Quote:
Originally Posted by lumpynose
The copyright laws, or whatever laws they are, can sometimes be surprising. Another example from the early mp3 days was an article I heard on the radio. From what I understood them saying, you can't buy a CD, for example, and play it in your restaurant as background music for the customers. Unless you arrange to pay royalties to the people who manage them (BMI, RIAA, I think). So every time the radio plays a song, they're paying royalties; it might only be a penny per play, but they're paying it. In these cases there is money being made by the party playing the music, which is part of the reason they're playing the music. Another example they mentioned was a summer camp that bought some sheet music and they were using it for the kids to sing the songs around a camp fire. According to what I heard they were liable for the royalties since the camp wasn't free/nonprofit.
Royalties are related to copyright but the point is that it's about the artist being compensated for their work. But what we see is the "greedy" business that's collecting the money, and they typically take a huge percentage in comparison to what the artist ends up getting.
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Please see my earlier post about the publisher's share, versus the artists'. The artist took the time to create the story, the book, the song, the artwork, yes--but it's the publisher, the music producer, the guy who pays the recording studio, who pays thousands for layout, etc. that risks the money to produce that piece of art for public consumption. Self-publishing is nothing more than authors taking those risks THEMSELVES, which entitles them to the publisher's share of the profits.
Same with "garage bands" that self-produce their music by playing crappy gigs to get studio time; record their own albums, distribute them, market them via YouTube, etc.
Anytime an artist does all the heavy lifting himself, then he is perfectly entitled to that lion's share of the proceeds. But when they ask someone else to invest in them, to take those risks;to pay them an advance, pre-publication and foot the bills for an editor, layout, eBook production, cover design and marketing--then yes, that author also agrees that the publisher gets to keep the lion's share of the money, particularly until the book earns out. That's simply business and standard investments--if you want a
bigger reward, you take a
bigger risk. If you want someone
else to take the risk, while you don't, that gets you a much smaller percentage of the ups.
There's not one damned thing "greedy" about it. Fundamental risk-reward.
Hitch