Sound Exchange Royalties-Still Seeking Artists

May 20th, 2009 / Filed Under: Music Business News / No Comments / Tags: , , , , , ,

Bob Davis Appears courtesy of Soul-Patrol.net

This email was forwarded from our friend Todd Baptista, via our friend Clyde Frazier. Please read it and pass this blog link and information along.

1. Obviously it is very important for OUR artists to be compensated for their work and as you read thru the website list you will see the names of some of your favorite artists who have money waiting for them, all they need do is collect it. This money represents PERFORMANCE ROYALTIES that they are due as a result of Internet Radio airplay.

Please forward this blog address to as many people as possible and if you know any artist (not just the ones listed on the website), please encourage them to go to the SoundExchange website (http://www.soundexchange.com) to check and see if they are entititled to collect any past due airplay royalties.

2. It is these very same PERFORMANCE ROYALTIES that the US Congress via HR Bill 848, wants to insure are paid by terrestrial radio broadcasters like Cathy Hughes.

CATHY HUGHES WANTS YOU TO LOBBY YOUR CONGRESSPERSON TO OPPOSE THIS PROPOSED LAW. SHE DOESN’T THINK THAT ARTISTS DESERVE TO BE COMPENSATED FOR THEIR WORK AS A RESULT OF HER PLAYING THEIR MUSIC AND MAKING MONEY FROM IT.

Soul-Patrol feels that Cathy Hughes in taking this position is helping to enable CULTURE BANDITRY. Why shouldn’t she pay for using the artist content? How would she feel if someone used her work to get rich, and then got on the public airways and told the general public that it was a good thing?

(and this is one of the things that I recently discussed on www.AirAmerica.com w/Chuck D on his show “On The Real”)

Here’s the Email that I received:

Friends-

It’s about time for next round of Sound Exchange royalty statements to be sent out and while browsing at their site today, I am amazed at the number of artists who are not collecting their royalties.

Remember- any unclaimed royalties revert back to the U. S. Government at the end of each calendar year.

I am not sure when the following list was most recently updated as several of the artists we recently signed up (including the Solitaires and Tune Weavers, for example) are listed as unclaimed. However, the following artists are still not collecting royalties. If you are on this list or know someone on this list or a family member or estate, please contact Sound Exchange or visit them online at http://www.soundexchange.com.

As always, I am willing to volunteer my services to assist in getting the paperwork done for original artists or their families (trbent[at]charter.net). Currently, we
have assisted over 60 performing artists to collect these royalties.

Thanks,

Todd Baptista

For the updated list, and more info about Sound Exchange, read on:

Artists not collecting royalties are listed on 84 pages at their website.

In summary, SoundExchange handles the following:

. collects performance royalties from the statutory licensees;
. collects performance royalties from reciprocal agreements with foreign collecting societies for featured artists and labels;
. collects and processes all data associated with the performance of the sound recordings;
. allocates royalties for the performance of the sound recording based on all of the data collected and processed;
. makes distribution of the featured artist’s share directly to the artist;
. makes distribution of the SRCO’s share directly to the copyright owner;
. makes distribution of the non-featured artist’s share to AFTRA and AFM’s Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund; and
. provides detailed reports summarizing the titles, featured artists and royalty amounts for each of the sound recordings performed by the statutory licensees.

—————————————-
Bob Davis
earthjuice@prodigy.net
—————————————-
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Music At What Price?

December 8th, 2008 / Filed Under: Music / No Comments / Tags: , , , , , ,

For years I have been lobbying for “variable pricing” for music.
99 cents/song is just too expensive. Especially now, during an economic
depression.

Who do you know that can afford to fill up an iPod with say 5,000 songs
“legally” and pay $5,000.00 for that privilege?

http://www.soul-patrol.com/newsletter/2006/news11/paradigm.html

If you know someone who has that kind of disposable income, please give
me their email address, so I can write them and ask them to legally
adopt me.

Some say that the answer to that problem is that music should be “free.”
I don’t believe that either.

I think that the consumer’s perceived value of “free music” is zero.
Most of the people I know who have vast iPod collections of “free music”
only listen to a relatively small number of those tracks. The rest of
the tracks sit in what is the digital equivelent of a trunk stored in a
corner of the attic surrounded by cobwebs.

Music should be priced according to what the marketplace will bear.
If you think it’s “good music” and nobody buys it at 99 cents, then
lower the price.

People will buy what they can afford and what has value to them on an
individual level.

Music is a personal thing.
Great music is even more personal.
If it doesn’t touch my soul, I don’t want it even if it’s free.

I will pay almost anything for music that truly touches my soul.
But if it’s 1/2 price or 1/4 price this week and it’s gonna be full
price next week, which week do you think I’m gonna buy it?

For music that doesn’t “touch my soul”, but I still might like, I may
want to own it, but probably only at a huge discount. It’s no different
than in the physical world. In the past I have purchased CD’s of artists
that I barely like (ex: Patti Patti Labelle, Frankie Beverly & Maze,
etc.)

But I have waited 20 years in some cases to buy those “greatest hit”
collections of artists that I only marginally like and only when I could
get them for $6.99 or $7.99. I have always loved “compilation albums”
because they enable me to sample an artist at a low risk price.

I would generally buy albums like that during the same record store
visit when I have paid $25.00 for a Passport album. When I got home, the
Patti Labelle, Frankie Beverly & Maze, etc. album would get tossed into
the corner, still in the shrink wrap until someone comes over to my
house & wants to hear it. Meanwhile that Passport album gets opened
immediately along with the bottle of 12 year old scotch I brought on my
way home from the store, I put on the headphones, shut the door & listen
to the Passport album 2-3 times, because I have set the CD player on
repeat.

Translated to today’s world that means I might be willing to pay 99
cents for a great track by Nadir (an artist that I really like) and set
it up to automatically play when my PC boots up, but only 9 cents for a
track by Kindred & the Family Soul (an artist that I only marginally
like) that would likely only get played at the request of someone other
than myself.

For you it may be the opposite…

Either way I would think that the people who are responsible for the
long term financial viability of Kindred & the Family Soul would rather
have me pay 9 cents several times over the course of my lifetime to
acquire their music, as opposed to zero? At least this way I would at
least listen to the music a few times, perhaps by pulling up the track
for someone else to hear? (no different than with my Patti Labelle,
Frankie Beverly & Maze, etc. albums.)

The whole idea is for more people to consume more music. Consumption
goes up when prices are cheaper and people will consume whatever has
value to them on a personal level and they will consume it at a rate
(price) based on whatever their personal likes or dislikes are.

I think that the smart people in the music industry are starting to
realize that this concept is probably their best long term salvation.
Just read some of the comments being made in the music blogosphere and
you can see that the tide is turning.

All of those starving artists and economically depressed record labels
should seriously consider this strategy. Especially right now when
people actually have more time to spend at home listening to music,
since millions of people no longer have jobs to leave their house for
and certainly are in need of something CHEAP that is guaranteed to bring
a smile to their faces.

“Less is not more, more is more…”

Bob Davis

(Bob Davis & Soul Patrol.net contributes timely music industry information for Earwax Digital. The opinion expressed here does not necessarily represent the opinion of Earwax Records.)

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