Looks like Sony is in the news again. Of course it's a negative story as well. It seems there has been a lawsuit filed by the rock bands the Allmans and Cheap Trick, claiming that Sony is not giving them their fair share of the royalties due from iTunes downloads.
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"Sony Music is presently engaged in a widespread attempt to underpay its recording artists," attorney Brian Caplan said in a statement. "With the technological advancements in the music industry, where many people download songs to their iPods and other portable devices, it is essential that artists receive the royalty income to which they are entitled." The class-action lawsuit claims that the artists' contracts require Sony to pay its artists about 30 cents out of every 70 cents it gets for digital downloads--out of a total of 99 cents that iTunes charges per song. But the complaint maintains that Sony is only paying artists 4.5 cents for each song. The case hinges on whether a digital download is comparable to a sale of a CD, as the labels contend, or more on par with a license of a song for use on a movie soundtrack, for example, as the artists claim. |
Apparently this is a contract problem in that the older contracts do not clearly spell out what is due. This is something that happens with the arrival of new technologies according to Bob Kohn, founder of indie digital-music store eMusic and now CEO of royalty processing service RoyaltyShare.
Source: MP3.com
