Ford Motor Company has a lot of money too, and their products are certainly overpriced. Care to help yourself to a new Explorer?

Not all artists are making a killing, and you might be surprised how little Britney Spears actually makes from her record label. I'm sure Pepsi is paying her more than her record contract is. I mean, let's get real. If the RIAA is the big, faceless, evil, corporation eveyone says it is (and I agree that it basically is), do you really think she is getting more than a few pennys per CD?

Hey, as much fun as it is to rag on Britney, there's no difference between downloading an "unauthorized" Britney tune and an "unauthorized" Wilco tune, morally. Doesn't matter if you think downloading OK or it's not, but you can't imply downloading unauthorized songs from one artist is better or worse than downloading unauthorized songs from another artist.

Hey, don't get me wrong. The RIAA are a bunch of ostriches that are simultaneously killing the goose that laid their own golden egg and preventing new artists from getting exposure. If they'd just lower CD prices and put out an affordable downloading scheme, they'd do just fine...

Does anyone have any good background on exactly what kind of $$$ we are talking about here? How does the CD pie break down? How much does the manufacturer make versus the artists versus The Company? Also, don't many artists make a good amount of green from concert ticket sales? How does that figure in? I'd love to know how low CD prices could get with everyone still making a decent living*... Anyone?

-Gunshy
* yeah, I know it's relative, but let's think realistically, I mean nobody *needs* to own a huge house in Miami *and* one in LA...

I'm not saying stealing music is okay, people. All I'm saying is that Britney Spears is a bad choice for a spokesperson. You could put a more sympathetic character up there than her. She is not an example of a musician who is starving because people are pirating her music.

Oh, and Wilco is not a good example, SAShepherd, because they encourage people to download their music. They only ask that you don't sell the music you download to others.

A couple years ago I read that the "biggest" artists got about 40 cents per cd.

The record label sells them to stores at about $10 on average and some artists (michael Jackson) were sold to stores for about $12 or so.

I just remember A Tribe Called Quest having a platinum album and when all the videos were paid off (back to the label) and everything.....they ended up with about $34,000 each. There were three members of the group.

CD's are so cheap to manufacture and the big companies are just greedy.

Everyone knows that and it's never going to stop. It's sad that you have to buy new artists for 8 or 9 bucks because those are the only albums the labels will make affordable so people get the name going around.

Avril Lavigne's cd was about 6 bucks at Best Buy when it came out a few months ago.

Now it's most likely full price everywhere.

$18.99 is just absurd to pay for an album of songs that may or may not be crap.

Ryan Adams new cd "Demolition" is $8.99 at certain places but that's only because he's still not established in their eyes with mainstream consumers.

If he were to have some huge hit then he'd be costing twice as much.

I see CD's for $15 a pop, too much when I can just go home and download all those songs. Make them less then $10 and I'll be happy to go out and pay.

Britney may not have been a good choice, but then who is? A new artists won't say anything because they can't afford being blacklisted. A season'd artist is already believed to be too rich. At least these artist have the stuff to come forward with their views on something that hits close too home.

Why on earth, would I pay $18.99 for a CD, that offers less than 80mins of music in stereo sound, when I can go to a B&M on "Super Tuesday" and pay $15.99 for the newest DVD releases, which offer a 2hr film, DD5.1 sound, extras and more?

The RIAA needs to get with the program.

Exactly...IMHO, the three reasons for the decline in sales are 1)Poor product, 2) Overpriced product and 3) DVD. Look at the numbers, the biggest CD's (and I mean 1 a year on average) sell over a million copies in the first week. The DVD of Monster, Inc. sold 5 million copies the first week. DVD is taking the entertainment dollar away from CD's with great quality and prices. They need to start looking at that as competition.

Yep......and the RIAA already knows this.

Even if they succeeded in obliterating P2P networks, I will never buy a CD again....cause my dollar goes to the almighty DVD Gods.

I'll try and help out here without any techspeak.

