Jim Lynch: Off the Top of My Head…

I’d like to say I’m surprised about this but I’m not.

Record companies are taking such a large cut from tracks sold online that many of the burgeoning online music stores will go out of business, experts warned yesterday.

Figures obtained by The Independent show that the labels take home the lion’s share of the cost of a digital download – making more money per track than they do with CDs in shops.

Online stores such as Apple’s iTunes were seen as a revolution in music sales, with customers turning their backs on CDs to shop online. Many also believed that the stores would drive down the cost of online tracks.

But figures from the US show that Apple Computer, the dominant legal download business in Europe and the US, retains just 4 cents from each 99-cent (55p) track sale while “mechanical copyright” holders – generally the record labels, who own copyright in the song’s recording – take 62 cents or more. Music publishers take the rest – about 8 cents.

This echoes the arrangement that record companies have with artists – the record companies make the lion’s share of the money off the music while the artist gets a tiny percentage and has to rely on the sale of t-shirts, and other merchandise as well as live performances.

When will artists and others in the music business finally figure out a way to stop the record companies from screwing them over? I’m not optimistic. It looks like online sales have already become just another way for the record labels to rape and pillage. :roll:

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...