File Sharing

Most copyright in recorded music is not owned by artists, but by recording companies (artists own the copyright of songs, they contract them over to the publishers or labels for the recording).

The bodies against file sharing are the recording industry through Pub. Assoc, Fed. Against Copyright Theft, BPI and many labels (Universal, Sony EMI...). Artists just want a new way to sell their products to the customer, without the lock-in to the labels which occurs today.

Artists want new and better ways to sell music on line, but this is not being done by music publishers! That's the problem.

Labels want to keep the old business models, controlling the means of distribution, i.e. CDs, not create new ones. They also are insidiously clobbering all high quality music distribution with DRM (SACD, DVD-Audio, Blu-ray...) in order to hold on yet again to the means of distribution. This is where they make their money, and why artists suffer under their control.

Labels are complaining because people share files - that is because people want them on their PCs/Mobiles not on CDs. Pirate networks attack the very raisin d'etre of the music business. And until the labels change their business models and make available on-line music, not disabled by DRM, in lower MP3 quality AND CD and HD quality the pirates will continue and people will continue to swap files.

See an interesting article at

Copyright

Of course it is all about money, here's the breakdown of the CD income and costs:



As you can see out of the CD cost of £12.99, the artist gets £1.03 + some royalties, AFTER the labels costs of marketing and promotion have been met. The government gets VAT of £2.69!!!