This is an oversimplification of the situation, but good ballpark type figures nonetheless:

http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

Here is the RIAA's line on CD cost:

http://www.riaa.com/MD-US-7.cfm

There are a ton of factors that will go into recording contracts obviously. For the most part though artists aren't going to make that much on their albums sold. Their royalty rate will depend on their level of success and lawyer, the mechanical rate is there for those who write their own material regardless of status. The specifics of the publishing and merchandising agreements will sway vast amounts of income to the artist or the huge corporations. Touring is almost always the largest cash cow for an artist.

Hope this helps.

And I just picked out Wilco because I know you're a big fan. (Hey, so am I.) But if Britney has made the decision that she doesn't want anybody to download any of her music for any reason (and, yes, I understand that she's probably not the one personally making that decision), why should that decision be any less respected than Wilco's desire that you not sell copies of the YHF stream picked up from their website?

Which is not to say that the RIAA couldn't have picked a spokesperson with a little more cred.

I'm not necessarily against downloading music -- I just think artists/record companies should be one the driving the choice, not the consumer. Meaning that artists/record companies should get to decide. At which point the consumer decides if they even want to bother with the artist, which may make them change their mind.

Heh. Consider this. You can buy a movie (on VHS or DVD) for less than it costs to buy the soundtrack.

The recording industry needs to pull its head out of its *ss and see that they're charging too much for CDs. I can walk into a shopping mall music store and every damned CD is $19.99.

A CD from a four year old one-hit wonder band. $19.99. Thrity-five year old Beatles CDs. $19.99. CD that just came out last week. On sale for the low, low price of $17.99.

A more flexible pricing structure is needed here. Hell, even the movie studios (most of them anyway) drop the prices on their movies after a while. And, face it, the "new" wears off of music faster than it does movies.

Here's what I propose. New releases, retail for about $15.00. Catalog titles retail for anywhere from $5-$10.00. This will turn the CDs into impulse buys. A $20.00 CD is not an impulse buy. It's going to be left on the shelf. Maybe people are going to pick up a $5 CD from a band from a few years back. Maybe you liked one of their songs, and would buy the album for $5.00. Nobody's going to get it for $20.00.

Maybe if CDs were a little cheaper more people would check out the back catalogs of the Beatles and the Stones, or Led Zeppelin. Right now, the price is prohibitive. The only place you're going to hear the old stuff is if you're riding in the car with your parents and they're on the oldies stations. And, face it, that just ain't cool. Better to discover the old stuff on your own.

File-trading is not the problem. It's the symptom of a larger problem.

I'd like to call the RIAA a bunch of greedy scumbags. But I can't. If they were actually greedy, they'd want to make more money than they already are. And that would involve, you know, actually selling more things.

I think the problem is one of pride and arrogance. They've actually deluded themselves into thinking that what they're doing is more important than it actually is.

I wouldn't steal one, but I'd make an exact copy of one.

(Actually, I wouldn't. Ford sucks so hard. I wouldn't want one of their lemons even if it were free.)

I find this interesting...

HMV sells the about-to-be-released Diana Krall: Live in Paris CD for $16.99, while the DVD sells for $19.99.

The CD contains 12 songs (11 from the concert, 1 new track).

The DVD contains:

- 17 songs
- DD 5.1, DTS 5.1 and DD 2.0 tracks
- anamorphic widescreen transfer
- 2 music videos in anamorphic widescreen
- 3 songs performed in concert rehersal footage.

The DVD has alot more to offer and costs only $3 more.

Maybe someone at the RIAA can explain this?

They don't want to explain it, they want to focus on the more important (to them) issue of file swapping.

I'd also agree that catalog titles are outrageously overpriced. The RIAA always claims that the high costs of new CDs is due to the fact that many artists do not recoup costs for the labels as well as the increasingly high costs of promotion.

Catalog albums DO NOT have either of these concerns realistically. It is just the manufacturing/distribution costs. New music I don't mind paying $14 a CD for at Best Buy, but catalog albums are a different matter.

LOS ANGELES—The Recording Industry Association of America filed a $7.1 billion lawsuit against the nation's radio stations Monday, accusing them of freely distributing copyrighted music.

"It's criminal," RIAA president Hilary Rosen said. "Anyone at any time can simply turn on a radio and hear a copyrighted song. Making matters worse, these radio stations often play the best, catchiest song off the album over and over until people get sick of it. Where is the incentive for people to go out and buy the album?"

