Worlds of Trad Royalties Increase

Subject: Worlds of Trad Royalties Increase
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 29 Mar 07 - 05:49 AM

I've just had an email from Live365 who host my Worlds of Trad Internet radio station. The gist is that the United States Copyright Royalty Board is about to progresively increase Internet royalties by 149% for the period 2006 to 2010. The increase is retrospective and takes effect immediately.

Live365 rightly regards this as a swingeing move and in my view it is quite unmerited. Like me, most Internet broadcasters are hobbyists. We do what we do out of love for the music and as a not for profit public service. What's more, Internet broadcasting actually benefits the record industry by generating record sales.

The upshot is that Live365 say the only way they can absorb the increased royalty costs is by increasing the fequency of advertising blocks. Therefore, from March 29th, adverts will be inserted every 12 minutes instead of every fifteen.

Live365 are appealing against the ruling, so if you find the advert blocks distracting, do please bear with the situation. I believe that World Of Trad has something important to say about the world's music and I'm getting a lot of encouraging feedback to that effect. Unfortunately, advertising is the only way this thing can be made to work, increased advert blocks or no.

For more information on the CRB ruling, see http://www.live365.com/choice/ .

Cheers,

Fred McCormick.

http://www.live365.com/stations/oneworldmusic

Subject: RE: Worlds of Trad Royalties Increase
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 29 Mar 07 - 09:08 AM

they can probably afford that from the money they don't pay songwriters. most of us can see our work - pirated up and down the cyberspace in compilations and ringtones, and christknowswhat.

we're not important enough for them to collect our money.

that faceless sodding tradition though.....

Subject: RE: Worlds of Trad Royalties Increase
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 29 Mar 07 - 10:54 AM

The posting from weelittledrummer is libellous. I am requesting that one of the Mudcat elves removes it immediately and suggest that weelittledrummer moderates his comments in future.

Live365 is a legitimate organisation which pays legitimate royalties under United States copyright law. If they didn't I would not be with them.

If weelittledrummer has any evidence that he has ever been ripped off by a Live365 broadcaster then I suggest he brings it to their attention. They will doubtless take action. If he hasn't then he might pause to consider that not everyone on the Internet is tarred with the same brush.

Yours Sincerely,

Fred McCormick.

Subject: RE: Worlds of Trad Royalties Increase
From: greg stephens
Date: 29 Mar 07 - 11:05 AM

weelittledrummer: who are you, and who has been pirating your work on compilations and ringtones? This sounds a seriously bad thing to happen, tell us more.

Subject: RE: Worlds of Trad Royalties Increase
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 29 Mar 07 - 12:48 PM

Sorry I wasn't talking about your organisation.

I'm just pissed off with publishers. They take your work. And then sell it in vast catalogues. A lot of the people don't even know that they own your work.

You look on the net and there are thousands of instances of your work being used, and you know you haven't been paid for any of it. Sometimes its little djs - somethines its huge coglomerates - they all have terrific reasons for not paying you. the little guys because they can't afford to - the big guys . because youre too trivial and pettifogging for them to be bothered with.

I'm not really complaining even.. Its what I decided to do for a job, and that's the deal.

Its like that guy said in the Godfather 2, this is the business we are engaged in! Sorry if I offeded anybody - no offence intended. Ithought I was being completely matter of fact and non controversial.

Willie Jackson (Magna Carta) once said to me - you see these guys coming - you know its a rip off - but you think - oh well I WANT to make a record!

Subject: RE: Worlds of Trad Royalties Increase
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 29 Mar 07 - 12:51 PM

PS You have my full permission to withdraw anything I say anytime - I don't want to offend anybody.

Subject: RE: Worlds of Trad Royalties Increase
From: Joe Offer
Date: 29 Mar 07 - 02:35 PM

Well, I think the charge of libel is a little overwrought, but perhaps weelittledrummer could be a little friendlier in tone. Al, put little smiley faces or something in your posts or something, so people don't keep wanting to challenge you to duel.

It is a sticky problem. I think it's wonderful that people like Fred can make music available to us - and it's music I wouldn't be likely to hear or buy here in California. On the other hand, I'd like to see it possible for people like Al to make a living.

Anyhow, would everybody please be nice to each other, and realize that we're most likely all on the same side on this and shouldn't fight? I get this picture of two balding, overweight folkies, affixing bayonets to their guitars. Then they stand back-to-back and pace off the required twenty paces, turn; and then charge forward, wheezing and stumbling. This is not a pretty sight. Much better to be peaceable about all this. At our age, there's no way to carry on a duel and retain one's dignity - what little is left of it.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Worlds of Trad Royalties Increase
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 29 Mar 07 - 03:19 PM

If the guy was offended that's enough, I didn't want to offend anyone.

