Courtney Love Does the Math

http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/index.html

The beginning of the article starts off by talking about how little money the recording artists actually make from a record deal. The example that the author of the article used was that from a 4 person band, after all things have been paid off, each band member only makes $45,000. In contrast to this, the record label grosses ~$6.6 million, that’s 120 times the profit of the band members individually. Now, while it does make sense that the record label would gross more than the individual band members, it doesn’t make sense that they are grossing 120 times more than the band. The author also talks about current and past copyright law. Up until 1978, when the copyright on something ran out, that something would either go back to you or go back to your family to do with as they want. However, now, when a copyright runs out, the rights to that something are just sold off to the highest bidder. The author talks about how right now, many artists are fighting to gain control back of their names/band names from their respective record labels. The RIAA surprisingly enough, is helping the artists to gain back some of their rights. At the moment, the RIAA is also lobbying to make it even harder for artists to declare bankruptcy. Many artists and groups revert to declaring bankruptcy to avoid bad contract deals. The main example that the author uses is TLC, who received less than 2% of their $175 million in record sales. Later on in the article, the author starts talking about how she is fundamentally against piracy, but then looking at the statistics, “piracy” is actually good for the industry. Each year music downloads have gone up, but so have sales of CD’s and other forms of legitimate music purchases. The author argues that the digital age is actually better for the artist, because it makes their music far more accessible to the majority of their fan base. She says that the limited promotional time that their labels buy is not nearly enough for productive advertising. The internet is a much cheaper and widespread, so it is a far more efficient way of advertising than radio promotion or TV promotion. Ultimately, the author says that, since under the current system she is basically giving away his music for free, so there is no reason to be afraid of the evolving age of internet based music.