A step in the right direction.
However, it is very frustrating how many, many end consumers are hostile to the whole royalty situation,since Napster, it seems that the anti lobby / silicon valley, whoever- has filled everyones heads with how evil the record industry is, but truth be told, the big labels are dead anyway, and the people getting hurt now are the artists.
Let me give you a breakdown of how things generally work.
Just say a lower indi artist is signed to a small label.
The artist is advanced $5000 from the label to do a record. In exchange for the advance, the label asks to take a cut of their musical publishing, to recoup the loan. This publishing deal is really just a bank loan, the artist is paying for this themselves in the end. More on this later.
After recording costs, instruments, misc items, they have used all of $5000, and also a few thousand of their personal money. The album is released.
Now, they're selling material on Itunes and the odd CD. The band is not Coldplay, so they're not selling a huge amount of tracks. They're touring as well, and between Itunes sales and touring the band is making less than if all 5 members were instead working minimum wage jobs..but hey, thats the choice they made.
Now, royalties - this is the chance for the band it make a little money.
In the US these are collected by ASCAP and BMI.
Every time the music is played on radio and such live to air mediums, the station pays a minuscule amount the ASCAP / BMI who distribute it back to the artist and publisher, in a non profit manner, in the following way.
of say, 0.01 cents -
50% is the writers royalty. The person who wrote the music in the song gets 25% and the person that writes the lyrics gets 25%
The other 50% is the publishing royalty. As the record label loaned $5000 to the band, then the Band is taking 40% of this money and the label is taking 60% until the money is paid back, and then depending upon the contract may keep collecting these royalties for a profit.
Now this is a gross simplification, but I wanted to paint the picture for those of you who dont know much about this.
As a musician myself, I can say that for much of the music I write, the only chance I can at all make any money after covering expenses is from Royalties..writers shares and publishing shares. I am not attached to a label. Its that hard.
I think most artists would be quite happy for everyone to be downloading their material via torrents, if only they got some super tiny fraction of a cent amount every time someone plays their music, just like if it was on radio.
Now, Youtube, Google, ect make a lot of money from advertising revenue exploiting content from artists and such. This is why they fight so hard against any royalty association trying to collect these royalties for artists, it cuts into their profit margins.
Now Youtube is paying royalties, but its not more than token amount, and looking at my statements, doesn't seem to be very accurate regarding the amount of plays the material actually receives.
This from Apple, im glad it makes the front page of Macrumors, and Im glad apple is making another baby step in the right direction.
So regarding how little artists (and labels) make from their music, and how much big business like Google and Apple make from their music, it is fair that the artist take a little more money from those Giants.
But they fight it, and they have the average consumer fighting it too, making you think you're sticking it to the man (labels) when you're really In the mans pocket and you're sticking it to the people of are writing the music you love.
Thanks for your time.