According to Rosen, the radio stations acquire copies of RIAA artists' CDs and then broadcast them using a special transmitter, making it possible for anyone with a compatible radio-wave receiver to listen to the songs.

"These radio stations are extremely popular," Rosen said. "They flagrantly string our songs together in 'uninterrupted music blocks' of up to 70 minutes in length, broadcasting nearly one CD's worth of product without a break, and they actually have the gall to allow businesses to advertise between songs. It's bad enough that they're giving away our music for free, but they're actually making a profit off this scheme."

RIAA attorney Russell Frackman said the lawsuit is intended to protect the artists.

"If this radio trend continues, it will severely damage a musician's ability to earn a living off his music," Frackman said. "[Metallica drummer] Lars Ulrich stopped in the other day wondering why his last royalty check was so small, and I didn't know what to say. How do you tell a man who's devoted his whole life to his music that someone is able to just give it away for free? That pirates are taking away his right to support himself with his craft?"

For the record companies and the RIAA, one of the most disturbing aspects of the radio-station broadcasts is that anyone with a receiver and an analog tape recorder can record the music and play it back at will.

"I've heard reports that children as young as 8 tape radio broadcasts for their own personal use," Rosen said. "They listen to a channel that has a limited rotation of only the most popular songs—commonly called 'Top 40' stations—then hit the 'record' button when they hear the opening strains of the song they want. And how much are they paying for these songs? A big fat zip."

Continued Rosen: "According to our research, there is one of these Top 40 stations in every major city in the country. This has to be stopped before the music industry's entire economic infrastructure collapses."

Especially distressing to the RIAA are radio stations' "all-request hours," when listeners call in to ask radio announcers, or "disc jockeys," to play a certain song.

"What's the point of putting out a new Ja Rule or Sum 41 album if people can just call up and hear any song off the album that they want?" Frackman asked. "In some instances, these stations actually have the nerve to let the caller 'dedicate' his act of thievery to a friend or lover. Could you imagine a bank letting somebody rob its vaults and then allowing the thief to thank his girlfriend Tricia and the whole gang down at Bumpy's?"

Defenders of radio-based music distribution insist that the relatively poor sound quality of radio broadcasts negates the record companies' charges.

"Radio doesn't have the same sound quality as a CD," said Paul "Cubby" Bryant, music director of New York radio station Z100, one of the nation's largest distributors of free music and a defendant in the suit. "Real music lovers will still buy CDs. If anything, we're exposing people to music they might not otherwise hear. These record companies should be thanking us, not suing us."

Outraged by the RIAA suit, many radio listeners are threatening to boycott the record companies.

"All these companies care about is profits," said Amy Legrand, 21, an avid Jacksonville, FL, radio user who surreptitiously records up to 10 songs a day off the radio. "Top 40 radio is taking the power out of the hands of the Ahmet Erteguns of the world and bringing it back to the people of Clear Channel and Infinity Broadcasting. It's about time somebody finally stood up to those record-company fascists."

http://www.theonion.com/onion3836/ri..._stations.html

Before I saw the link, I thought -- this has to be a joke. Must be an Onion article.

Is this for real?

If so...this is turning into one awesome witch hunt if you ask me.

Radio is being punished because of technology? Isn't the record companies the same people that used to pay stations to play artist back in the hey-day of payola?

If this is the case, then all radio stations should be silenced right now? Will this happen no. Should it happen...hell no.

Sounds like people wanting to have their cake and eating it as well.

Um....

isn't the whole point and basic principles of radio to freely air music, commentaries, news etc .... der, this story is ludicrous, hence the onion link to the story.

Chuck:

The Onion is a satirical news paper. Nothing you read on that page is true, except maybe their copyright and subscription rates.

The thing is...I wouldn't have been surprised if it was true.
These record companies DO just care about profit. Of course in theory radio stations help them advertise their bands, but maybe at some point in time they won't see things that way.

The RIAA really sucks though...what're the updates on the whole law they want passed that'll allow them to hack into people's PC's?

Me too!