[BC] RIAA and Copying

[Rich Wood]

------ At 06:51 PM 1/16/2008, Kevin C. Kidd, CSRE/AMD wrote: -------

>Sorta like one of the players comments during the 1994 Baseball strike
>"They are taking food from my baby's mouth...".
>
>If you are making $3mil a year and you need even more to feed your
>family...  There is probably a more severe underlying problem.

It's been my experience that the whole system is screwed up. Not 
every musician makes multi-millions. I think record companies stack 
the deck and very few musicians actually make much money.

One of my Talk Show Hosts commissioned a musician to write some 
thematics. The composer agreed to be paid from license royalties. I 
received a pleading call from him asking if I could help him get 
paid. He hadn't received a penny because the licensing organization 
hadn't heard his music during their monitoring. Fortunately, I knew 
when his material aired and reported the times to the organization 
that was supposed to be looking out for his best interests and got 
him paid. Many had lyrics, so they'd be easily identified.

Ask the millionaire performers how long it took and how often they 
got screwed by record companies before they sold enough to give them 
some negotiating clout. Look at the history of the record industry 
screwing people like Little Richard and many like him.

I blame record companies for the sad state of music on radio today. 
Add the RIAA and it looks like they're on a suicide course. I don't 
like theft of intellectual property but can easily understand the 
attitude of those stealing music. They don't see individual 
performers. They see big foreign record companies ripping them off.

Rich