大象传媒

Finally glad that the industry has seen sense

And Pete Waterman deserves nothing for that woefull (if this wasn't as strictly moderated a blog my words would be a little different) song. Rickrolling was a horrible thing.

I used to watch and listen to some of the stuff on Youtube when it was young and anarchic, now it is just part of corporate big business doing cosy deals with protectionist organisations like the PRS and seeking to monetise the content.
Most of the content was provided free and in good faith by the users themselves and who now find that that content is now owned by big business, this has not gone unnoticed.
Youtube is oldhat, the new flavour of the month is somewhere/something else.
Google would have been better throwing 10 grand here and 10 grand there on new startups to catch the next big wave than sinking 1.65bn dollars into yestedays wave that the surfers have long since ridden.

Who cares if Pete only gets 拢11 for a song which was released many years ago. He's making so much more from other more recent songs.

I'm glad that YouTube have brought back the music video's. Some people can't gain access to TV music stations and need YouTube to watch/listen to their new favourite artists music/video.

Some video's on Yahoo can't be played because we're not in the USA, so YouTube is the saviour for watching that certain video.

I would think the final details, or at least a clue to them, will come out in the next PRS annual report where most of the accounting is normally broken down so members can see what the overall earnings are from each sector.

The PRS is a society for and by its members, where we elect our chief officers from amongst the membership (those mad enough to want to take it on, of course!) And members like to know what is going on

just an editorial point on the news article - I think the PRS for Music MD is called Andrew Shaw, not Adam Shaw.

Didn't I hear one of the members of the yoof panel say something like "I never watch YouTube any more because they took off the music videos"? Instant gratification -- the kids will be delighted!

Rory:

I am glad, that YOUTUBE will be allowing music content to return....


=Dennis Junior=

What REALLY riles me about this whole discussion is that - once again - the answer is obvious and yet due to everyone's obsession about not offending anyone anywhere, nobody says it.

Music Videos are advertising!! Pure and simple.

Thats what they were originally created for and that is why they are still created.

I know this. I make them!!

Why should ANYONE have to pay to see advertising??

Poor Pete only getting 拢11. To be honest for the quality of that song and many others that he's behind he should be forced to pay 拢11 to everyone that heard one of his terrible songs. Maybe then some decent music would get recognized.

If 154 million plays means 拢11

#5. Gurubear wrote:

'I would think the final details, or at least a clue to them, will come out in the next PRS annual report'.

'The PRS is a society for and by its members, where we elect our chief officers from amongst the membership'

According to the lastest financial report availible (2007), the PRS earned well over half a billion pounds during the year, spending some 60million pounds on operating costs (including directors salaries, bonuses etc.).
Of the remainder, the publishers (such as EMI, Sony etc.) took half.
Yes the PRS is supposedly there to benefit the members but the music industry itself benefits enormously and has a quarter of the seats on the board.
The writers get less than half of the revenue.

So the record companies who are trying to cut off people's internet connections for downloaded content "in order to protect the creative industries", continued to put official video's on Youtube even though an organisation that directly represents one of the creative industries was trying to secure a rights deal to pay it's members for that content?

Far be it from me to suggest the record companies were undermining their own argument.

#9 - teejayesse, I kinda see your point, but videos were created largely in a pre-digital age where they could only be recorded on VHS tape whose sound quality would be abysmal.

Of course, the sound quality on most YouTube videos is poor, but the point is that the audio can be downloaded onto a computer in a way which was not really possible in the eighties.

I fail to see how people can say that all this stuff should be free - if you went in to Waterstones and treated their books in the same way you might be in trouble. If everyone did it, all the time, there would not be enough courts to prosecute everyone, but publishers and authors would soon get fed up of working for nothing.

12. At 2:06pm on 03 Sep 2009, BobRocket wrote:

Of the remainder, the publishers (such as EMI, Sony etc.) took half.

The writers get less than half of the revenue.

###

Actually, I get 100% of most of my Royalties (after operating costs) since commissioned music does not always involve a separate publisher.

Of the few tracks I have with publishers, I get between 75 and 85% of the royalties depending on the deal.

Publishing deals where publishers get 50% are few and far between these days.

The way you put it, you would think that publishers have nothing to do with the composers, but that is not the system. Publishers often advance funds to composers, are responsible for selling and administrating works and so on - so they earn their fees.

teejayesse wrote:

Music Videos are advertising!! Pure and simple.

####

Actually, it is not pure and simple. When music videos were made in the early eighties it was quickly seen that these could be a product in their own right and by the time DVD came along, the expectation was that music would tend to move to a visual media rather than audio only media.

