[Dixielandjazz] Copoyright decison adverse effects, discussion extended

[tcashwigg at aol.com]

Here is another look at the situation with regards to internet radio 
and independent artists owning their own publishing Co. and independent 
label.

I own the label, I charge $14.97 per Cd for 14 songs of all original 
music, I sell thru Cd Baby they take $4.00 each Cd sold at that price 
to the retail consumer and My label gets $11.97 per Cd from retail 
sales. The consumer pays the shipping and postage charges to Cdbaby 
 from which they also make a profit. Now A retail record store or 
distributor can buy the cds for a 20% off the retail price or $11.97 
each and Cd baby still takes $4.00 a cd from me with the retailer or 
distributor paying the shipping.

That give me $7.97 per cd wholesale to pay all the songwriters 
royalties, and performers royalties, manufacturing costs, shipping 
costs of the bulk cds to Cd baby, and I have to pay all the promotional 
costs, and mail the Cds to radio stations that will play them at my own 
costs, along with promotional materials etc. Now if I have to go pay 
for Radio time on top of that and have royalties filtered off by ASCAP 
and BMI and Sound exchange so they can take their own expenses and cut 
form it then supposedly send back the songwriters and performers 
portions to them direct it just does not make economic sense. Not to 
mention that we do not need them or want them to collect our royalties 
which we have already collected selling our own merchandise that we 
paid for. The recording performers who played on this recording were 
paid by the label and are also participants on the profits and if they 
contributed any of the songs that we are selling they also get for the 
first time in history their royalty direct with out it having been cut 
into by all the above organizations.

Now I hope you see the real true value of internet stations like Dave's 
and countless others not just OKOM folks, this is across the board for 
all music.

And after all that maybe we will recoup all the money we spent to 
produce the recording and make a profit MAYBE just MAYBE buit at least 
along the way we are paying ourselves back, Something that the Big Boys 
are simply not doing to the independent artists and musicians no matter 
what they say. We are them and we ain't getting no checks in the mail.

I am now instigating a payment program for the internet stations that 
play our product and sell it to their audiences so that they can get a 
commission for selling it. Hey that spread of $4.00 a Cd is dispensable 
to he who earns it by selling the product.

NOw to show yoi how out of balance it gets with the Big boys in the 
game: Amazon.com wants to set the retail price of my product and sell 
it for whatever discount they wish to whomever they wish and still keep 
55% of the sales price and make me pay for the shipping of the product 
to the consumer, and the shipping costs to get my product to them to 
forward. No thanks. I'll do it myself and share the revenue with the 
internet stations that are helping me promote and expose the music to 
the consumer.

Cheers,

Tom Wiggins



-----Original Message-----
From: snargi at pacbell.net
To: jazzdude39 at comcast.net; Dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com
Sent: Fri, 23 Mar 2007 2:04 AM
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Fw: Copyright Royalty Board Decision

   Dave, I run one of the few Dixieland stations on the internet. This 
decision to
boost internet broadcast royalty rates stems from greed, not fairness 
to the
performers, arrangers and composers of music.

These artists that SoundExchange claims will benefit from the new fee 
structure
will not be making any more money with these new rates, they will be 
making less
money. That's because all these little stations like mine that play
independently produced music are going to go away.

That this all means is that there will be NO MORE DIXIELAND ON THE WEB 
because
there aren't any million record selling artists playing our kind of 
music
anymore. No major broadcaster will play Trad Jazz because the ad base 
isn't
around to support the insane royalty fees.

Here is a recent post of mine that breaks down what I would pay JUST 
for 20
listeners.

___________________________________
If I have to pay these royalty fees for my station, Dixieland Gumbo, it 
would
add up to a lot of money.

   At 2007's rate of 0.0011 per song, per listener I would pay as 
follows.

 I average about 20 listeners at a time.
 0.0011 x 20 = $0.022 (2 cents, that's not a lot)

 With an average of 15 songs per hour.
 0.022 x 15 = $0.33 (33 cents, still not to bad)

 Now multiply by 24 for one day's total.
 0.33 x 24 = $7.92 (About the price of lunch)

 Now multiply that by an average of 30 days in a month.
 7.92 x 30 = $237.60 (O M G!)

 For one year
   237.60 x 12 = $2851.20 (That sound you just heard was me hitting the 
floor in
a dead faint.)

   I pay Live365.com $26.95 per month to host Dixieland Gumbo. I get 
about $6 per
month back from the total listening hours from VIP subscribers to 
Live365.com.
Most of my listeners do not purchase the VIP subscription, they listen 
for free.
The generous donations from some of my listeners have helped but if 
this Royalty
decision is not appealed and reversed, I will have no choice but to 
shut down my
station. It will be the death of all music on the Internet but Top 40 
Rock, Rap
and Country.
 ----------------------------------------------

Dave, that 26.95 that I pay to Live365 includes a $5 fee to cover the 
existing
royalty charges, charges for the 365 megs of web space my station takes 
up and
for the bandwidth used by my music. A part of that is their profit. 
After they
pay their employees and the Internet companies that provide the high 
capacity
bandwidth needed for streaming audio over the net.

If you were to compare how much the audio ad fees of internet 
broadcasting
companies to the fees charged by mega-corporations like Clear Channel
Communications, which owns 1,200 FM stations in the USA, you would find 
Clear
Channel is making much, much more profit off of their ads while paying 
half the
royalties that Internet broadcasters will pay.


Dave Livingston
 Dixieland Gumbo Radio
 http://www.dixielandgumbo.com/

Dave Hanson <jazzdude39 at comcast.net> wrote: 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.

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