I wish there was a 'compulsory licensing' for individuals for personal use. Pay a lump sum and then you're obliged to receive a license for downloading whatever you want from whatever source you like. If the MPAA/RIAA goons log your IP address and send you a notice of copyright infringement, slam the license on their face, and politely ask them to fsck off.
Would you support the same compulsory licensing for the software you write? Are shareware authors bad people? (I'm trying to push this argument to understand why we need to treat music differently).
Music isn't different, but it's treated that way presently. For instance, if I build a website using Windows, .Net, and SQL Server, I don't have to give Microsoft 50% of my revenue. Same with shareware. I don't have to rely on other big companies to negotiate deals with the shareware authors. I just buy the software directly from them.
This is a poor analogy. Pandora isn't paying music fees once to listen to the songs in their office, they are paying recurring fees because they then redistribute that music to others in a streaming fashion.
That's because I wasn't making an analogy. I'm showing how two similar business transactions (ie, they both involve being able to use content of some kind be it software or music) are artificially made different by laws and "leverage". I mean, there are very few software companies that can place the limitations on their software and charge the same way the music and movie industries do.
This really isn't an apt comparison at all. Music has a pretty limited set of uses than can be enumerated and license fees can be assigned to. This would allow for more competition and innovation in the music space if every new service didn't have to spend years upon years negotiating with the record labels.
It would be even better if television and movies also had compulsory licenses. Maybe not for new releases but after a certain amount of time the value of certain types of videos becomes nearly equal.
Supposing we wave a magic wand and eliminate all legal, contractual, technical, and logistical barriers to doing that, how much do you think would be fair for unmatched, untrackable, all-you-can eat access to music?
There is no such thing as fair pricing, the only price is the lowest you can get (if you are the buyer) or the highest you can get (if you are the seller).
Getting a fair price is handing power to your enemy in a zero sum game.
And these goes to the music groups where if you're a band, you must apply for royalties. I don't think any band got very much at all. 'Government-sanctioned guilds'
Although it would complicate matters, I'd prefer the license to be by song or by band or similar. Otherwise they'd either need to track your listening/downloading habits to make payments to artists fair, or else just make the payments on their own metrics (which are always tilted toward the artists most controlled by the labels)
Splitting at least 50% with the studios or labels is pretty standard. It's one reason why the Apple 30% app store tax makes no sense for some businesses (ebooks, vod, music).
There's a difference between making money and highway robbery. And note that we aren't talking about content producers making money. We're talking about middlemen who serve very little purpose anymore making far more money than they deserve.
I'm sure we could have an interesting philosophical or religious debate over that subject, but it's not really relevant to my point. My point is that record labels take far more out of the system than they put in. That's bad both from a moral standpoint of what people deserve and a pragmatic standpoint of efficiency.
According to you they take more out, but the truth is, they put in just as much. Artists willingly go to labels because most of the time, they either don't have the resources or just aren't interested in dealing with everything that has to do with the music business (it is and always has been a business). They just want to concentrate on what they do best: playing music.
Unless you outlaw business, there will always be labels because there will always be an artist that doesn't know how to deal with the business side of the industry. They also might want connections that they otherwise wouldn't be able to have.
Venture capitalists serve the same purpose as a record label, yet this entire forum is based around the industry and nobody here seems to have a problem with them.
my point was the market determines the value of their services. as such, consumer feelings about what is "fair" may be misguided. I say 'may' because certain issues like, say, the value of healthcare, are too complex for me to judge.
