Okay, so we do not know when a tipping point will happen until after the fact, but I have seen a couple of stories recently of bands uniting to counter the RIAA’s handling of downloadable music.
- Cheap Trick and Allman Brothers take on Sony’s cost analysis of packaging costs in the post-CD world
- Canadian musicians unite to counter Canada’s RIAA claim of speaking on behalf of artists
A more informative post about the packaging costs lawsuit can be found in a subsequent post on the same site (Digital Music News). Here are the main issues, as copied and pasted from part of the post:
1) Sony pays royalties on only 85% of total sales of “phonorecords”. The 15% fee is for “breakage”. I.e. Sony and the artist have agreed to assume that 15% of the produced product will be unsaleable for damage during shipping, packing, and display. There is no shipping, packing or display in the conventional sense for digital downloads.
2) Sony deducts a 20% fee for “container/packaging charges”. Container and packaging charges aren’t associated with digital downloads.
3) [ Sony reduces ] “its payments by a further 50% “audiofile” deduction”. I’ve not been able to find any explanation of what this “audiofile” charge is.
I have a couple of RIAA posts in the hopper (as the bl-ids say).