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I'm in tears.

Is it reasonable to expect a 20 year old intern to have these 11000 songs? Does her life depend on it? What about other things which are unreasonable expensive for a 20 year old intern? The laptop to store the music on, external hard drive, smartphone with data plan to download and so on ... ?

This one has some background on numbers. And myths about royalties: http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/letter-to-emi...

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I don't want it to look like I'm defending her position, because I'm not. I think artists need to be paid. But I can't let that letter's maths go unscrutinised.

He starts off by saying "I’m gonna give you a break" and then ignores the record company's cut, which is about 80%. And then proceeds to use this drastically reduced value to lay a guilt trip.

It doesn't work that way, the record company isn't going to cut her a break, it's going to charge her the full 99c. Which means instead of $17.82 a month, she would need to pay $89.10 a month, for 10 years between the ages of 10 and 20.

And a great simple info graphic about royalties http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music...

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