[Dixielandjazz] Copyright royalty Decision What's wrong with it ? And Why !

[tcashwigg at aol.com]

Copyright Royalty Board DecisionHello all. Attached is some recent 
legislation
that will hopefully help musicians collect royalties. It is rather long 
but does
have a sample letter if you care to respond through your legislators.
Have a happy summer.

Dave Hanson

Hi  Dave &  folks:

Let us not be quick to drop this thread:

This is yet another scheme to collect monies for only certain musicians 
  almost none of whom are on this list and again almost none of whom are 
even members of the AFofM nor wish to be for many diverse reasons.   
Should the AFof M members that actually recorded and performed on these 
recordings being aired be entitle to earn royalty compensation form 
them you bet.  Will they ever? highly unlikely once again.   The days 
of HOPEFULLY as stated in the letter form the AFofM to Dave  pretty 
much sums it up.  There is a major independent artists movement and 
revolution well underway against all of the big powers that be in the 
recording industry and it is far from over.   If we who play Jazz ever 
want to see this genre get back any of it's long given away and stolen 
respect we need to pay more attention to the fine print and less to the 
hype of the Press releases telling us to Trust them.




I am going to make this post about it from a well informed and 
practical  opinionated viewpoint  because i am actually very very busy 
working the International promotion of a major record release as we 
speak and dealing with Internet Stations and Mainstream radio stations 
as well day and night.   And I am not talking about illegal downloading 
operations here either or people stealing music, I am speaking of 
upright and honest operators that have a great and valuable service 
that most of them provide for Free to independent artists just like US. 
   Now if this bad law passes and stays it will put guys on this list 
out of and off the air and deny many of us airplay on their stations 
and force all of us to have to BUY radio time to ever get our music on 
the air waves.  WAKE UP AND SMELL THE ROSES and stop smelling the 
Manure that they have been spreading to us for decades.   IN the 
present system  Everybody in the chain gets to make money except the 
poor bastard musicians at the bottom of the list. 90% of the time.

I am already meeting resistance to playing the records by indie 
Internet stations because as they state the royalty rate structure 
could cost them as much as $1.76 for every song they play.  Simply not 
economically feasible at all, and the system was clearly designed to 
shut them all down under the guise of gong after AOL and Sirius  etc.  
The Big boys, fighting for yet another piece of the money pie that none 
of them had much to do with creating.

Now if any of you have ever even tried to get your records played on a 
mainstream radio station, then you know it is all but impossible, as 
they are pre programmed by the major labels,  hence the recent PAYOLA 
SCAM raising it's ugly head again  and the major culprit in the scheme 
Clear Channel who controls 45% of all commercial radio in the USA 
alone.    As part of their latest settlement without admitting guilt 
again as usual:))  they have supposedly agreed to give up 8000 hours of 
free radio airplay to independent artists and labels, since I happen to 
be working both  those entities I will let you know shortly if it is 
reality or will be put on the back burner for appeals processes which 
can take years longer of course while everything is status Quo.   And 
yews little or none of it will  have one iota of effect on any OKOM 
bands or musos except that they will no longer even be able to promote 
themselves and get free airplay on an internet station either.

Right now independent artists are making great strides on the internet 
self promoting their music and actually for the first time in history 
getting paid for it by selling their Cds and digital downloads direct 
to the consumers and collecting also for the first time ALL their 
royalties for their own pockets, rather than the pittance of usually 
10% of the leftovers after all costs and expenses and expense accounts 
of the major record labels and ASCAP and BMI and RIAA have been paid.

Now another fly in this ointment of organizations set up ostensibly to 
Protect and collect money for the starving artists and songwriters thru 
the various already long in place systems of the status quo is evident 
with my good colleague Dave Hanson's post about this situation from the 
standpoint of the AFof M.

The AAF of M want us to all get on board and vote for the Court Royalty 
decision because they do not have to fight for anything on behalf of 
the individual artists or copyright owners, but are party to the 
awarded decision because they are set to benefit with a 5% contribution 
to their own fund for recording artists union members.  Hello   we are 
not talking about the Union session players here in the millions of 
dollars being generated by independent produced artists most of whom 
are not even Union members, and also many who actually own their owen 
independent record labels and publishing companies that have long been 
ignored and passed over by the aforementioned Giant organizations set 
up to actually pay them but divert the majority of the money into their 
own extravagant expenses and operations and armies of lawyers to keep 
everyone else at bay and preventing congress or the courts to ever 
really know what the Hell they are doing with all that money they 
collect anyway.    So of course they want to go along with it, it is 
just more found money for them even if it means starving out all the 
small independent artists and radio station entrepenuers  once again 
and killing small business operators to maintain their own status quo 
welfare benefits for the chosen few that benefit thru their membership.

I certainly do not have a problem with ANY union member collecting 
royalties for any recording he actually played on that is sold and 
making money, but I do have a big problem with the money from all the 
non union member musicians paying royalties to the minority of Union 
cats feeding off that fund set up to collect money from the major 
record labels  and radio stations and Television stations many years 
ago before we started to realize just how crooked and broken the 
Recording and publishing and copyright business really is.

Do not roll over and play dead on this one check all the FACTS and read 
between the lines,  Question Authority and always beware of those that 
volunteer to go collect your money for you, they might also offer to 
take care of your lovely wife and daughters too :))   Or to be 
Politically correct even your sons :))


  I am currently looking to get a record played on thousands of internet 
stations and sell a Million dollars worth of them.   Not one of those 
folks ever invested a penny into this project and they have no right 
whatsoever to tell me that I can't offer it for radio airplay on any 
station that I choose that might just sell some copies of it for me.   
They simply don't want me selling any that they don't get a piece of 
for doing nothing for me or my artists other than the old status quo BS 
about how they are protecting us, from Who ? ourselves ?

You see folks we can't collect any money form any airplay spins that we 
can't even get, and if we have to play the payola game to get them 
there will be none coming back anyway, the money that they collect will 
be coming from us paying the radio station to play them so in essence 
the Big Radio has developed again the Payola game to pass those 
royalties going to ASCAP BMI  etc on down to the artists "AGAIN"    Now 
there is a new scam coming on board too where the radio stations will 
be selling the artists spins on the air for $25.00 each and up, 
depending upon the drive time of the play, all approved by the FCC 
already.   Now Ain't that just Dandy?

Now there you have it kids,  They Finally got Rid of the ugly Old 
PAYOLA scheme to get your records played on mainstream radio and it's 
all nice and tidy and legal  falling under infomercial and advertising 
revenue.

Cheers,

Tom Wiggins

Back to sending out Cds to radio stations before they shut them all 
down.   Ya see guys they want AOL & Sirus XM etc. but we can't even get 
on those stations until we build a track record of the smaller ones 
that are playing the material, and simply for get mainstream stations 
playing it without hundreds of thousands of dollars being paid thru an 
independent Radio promoter who still does not want to work the record 
unless it is already in the retail stores, who will not take it unless 
it is getting airplay and has a track record of being played on smaller 
market stations driving customers into their stores to actually buy it.


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