The result has been more mixed in reality. But there has been some success, especially in the "live concert" side of music videos. One of the more successful ones was the Three Tenors concerts, but with the advent of DVDs, it has been regular practice to include visual media in albums because there has been a demand for it from the public. That can be anything from interviews to special video edits, live footage and so on. All these potentially end up on YouTube

On YouTube, google make money from advertising - that advertising revenue is only possible because people have reasons to visit YouTube in the first place. One of the reasons for visiting is music videos, especially listening to the audio attached to the video. It is fair, therefore, that performing rights are paid.

In addition, google will allow certain channels to take a percentage of advertising revenue because they are very high profile - but that does not apply to all channels.

Chad Sexington wrote:

So the record companies who are trying to cut off people's internet connections for downloaded content "in order to protect the creative industries", continued to put official video's on Youtube even though an organisation that directly represents one of the creative industries was trying to secure a rights deal to pay it's members for that content?

Far be it from me to suggest the record companies were undermining their own argument.

###

The point is that with YouTube, when works are officially released there (not just uploaded by Jo Bloggs), they are done so where the record companies and their artists get paid. However, the Performing Rights and the Mechanical Rights are purely for the composers and the publishing companies (if there is one). So this is the other part of the deal if you like.

But this is nothing to do with people simply stealing things by downloading illegally. If they want to be thieves, then I would say that was their own lookout.

# Gurubear

No the point is that the music industry is not beyond treating their customers like criminals, the PRS website specifically states that they visited a large number of premises to enforce licensing, this includes staff canteens, the Womens Institute meetings and many others. (sounds like a visit from the mafia)

I find I am no longer exposed to music as I go about my daily affairs, consequently I no longer buy music.
I was not a big purchaser, probably 20-25 CDs per year judging by my collection but the last one was over 6 months ago, I haven't heard anything new worth buying in ages (I listen to R4 or my existing CDs in the car).

Another arm of the music business, the BPI, is also trying it on

Read from The Register

BobRocket wrote:

###No the point is that the music industry is not beyond treating their customers like criminals,

No, It treats criminals like criminals - people who steal are NOT customers


###the PRS website specifically states that they visited a large number of premises to enforce licensing.

Premises that play music publicly to enhance their own look and feel, customer base, or whatever, are required to pay a licence for that music. It is a yearly fee, not very big, which is then distributed equally amongst the PRS members. After all, shops play music in the hope it attracts more customers to buy their clothes - seems fair the artists get a cut since they are being used to make money for someone else (and it is a TINY cut). Small shops pay around a couple of hundred quid a year.

Oh, and the visits are polite and informative (not as the bloke from the FSB said, who was simply shouting to make a silly point) - the PRS are not bailiffs and the system is not worked in that way. Premises that are playing music "before" they get a licence, pay a higher rate for the first year, then go back to the standard rate. It seems a good compromise.

###I find I am no longer exposed to music as I go about my daily affairs, consequently I no longer buy music.

You are not? Have you got your fingers in your ears? Oxford street has music blasting out of every other Doorway, and most shops and restaurants in Milton Keyens (as an example of a provincial town) seem to play music non-stop. The amount of music used in retail premises has increased in recent years, not decreased.



And the amount of commercial radio stations has risen from around 20 in the late 70s to over 450 today - most playing music. On top of that I notice that car stereos are WAY louder!

#Another arm of the music business, the BPI, is also trying it on

By "trying it on" I assume you mean that they require you to pay for making money out of their members products? The BPI charge a licence to production companies who produce background music for shops and offices. This is because background music companies make PROFIT out of reselling records. I used to work for a lady called Betty Taylor who started that particular industry with a company called "Sound Recordings for Industry," which was spun out of the radio programme "Music While You Work." The BPI licence has been around for decades.

I have to say, if you don't want to pay for someone else's hard work, or object to people earning fees from radio plays and so on, then I suggest you stop listening.

You don't have an automatic right to another persons creative output - something which those of us who are professional musicians and composers have spent YEARS getting right.

Here is the reality for you: I wrote a title theme some years ago for a series of Sherlock Holmes radio plays that were used on an Airline. A couple of years later, the 大象传媒 bought the licence to 6 of them and played them on the English speaking World Service network right round the world.

My PRS royalties? (And I get 100% since there is no publisher)

拢54.

The performance royalty is NOT about a small number of record companies making a fortune, it is about thousands of composers making a little bit. THAT is who the PRS represents.

Personally it doesn't really matter to me - We're not paying for it...

Not really being a music fan it also doesn't affect me to much as i don't watch music videos very often (except for Girls Aloud videos :))
But today i did, and had a strange grubby feeling as i was doing so - ironically feeling like i was doing something wrong, even though it has just been allowed - Work that one out???

lordBeddGelert,

haven't libraries existed free for years though?

Personally i'm not afraid... if the whole music industry came crashing down tomorrow it wouldn't mean people would stop making music. I find that the internet is a good tool for smaller bands to get known, bigger bands like Metallica just churn out terrible music anyway.

You can't uninvent technology - so if the music/film industry wants to survive it needs to get smart