Don’t Change, Evolve!

Last week I spoke about the furore caused by the infamous P2P clients, which prompted RIAA to take action against them. And now that it has lost the legal battle against clients like Kazaa and Morpheus, it has started suing users based on the songs recovered from their hard disks. Somebody amongst our readers made a valid point about how free dissemination of an artist’s work will lead to his extinction. This is not false in a way, yet far from the truth.

To be able to understand the effects of free sharing of music and its consequences, we will need to mull over the recording contracts and agreements held between an artist and a music producer or record company. However, before I go ahead, I would like my readers, who are proficient enough to comprehend the illegalities of free file-sharing dynamics, to know that artists around the world have condemned RIAA on the same issue.

Firstly if you think musicians make all the money, then it’s not true. Under normal circumstances, record companies ask for a set number of albums, which means that the agreement will last as long as it takes for those many albums to be properly recorded, released and promoted. However, if a record company loses interest in an artist then the recording agreement may last twelve months or even less. If any royalties are due they are normally paid at the end of the financial year and may take as long as two years from the date of sale to the date of payment of royalties.