[Dixielandjazz] Copyright

[tom bengtsson]

Hello Tom,    I am in full agreement with you.  ASCAP[BMI seem  only to 
collect  money and   rarely siphon anything back  to the musicians on 
this level.    One  question though, by the letter of the law should you 
be paying ASCAP  for the  intellectual rights to the music that you 
record in your own studio?
On Friday, October 17, 2003, at 09:59 AM, TCASHWIGG at aol.com wrote:

> Hi Rocky:
>
> You got it correct, and just the sheer ridiculousness of trying to 
> think of
> policing the millions of people making copies of their recordings for 
> their own
> personal use is ludicrous at best.
>
> The blank tape and now CD ROM industry indeed has royalties built into 
> the
> wholesale price of all units sold, not that the artists will ever get 
> any of the
> money except to the Michael Jackson's and of that caliber who have 
> enough
> money and clout that the Industry cannot avoid them getting a piece of 
> the
> action.
>
> But us little guys down the ladder can continue to just whistle Dixie 
> for any
> money we might have coming, because there is no way they will ever do 
> the
> accounting to keep track of the revenue and or distribution.
>
> It is basically just a licensee to steal and rip off the poor starving
> musicians and songwriters, while threatening all the venues that use 
> music, into
> paying them fees to finance their own salaries and enormous operating 
> budgets.
>
> I have always said if it costs all that much money for you to go 
> collect my
> royalties, just forget about it I don't need you to collect them, I 
> can't
> afford you.  I have even been present when they actually did collect 
> the money, and
> asked them to give it to me, ha ha ha ha, what a  bad joke.  They just 
> spend
> ten minutes with a prepared speech about how they have to take it back 
> to
> their offices and process it through the accounting department, etc., 
> blah blah
> blah.
>
> I now sell all my own products direct to the consumer and at 1/2 what 
> the
> Major Labels charge, manufacture it for the same price as they do 
> within cents,
> about $1.00 each and sell them for $10.00 to $12.00 and make plenty of 
> profit
> to pay myself and any artists on the recordings with me a royalty.  
> With the
> advent of the Internet and being able to market to millions of 
> consumers direct
> we finally really do not need a major record label if we are willing to 
> work
> at our business.
>
> We also make enough profit to be able to give away as many promotional 
> copies
> as we need to potential employers and reviewers to promote ourselves.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Tom Wiggins
>
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