sikoone used our news submit to tell us: "When I see things like this it makes me not want to buy music in any shape or form. When I buy a CD I want to support the ARTIST, not the record company. I know the record company has a lot to do with promotion and other such ilk, but the vast amount of money should go to the artists. For a true recording artist, not this candy-coated crap the record companies are trying to feed us; they are the creative force and they should reap most of the rewards. We already know the record companies are taking most of the CD money, but when I see this it makes me not want to buy music ever again. There are some artists I enjoy supporting. My favorite bands are probably(allow me to do a little promoting here)Cheap Trick,Enuff Znuff,Tool,and Soulfly. If it keeps them making music I will gladly buy their CD's, but if the vast amount of money is going to the record companies maybe I can"t buy their stuff anymore either."
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When asked by a fan whether purchasing a conventional CD or buying a digital file via iTunes would net Yankovic more pocket money the artist answered on his website. "I am extremely grateful for your support, no matter which format you choose to legally obtain my music in, so you should do whatever makes the most sense for you personally. But since you ASKED... I actually do get significantly more money from CD sales, as opposed to downloads. This is the one thing about my renegotiated record contract that never made much sense to me. It costs the label NOTHING for somebody to download an album (no manufacturing costs, shipping, or really any overhead of any kind) and yet the artist (me) winds up making less from it. Go figure." |
If we think about it, the Internet has been a good deal for a lot of businesses, as they no longer have to provide a physical product. It's a good deal for us too, as we don't have to pay for the physical product, or the postage, when it comes to software or patches, or even wait very long for the product to download to our computers. However, we are paying for an Internet connection, and this provides the distribution channel, if you will, for these companies. But, it is a win win deal it seems. At least, I'm not complaining!
However, in the case of the music industry, specifically the labels-they are arguably making out better than many other Internet business paradigms. For one thing, they don't have to operate a server, or provide bandwidth, as iTunes and the others are doing all the grunt work in this area. In addition, they don't even have a clue as to how to protect their product, so others, hungry for a copyrighted product they can sell, have provided the DRM and even the compression techniques for the labels. The labels can't create the product they offer, they need people with talent and creativity, they use artists for that, so labels are basically "promoters".
But in the case of online digital music offerings, they were dragged kicking and screaming to the table, since they were against online sales, and now even the online promotion is done by other companies. To hear that they are keeping so much of the share of this "free money" does tend to become an irritating factor. Good story sikoone.
Source: Digital Music
