From: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org (alloy-digest) To: alloy-digest@smoe.org Subject: alloy-digest V5 #22 Reply-To: alloy@smoe.org Sender: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "alloy-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. alloy-digest Tuesday, February 1 2000 Volume 05 : Number 022 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Alloy: FW: Your Rights Under Attack by Record Industry ["Alexander, D] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 10:48:24 -0700 From: "Alexander, Dennis" Subject: Re: Alloy: FW: Your Rights Under Attack by Record Industry (Sending from my work address...) >One thing that has recurred in your post and the forwards is "protection from the record companies" which makes the record companies sound like a Mafia organisation or something that is going to try to break our legs should we buy something that isn't distributed by them. This is untrue. I agree with you that, because we have the record companies, we have The Beatles, Thomas Dolby, etc, and I wouldn't necessarily say they are like a mafia organization. But they're up to no good, as far as the artists go. I don't know who it was but some band made a huge hit record, went on tour and sold out every show in stadiums. And in the end, despite huge profits made in general, the band was in debt by some exorbitant amount. The reason why was because the percentage the band made vs. what the record company made was incredible. Downright ridiculous. I read an article yesterday in the Rocky Mountain News that explained this situation and it made me mad. It brought up how *Prince* wrote the word 'slave' on his forehead and after reading the article I knew exactly why he did that. It was related this way (if I can accurately remember it). Comparing it to a mortgage... You buy a house for $250,000 paying 75% interest. You pay the loan off but it's not really yours yet. You still owe another $2 Million in fees. You pay those but then you still don't own it for another 35 years. But then that last part just changed as the government just signed a bill reducing artists to that of hired labors. The law now says that anything you create under the contract of a record company will never be yours. It is permanently the property of the record company. Now, the way this works in the music industry; You borrow $200,000 from the record company to record the album. It sells 500,000 copies (it goes gold). The company gets $8 ($4 Mil), the artist gets $1.50 ($750,000). They pay the record company back the $200,000 to record the album but the album still belongs to the record company. And I forget how the rest of the analogy goes because there was another $2,000,000 the artist had to pay. I think it was for the tour or something. In the end, the artist pays the record company tremendous amounts of money for his creativity and never owns it. ------------------------------ End of alloy-digest V5 #22 **************************