Rebecca Giblin on chokepoint capitalism [LWN.net]

Rebecca Giblin on chokepoint capitalism

Posted Mar 30, 2023 12:15 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
In reply to: Rebecca Giblin on chokepoint capitalism by kleptog
Parent article: Rebecca Giblin on chokepoint capitalism

> I'm sure that the fee collectors for music are their own horror stories. Still, one can dream.

The fee collectors are supposed to distribute the fees to the copyright holders. But for small-time artists, the fee-collector's fees eat it all up. And for many works I don't think they bother tracking down the artist, so they hang on to the money in their own bank account, until the artist comes and claims it (which they never do, because they know nothing about it ...)

And then, of course (I think this got shot down, fortunately), there's the horror of having to pay a fee-collector for the right to broadcast YOUR OWN music ...

Etc etc.

Cheers,
Wol

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Rebecca Giblin on chokepoint capitalism

Posted Mar 30, 2023 12:21 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

It really is a ripoff. I have 5 tracks on a comedy album available on all the popular streaming platforms. The album was released 5 months ago. I've accrued an amazing $0.34 in royalties. That is $0.00337 for each time someone listens to my comedy. I can't withdraw a payout until it reaches $5, which at this rate will take more than 8 years.

To put that into context, I recently did a 15-minute set at a tiny pub near a university. For that one independently-produced local show, I made more than 115x my entire royalties earnings. (Yeah, I'm not getting rich off comedy...)

Rebecca Giblin on chokepoint capitalism

Posted Apr 4, 2023 12:54 UTC (Tue) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

Like all organizations fee collectors exist primarily to finance fee collectors. Tracking small fishes is a lot of work and successful copyright holders can afford big lawyers to make sure fee collectors take as little as possible from them. The system has strong built-in incentives to make fee collectors take their cut from small copyright holders.

Therefore, a fairer (and more effective) way of promoting arts would be to force fee collectors to provide a free (as in beer) service to small copyright holders, taking their cut only from big successful ones that can afford that and have the lawyers to keep fee collectors honest. You’d probably also need to make part of the fee collection revenue indexed on the proportion of collection reversed to small copyright holders.

Not going to happen but one can dream.