Comment by dhosek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dhosek | Hacker News Reader

Part of the dispute Prince was having with the label continues to this day and is why Taylor Swift has re-recorded all her albums. It is "standard practice" for the label to take ownership of the copyright on the recorded material (called phonographic copyright and indicated with ℗) while charging all the costs of recording against the artist's share of the royalties which can result in an artist owing the label money for a hit record.

Ray Charles was a pioneer in insisting that he own the phonographic copyright on his recordings when he moved from Atlantic to ABC-Paramount yet this remained something out of reach for most artists. Robert Fripp was engaged in a decades-long lawsuit against EG to regain control of the phonographic copyright on King Crimson material (as well as to recoup illegally withheld royalties). Squeeze is another artist who re-recorded their albums to reclaim the phonographic copyright.

It's worth noting that Warner Brothers' response to Swift re-recording her albums was to update their contracts to prevent any other artist from following in her footsteps.

In the old world the business model made sense, it no longer does.

Part of what gets distorted by Taylor Swift and Dave Chappelle is the larger context. Similar to VC the vast majority of label supported musicians are economic failures. The big winners pay for the rest of the failures.

With modern distribution this is mostly a bad deal.

Since the 'Non Fungible Taylor Swift' [0] is really in control she can subvert this (until contracts get updated), but generally people can just go direct now and do their own marketing or negotiate better terms for investment.

I'm not fan of the music labels or how their clinging to an outdated business model for decades has set back their market cap by probably billions (compare to free to play videogames), but the way this is often portrayed by the rare breakout artists is similarly warped and one-sided. You never hear from the failures the label funded that didn't make it.

[0]: https://stratechery.com/2021/non-fungible-taylor-swift/

I don't think it ever made sense. Steve Albini wrote an article about how fucked up it all was back in 1993: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music

I think there's a reasonable argument there, but I can understand the model better before the internet (since distribution was way harder and more expensive). The terms were definitely bad for talent because early talent had no leverage before the internet (and couldn't coordinate).

After the internet whatever argument the record companies had was way weaker and their unwillingness to update (instead attempting to fight everything legally) cost them enormous returns.

"I prove to you that I am bad enough to get into hell, because I have been through it! I have seen it! It has happened to me! Remember: I was signed for Warner Brothers for eight fucking years!" - Zappa in '79

During the Napster era Courtney Love made a similar argument that record labels are the real pirates. [0]

https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/

Not entirely related, but one doesn't necesarily use the advances as cash in the pocket -- you dump it into assets that pay you money (e.g. bonds).

Taken to an extreme, you see David Bowie who floated the royalties of all his records as a financial instrument that you can buy. [0]

[0]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bowie-bond.asp

What is truly enraging in the story about major music labels and copyright is how they essentially pushed through massive law changes in many countries making breaking copyright crimes (not just civil cases) and going after some file sharers with absolutely outrages claims of lost earnings (and often won).

At the same time they got caught red handed disregarding copyright themselves multiple times (Sony's rootkit which used some linux copyright IIRC, or the case of several major record labels releasing compilation albums of music without artist consent and copyright in Canada are just two examples). By their own calculations used against file shares the damages should have amounted to billions, but they got away with not so much but a slap on the wrist. I wish some judge would have really made an example of some of them.

In France they managed to make the country pay for the hunt against P2P.

There was a governmental agency (Hadopi) that costed millions of euros and due to the stupid law managed to won I think one case for 2000€.

They got merged into another useless agency and was forgotten. I am not sure whether they still exist, nobody really cares.

This is how pay of our tax money is spent in France, on subsidized sandboxes for politicians.

Interestingly, I had a CD that I owned go bad. I found it on a torrent and started downloading it on my laptop. It was taking weeks to finish. I forgot that it was running and then went on vacation to Paris, taking my laptop with me. Within the first hour at our AirBNB the torrent finished.

