OFF: Star Nation-Napster

[Doug Pearson]

On Wed, 19 Jul 2000 00:04:34 +0100, ANDREW GARIBALDI
<andygee at DIAL.PIPEX.COM> wrote:
>I want to know why musicians for the last 30 years have
>sacrficed themselves on the altar that is major label status,
>sell more CD's than labels like mine could ever dream of and
>still manage to get ripped off by the major labels - are the
>labels that clever or are they that daft?

Did you read the part of Courtney's speech that described how a (US)
congressional aide (who now works for the RIAA) changed the text of a bill
AFTER it had been debated in Congress, but BEFORE it was voted on, so that
the senators and/or representatives voting on it didn't even know what they
were voting on?  When you're able to circumvent democracy and honest
legislation, ripping off uninformed musicians is hardly a difficult action.

Also, remember that major labels hold outstanding loans ("advances") on all
the artists they sign.  It's not too difficult to doctor the books in such
a way that "expenses" related to the artist are shown to be greater than
the royalties due to the artist, hence the artist is always in debt to the
company, and the company never has to pay the artist.  Same way that
corporations avoid paying taxes by incurring "losses" that negate their
income.  That's what Courtney's talking about on the first page of her
speech (and that was, as I mentioned, better covered by Steve Albini in a
similar article).

        -Doug
         ceres at sirius.com