It cannot be saved, pt 2

Let's look at artist's rights a little closer. I want you all to read the liner notes from Radiohead's OK Computer. Come on, they sold like a billion of 'em, so I know you have it. Now, check out the copyright notice. A huge sign of what's wrong with the music industry can be summed up right there.

all songs are published by warner chappell ltd. lyrics used by kind permission even though we wrote them.

That's ridiculous. Going back to the idea that record labels are increasingly becoming obsolete, that's the first thing that has to change.

Note: I realize that I will be speaking in very general terms here. In fact, I may very well be way off base. Perhaps the industry, while hurting, isn't nearly in as bad a place as I might think. So, it's possible that I may sound a bit naive or, at the very least, overstating the situation a bit. Continuing...

I think that if record companies want to continue... I don't know... exisiting, then they need to accept that, when we buy an album, for the most part, we don't care who's distributing it. We're buying the album because we like the artist who created that album. For too long, RCs have had the controlling share of the music that they distribute. They own the music that someone else created. They make the most money off of it. And, maybe, some of the money will trickle down to the actual artists. But not much. In fact, they actually make it very easy for the bands to end up OWING the record company money. And if you think it works differently, go ask Cheap Trick.

I think its time to turn the tables and make the artists the true stars. They should own the rights to their own music and lease it to the record company that they sign with. Perhaps give them 6 months to a year of exclusivity on that music and then, after that, the artists can re-sign or do whatever the hell they want with their music. Meanwhile, the album can continue to sell, while the RCs and the artists share equal profits on that.

Of course, this will never happen. There's no way the RCs would ever agree to it. And the fact is, for every band that would try and fight for these (or similar) demands, there are Hundreds of bands who would happily sign on with a record company, no questions asked.

But I think it would be nice (and fair), if we saw more copyright labels that read like this:

They Might Be Giants are independent artists. While they are happy (and occasionally unhappy) to collaborate in the marketing and rights management of their music with large, faceless corporations, their compositions are theirs and theirs alone.