RAW DOGMA written by Nkrumah Steward
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| Recording Artists Testify against the Recording Industry |
The "record industry" fucking over "the artist" is as old as the recording industry itself.
Americans are justifiably appalled at the behavior of Enron executives for their total absence of conscious, but this isn't a new phenomenon, this isn't a "reflection of our times or the fault of our educational system teaching our impressionable children "ethical relativism".
This is how America does business. Not every American business of course but more than enough to create the stereotype and we all know the only way a stereotype can continue to exist is if there are enough people out there that fit the bill.
What bothers me is that Americans have this idea in their heads that if an athlete gets paid millions and he too is screwed by the owners no one seems to care because he "has millions". Likewise if a recording artist is getting fucked over on his royalties by his recording label we generally don't care because somewhere deep down inside we believe that celebrities like Little Richard are exempt from needing money.
The government allows him to pay his taxes with Fame.
Just because they have more than you, it seems your little jealous heart gets callous towards even beginning to empathize with them getting screwed.
How would you feel if they cut you a million dollar check but a team of executives who won't even accept your phone calls were cutting themselves 20 million dollar checks and living in neighborhoods that you couldn't dream of moving into off the royalties from your songs?
Music that they never lifted a finger to compose.
How could you make peace with the fact that they are benefiting 20 times more than you for the product that your talents and hard work produced?
You are putting their children through college. They are getting paid when they sell the rights to your songs to play in some fast food commercial.
It's just like collegiate sports where they are selling jerseys with your number and name on the back to every kid in the state, bringing in hundreds of millions a year to the University from apparel and television rights to broadcast you run and up and down the field and you are supposed to be happy with the equivalent of room, board and books and the opportunity to get a fine education from their communications department.
All of which would come to a whopping total of 30,000 a year.
Fuck that.
Let the athletes keep the millions and make them pay for their education out of their pockets thank you very much.
The recording industry like all entertainment industries should be indebted to the performers not the other way around. The recording industry doesn't train these artists how to do their jobs. It's not like you go to college to learn how to "write a hit", and then you get a job at Sony Music where they teach you how to write the "Sony way".
They complain that they lose so much money on artists that don't pan out. That is both crap and crocodile tears. They don't promote 95% of the artist on their label. Any artist in the music industry will tell you signing to a label doesn't mean that you won't still be selling CD's out of the back of your own car in the beginning. Go to the record store. The only way you are going to find artist on those racks that you haven't heard of is if you are not familiar with the genre. If you're losing money on artists that don't pan out then you need to be more discriminating on who you are signing. That is like a professional sports team complaining that none of their draft picks are making the final cut on the team. Well whose fault is that genius? The scouts that's who. You don't make the players that did make the team take a pay cut to recoup your loses on the players that didn't pan out.
"Hey fellas, the starting QB just broke his leg. He is out for the season. The head office is asking you all to take a pay cut so they can break even on paying this guy for the rest of the season since we can't benefit from his service."
The recording Industry which is always arguing that they are looking out for the "artists" when they are trying to shut down file sharing sites like Napster, Audiogalaxy are being criticized by those very same artists for being the underhanded shady son of a bitches that the industry is.
Singers and entertainment attorneys are criticizing the $41 billion dollar recording industry, testifying in court that they routinely underreport royalties and cheat artists of millions of dollars.
Music attorney Don Engel estimated that record companies routinely "underpay 10 to 40 percent on every royalty" and dare artists to challenge it without killing their careers.
The recording industry claims that fewer than 5% of signed artists produce a hit record, so for every hit the industry loses $6.3 million on albums that fail.
Sam Moore of Sam and Dave testified that his retirement fund comes out to $67 a month because his record label never reported income to his pension fund.
Singer Montel Jordan, who had the 1995 hit, "This is How We Do It," said despite 2 million singles from that release and several albums since, he still owes money to his record label.
"I have sold many gold and platinum records. I've never had a moneymaking loss and yet ... I still haven't recouped," Jordan said.
They are proposing setting a standard for accounting rules for the industry. A bill introduced in the Senate would close a record industry exemption from state labor law and limit contracts to seven years.
So let's see here, the recording industry has been sued for price fixing by forcing retailers to sell CD's at a certain price, they fought the anti-terrorism bill because it would make it illegal for them to hack into your computer, and now the very artists they are swearing they are fighting sites like Napster for are testifying that they have been fucking them out of their royalties this entire time.
And they call us thieves? |
