AT Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 02:34:40 Farrar wrote: >Yes, it's almost as irritating as chatting with my friend in Canada, who >can download tunes without fear of legal action before I can save up enough >dough to buy the CD. No sooner have I said "Have you heard [X] by [Y]?" >than she says "I'm downloading it now." >grunt< Meanwhile, there things in the US that we can't get in Canada as downloads because the CRIA (our equivalent to RIAA) is still doing battle with publishers over the standard mechanical royalty rate paid per download to songwriters. The publishers want parity with the master use royalty....in other words, if SONY/BMG is making $0.50 on a $0.99 download, the songwriters want the same thing. Their logic is that because there is no manufacturing or physical cost of creating these downloadable tunes, then the labels should be willing to cough up more of the profit margin. The labels still feel that all the production costs still warrant a high yield of profit and that the publishers can go blow. >If it weren't for the weather... Because of that imaginary *global warming conspiracy*....this year, in Toronto, we had zero snow -- first time I can remember in my 42 years. We've been surfing 55F to 60F temperatures since mid-March. Today it is 79F. We had an unusual amount of rain because of the higher temperatures in lieu of the snow....but not so threatening as seen in the Southern USA in the last two years [though, we did have a hurricane related storm last August that flooded most of this city]. Jaimie Vernon, President, Bullseye Records "Not Infecting Our Customers' Computers Since 1985!!" http://www.bullseyecanada.com http://www.bullseyerecords.com Author, Canadian Pop Music Encyclopedia http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/Pop_Encyclopedia/ http://www.myspace.com/jaimievernonsmovingtargetz