No disagreement with me there, the copyright laws are a disaster and have long lost their way from the 'means' to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

The purpose is to incentivize creative works for the public benefit with the limited time exclusive rights, not retroactively extend copyright years after the death of the author to enrich their rights-holders in perpetuity every time expiration comes up.

As it is, you can't even make something public domain yourself - the best you can do is add a permissive license since all rights are reserved by default without registration.

But this is getting somewhat off topic.

Copyright has always been a means of control by publishers, stretching right back to mid 1600s.

The specific wording of the US constitution was (is?) a nice little bit of fluff but it didn't really change the nature of copyright at all when it was published.

> compare to free to play videogames

What's the music equivalent of abusive lootbox and gatcha mechanics? Those seem to drive a lot of the free-to-play profit..

In games its give away the game and pay for the skins, characters etc.

In music its give away the songs and pay for the merch, shows, access to artist, etc.

The market for the latter is huge. The music is the viral hook you can use to take advantage of the internet's distribution in order to get the attention to create fans and drive them towards the other stuff.

With the internet you don't even need to rely on mega-pop stars, there's enough people at scale for a lot of niche audiences.

"Oh, you need to sign over the copyright to us so we can legally make and distribute copies." I think that's approximately the line of bullshit they give. No, by default creators own their copyright and can license that on terms they allow. Once you sign that over it's just not your material anymore.

That's what Daft Punk did in 1997: "The deal they struck with Virgin at the outset of their career - essentially licensing music to Virgin from their own company, Daft Trax - was pioneering." [0]

[0]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/articles/48f880e8-d8b3-4e4f-9fa3...

"It's worth noting that Warner Brothers' response to Swift re-recording her albums was to update their contracts to prevent any other artist from following in her footsteps."

Is there any indication how this is working for them and their artists? I would think given the massive publicity that the Taylor Swift effort has received, it would be quite the other way, with more artists insisting on getting those rights upfront. I know they're typically young and desperate/powerless when these things are being negotiated, but I would think the "go it yourself" route is if anything more robust now than ever before— no one cares about physical distribution, there are many paths to getting your stuff on Spotify and iTunes, and most small-time artists I know are doing the publicity/engagement side themselves with some combination of regular video content on YouTube and streaming mini-concerts.

What can WB or any other major label offer an artist like this in exchange for the gigantic ask that is "we own all your stuff forever and btw we also own any re-recordings of these songs"?

> with more artists insisting on getting those rights upfront

I doubt that unknown artist can negotiate anything. What you are offered is better than nothing. Big corporations abuse their position all the time, individuals can not realistically opt out. The only option is regulations and law enforcement.

> What can WB or any other major label offer an artist like this in exchange for the gigantic ask that is "we own all your stuff forever and btw we also own any re-recordings of these songs"?

Advertisement, legal protection (mainly from themselves), access to traditional media, and distribution in general. How many artist make it out of the big labels system? There is a reason for that.

"How many artist make it out of the big labels system?"

Lots, particularly if your criteria is "big labels" and not just "labels":

https://www.complex.com/pigeons-and-planes/2017/07/independe...

>What can WB or any other major label offer an artist like this in exchange for the gigantic ask that is "we own all your stuff forever and btw we also own any re-recordings of these songs"?

You will never be played on the radio without a big label to pay off the programmers. Every single song you hear on the radio is bought and paid for.

Spotify and other streaming revenues are a joke for the vast majority of musicians. I personally own all my music and thanks to iTunes I know how many times every song has been played over the last 15 years (from when I got my first iPod and then my iPhone and migrated all my CDs to iTunes). My most-played track would have earned the artist $.53, the median would have yielded about $.05. (And remember this is over 15 years.) And discoverability is not necessarily that great. My wife pays for Amazon music that she and the kids listen to on Amazon Echoes and in my experience, the ability to get the specific song that you want to listen to is pretty hit or miss. I suspect that most people who are still in the discovering new music stage of their lives end up getting their music discovery happening through channels that are pretty much controlled by the majors.

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