Entry tags:

copyright, music

Small Mercies: No UK Copyright Extension
It looks as thought the UK will not be seeing the copyright extension on sound recordings sought by the music industry. Understandably there are some ruffled feathers. From news.bbc.co.uk:

"This was set before the advent, the big boom, of rock 'n' roll - the boom in popular culture which has led to a whole vast number of people making their living from these royalties.

"You can make a record in 1955 and have been getting royalties," [Music journalist Neil McCormack] said. "Suddenly they're gone."

It's interesting that the arguments used here in favour of copyright extension are generally the same as those used against it.

Does anyone actually think the number of people who can "making a living" from royalties could ever be described as "vast"? Last I heard, the most a band could expect to receive for sales of their work is a few cent per unit - split that between all those who contributed to an album, subtract tax, and there's not a whole lot left to live on. Even for a truly successful artist, if they do not get their huge advances and contractual bonuses, do not receive additional royalties from merchandising and branding, are not offered payment for guest appearances and performances, and have no opportunity to invest these accumulated earnings, I very much doubt that they would make anything described as a "living" on those royalties.

But, for the sake of argument, lets say that musicians could call their royalties a living. What makes anyone think they deserve to be paid for work they did back in 1955? How is that going to encourage anyone to continue making music after they have a few worthy successes under their belt? Perhaps this can explain the outstanding mediocrity of music over the last ten years: all the good artists got rich and settled down to pinching off some worthless crap every couple of years just to remind people to buy the "remastered" back cat while new artists are increasingly hamstrung by having to find a free space in music industry playlists stretching back half a century.

And one more thing about Mr McCormack's statement: I wonder what portion of the "big boom in rock 'n' roll" can be attributed to the rise of home taping as a means of distribution and exposure. I know for certain that back in the eighties, when there was nothing but the BBC to watch and listen to, I was buying music by artists that I would never have considered had I not heard a tape someone had illegally copied for me.


One of the things I've noticed while reading this article is that I have a tendency to use 'recording industry' and 'music industry' as synonyms - not unreasonably up until now. But the distinction between these two is going to become very important over the next few years.

The industry of music making will never leave, will never become redundant, so long as someone is throwing pocket change into a busker's open guitar case. However, the recording industry, that cumbersome edifice built on the broken backs of the real music makers, is a thing that has surely outlived it's usefulness. Their business was based on the reproduction of sounds produced by artists, they owned and controlled the machines capable of such reproduction in a cost-effective manner. Today, every one of us has in our home at least one machine that can reproduce music infinitely and distribute it globally at virtually no cost. In such an environment the recording industry has no future, it is as good as dead. Yes, it's being kept alive by the intervention of so-called Intellectual Property laws, allowing it to do some serious damage in it's death-throes, but it is only a matter of time before music makers and music fans in general begin to realises that it is no longer needed, and most certainly no longer wanted.