could go down dramatically if songwriters get screwed over, and bands that write their own music could have a hard time staying afloat.

In other words, think American Gladiators: The Album. Because the recording industry would never actually give up, even in the face of inevitable defeat (i.e. illegal downloading), they would instead press horrible cookie-cutter trash on consumers written by low-grade writers who are willing to work for a smaller cut. Music quality could go down over the next several months or years, the same way your cable TV bit the dirt in December.

So what should we do? I mean, the record companies have made it pretty obvious that despite all their pro-artist rhetoric when it comes to tracking down music pirates, they’re really only in the game to make as much money for themselves as they can. So the obvious answer is, of course, to hit them where it hurts: the wallet.

What I’m proposing is a complete boycott of all music recorded on any major record label, including songs sold over iTunes and other pay-per-download sites. This would be the only way to tell the recording industry that we as consumers care about the quality of the product and how artists, songwriters, and publishers are treated, since they obviously don’t listen to anything even remotely resembling logic.

I would go further and say we should rip them off by downloading torrents and free files whenever possible, but unfortunately this would still be illegal, and the fines from said actions go almost entirely to the recording industry, not to the artists hurt by the “crime.” So don’t download illegally, but don’t download legally either.

Look at it this way: if TV-watchers had boycotted their televisions in a show of solidarity with the writers, the strike would have been over months ago, since it would have put pressure on the industry to make a deal. The same is true here: zero album sales means zero revenue, and if that goes on for a while the RIAA might get pretty antsy.

So I urge everyone reading this to help out songwriters and publishers, and screw the greedy people in the RIAA. They already shut down Napster and sued hundreds of people for money most of them didn’t have; we shouldn’t let them get away with this too.

Rage against the RIAA, and e-mail Richard at rab53@pitt.edu.