Two days ago, I just got a snotty e-mail from this publisher, querying the amount the secretary had agreed to pay me two years ago - but she left the job. It put me in a bad mood.
When you go this guys office - there are all these Porsches outside - cos all his sons work for him.

Please disregard anything I've said Fred - none of it appplies to you, I'm sure. If Joe says you're all right, I'm sure you are.

I unreservedly apologise for any insult or hurt, I may have caused.

Subject: RE: Worlds of Trad Royalties Increase
From: Stringsinger
Date: 29 Mar 07 - 03:40 PM

The problem with song royalties is that the real profit is for the publishers that own the active copyrights on hits and in the performance right's societies (ASCAP and BMI) only the established writers receive a lot of benefit economically. The net broadcasterssmall indie labels , small restaurants and clubs as well as alternative stations are squeezed and I think unrealistically by these societies. The small and less-known songwriters are not represented in an important way. Those that try to promote new talent are penailzed.
It's a form of corporatism that places the musicians, writers/composers and those starting out on the extreme low end of the totem pole with nowhere to be heard or seen.

The solution is that ASCAP and BMI need to think about how they can encourage the "little guy/gal" by making allowances by not squeezing every last penny in the area of copyright use.

There is something that is contradictory about the folk process and copyright law, too.
No room for growth in the folk process area.
Frank Hamilton

Subject: RE: Worlds of Trad Royalties Increase
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 29 Mar 07 - 05:17 PM

Those of you in the US - join ASCAP etc and reform from the inside unless you have the funds to litigate the existing consent decrees. Google Les Hurdle, he has been fighting them for decades. Until you singer songwriters get businesslike, the ripoffs will continue.

Where were you, holy Joe, when we were trying to reform the MU and get the great 60s performers their money out of the MU that the MU was given by PRS?

WLD - next time you sign with a music publisher, get a lawyer, or would that offend your "prolier than thou" sensibilities?

Oh, yeah, and campaign for a reform of UK bankruptcy law that companies that liquidate cannot sell copyrights and performers rights free of their royalty obligations, and the similar for US chapter 11.

If it's a business, get businesslike. If it's a calling, pray. If it's a hobby, lie back and enjoy it.

Subject: RE: Worlds of Trad Royalties Increase
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 29 Mar 07 - 07:35 PM

Most publishers are lawyers. In any case they can all afford better lawyers than I can. One of them sends me derisory postcards from hawaii - he has a beach property there!

There are no quick fixes - you just have to accept that its a pretty shit situation. Common sense should tell you that - look at all the people who have written songs (almost qualifying as folksongs -I nearly said - but that would offend richard's -I know more about folk music than you do sensibility) and anyway- to conclude this wearisonme sentence - they end up skint.

there are no simplistic answers. Its a complex situation.

Subject: RE: Worlds of Trad Royalties Increase
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 29 Mar 07 - 08:16 PM

In Oz, an accordion festival was forced to pay a large sum for 'rights' - was not interested in being told that pretty well all of the music was 'trad', 'anonymous', and most performers were playing their own arrangements of these, if not actually playing their own original compositions - they didn't want a list of items played (so just how the hell could they sort out who to rightfully give money to anyway?) - just wanted the money, or would take the organiser to court.

Subject: RE: Worlds of Trad Royalties Increase
From: Joe Offer
Date: 29 Mar 07 - 11:45 PM

Well, Richard, I was studying Theology in the 1960's and never figured out what the MU and PRS were. I did learn, though, that folkies never bettered themselves by beating each other on the heads. They're better off going after the corporations, not each other.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Worlds of Trad Royalties Increase
From: eddie1
Date: 30 Mar 07 - 12:23 AM

If you go to http://www.savethestreams.org/ you can read the whole story plus what you can do to protest against recent developments.
I know many UK terrestrial radio stations also streaming on the Net have limited Net listeners to those in the UK in an attempt to avoid these royalties but those tend to be commercial enterprises. The real casualty will be the small, specialised stations.
I can see both sides of the argument but suspect that so often, fees are going to be swallowed up with very little getting to the artist.

Eddie

Subject: RE: Worlds of Trad Royalties Increase
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 30 Mar 07 - 05:21 AM

Hi weelittledrummer,

Sorry I've been a bit slow about getting back to this one, but I did want to say no harm done. Indeed, as a singer, songwriter and author myself, I know what it feels like to have my work ripped off and, in some cases, maliciously distorted. Plus, there are people out there who seem to think that anything on the Internet is up for grabs. It isn't. Internet material is subject to copyright, in the same way as any other form of intellectual property.

It would help though if you were a little more careful in your phraseology in future. Before pressing the go button, just ask how others might interpet what it is you're saying.

Best wishes,

Fred McCormick.

Subject: RE: Worlds of Trad Royalties Increase
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 30 Mar 07 - 09:13 AM

point taken. I have no knowledge of the organisations named - it was just a general shotgun blast at everybody who has diddled me over the years.