Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled

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• Digital music hurts the artists

  Grant Robertson looks at the impact of digital downloads and agrees with Weird Al that the artists are getting a raw deal. The artist (Grant uses the Allman Brothers as an example) gets $0.31 cents per song sold on a CD, but only $0.045 for each digital download. The format is crippled, the record label saves money in production and distribution, and the artist takes an 85% pay cut. That sure doesn't seem right, does it? The Allman Brothers and Cheap Trick have already sued Sony BMG over allegations that the bands are being underpaid for digital downloads . Among other things, it seems that these labels are deducting 15% of the total sales for "breakage" and another 20% for packaging. We should encourage digital distribution: more access and lower costs for everyone. As I've said before, "Digital music has the potential to (in Fred von Lohmann's words) 'grow the pie' for everyone - we'll have more innovation, more money for both content creators (and publishers) and technology companies... Posted Jun 18 2006, 04:20 AM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Intellectual Property, Music, Copyright, Web 2.0