This course provides an engaging and methodical insight into the past and present cultural and commercial music industry developments, directions, and trends. It will equip the students with the knowledge and skills necessary to appreciate, understand and more productively participate in today’s music industry field.
Regulations: Digital Recording, Reproduction, and Transmission (Part 2)
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来自 West Virginia University 的课程
新世界：当代音乐产业导航
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从本节课中
Magnetic Recording and Multitracks
与讲师见面
Darko VelichkovskiMusic Industry Program Director
Music Industry
The Audio Home Recording Act also defines the division of the collected DART royalties
between these two broad sides, as well as the division within each portion of it. See, the
royalties are first split into the so-called Sound Recording Fund and the Musical Works
Fund. The Sound Recording Fund is two thirds, or 66.7 percent, of the total amount of the
royalties collected, and its beneficiaries are the recording artists and the labels.
The Musical Works Fund is one third, or 33.3 percent, of the total amount of the royalties
collected, and its beneficiaries are composers and music publishers. Within each fund, the
Act prescribes that the royalties are further divided between different parties in a certain
way.
Now, it gets a little thick here, so stay with me, ok. The Sound Recording Fund, which
is as we said 66.7 percent of the total DART royalties, is divided between the labels,
featured artists, and non-featured artists. 96 percent of it goes to the labels and the
featured artists, and 4 percent goes to the non-featured artists. That’s 96 percent
and 4 percent of the original 66.7 percent. The labels’ and featured artists’ portion
is split 60/40, the labels receiving 60 percent of it, and the featured artists 40 percent.
That’s a 60/40 split of the 96 percent, of the original 66.7 percent. These funds
and the split is normally administered by the AARC, as we described earlier. Told you
it gets thick here. But, you’ll get it. Rewind it if you have to. But there is more
coming, so follow me here.
The non-featured artists’ portion, those 4 percent of the Sound Recording Fund – the
Sound Recording Fund being 66.7 percent of the total DART royalties, remember? - is also
split further, between the vocalists and the instrumentalists. 2.625 percent of the Sound
Recording Fund goes to the instrumentalist, and 1.375 percent of the Sound Recording Fund
goes to the vocalists. 2.625, plus 1.375, equals 4. That’s roughly two-thirds/one-third
split of the 4 percent total, allotted for the non-featured artists from the Sound Recording
Fund. The instrumentalists’ portion of the non-featured artists’ fund is administered
by the American Federation of Musicians, or the AFM. And the vocalists’ portion is administered
by the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or the AFTRA, A F T R A.
The Musical Works Fund, which is as you remember 33.3 percent of the total DART royalties,
is split in much simpler way. The split of those 33.3 percent is 50/50 between the composers
and the publishers. That’s it. 50/50 down the line. The problem there is that the funds
are to be collected from the Copyright Office and distributed to composers and publishers,
as we mentioned earlier, by the PROs (ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC), the Harry Fox Agency, and
the Songwriters Guild. These three sides, for years couldn’t agree how to split the
fund among themselves, until the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel was called in and
made the ruling. The Musical Works Fund was thus distributed for the first time in 2001,
almost ten years after the Act went into effect.
Now, there is another, simpler way to look at, and break down all the official splits
of the DART royalties. If we relate everyone’s portion of the royalties to all the DART royalties,
to 100 percent of it, the splits are perhaps easier to follow. So relating every party’s
percentage cut to 100 percent of the DART royalties, we end up with these numbers:
Music Publishers: 16.65 percent; Composers: 16.65 percent; totaling 33.3 percent for
the composers/publishers side, of the Musical Works Fund, as it is called, right? Then we have:
Labels: 38.4 percent; Featured Artists: 25.6 percent; non-featured instrumentalists
: 1.74 percent; non-featured vocalists: 0.92 percent; totaling 66.7 percent for the artists/labels
side, or the Sound Recording Fund as it is called. Combine the Musical Works Fund and
the Sound Recording Fund portions and we have 66.7 plus 33.3, which is 100 percent of the
DART royalties.
So, see, that’s simpler to follow. It’s just that doing it that way, the percentages
seem almost random, and it is not immediately obvious as to how the splits were created.
But it is a useful way to look at this whole funds division issue nevertheless.
Anyway, although the DART royalties are by no means a significant income stream in the
industry (only 45 and a half million dollars have been collected since 1992), the Audio
Home Recording Act, which is the basis for these royalties, is a significant industry
regulation. Its strengths and shortcomings have determined a meaningful portion of the
industry’s path and direction in the digital age. Because of its strong provisions regarding
the serial copy prevention system, the manufacturers are forced to include such systems in their
digital recording devices. But the consumers, by and large, rejected devices with the serial
copy protection, and moved on to the alternatives. Thus the Digital Audio Tape died, and the
Mini-Disc died, as well as the Digital Compact Cassette.
On the other hand, because the Act’s language does not affect computer devices, such as
hard drives, data CD drives, and so on, or computer data media, but only expressly digital
audio recording devices and media, because of such limited definitions and the Act’s
weakness in that area, alternative devices were developed and flourished in the field.
One of the first successful MP3 players, RIO, manufactured by Diamond Multimedia Systems,
paved the way for the game-changing iPod, amongst the other things because of this weakness
of the Audio Home Recording Act.
Diamond didn’t pay DART royalties, nor did RIO include a digital copy protection system.
It was in essence an encased, compact hard drive, with the system to download and store
the MP3s from the computer, and to play them back from the device. The industry tried to
bring RIO down in courts in 1998, based on the Audio Home Recording Act provisions, but
was unsuccessful, precisely because of the Act’s language referring expressly to the
digital AUDIO recording devices and media, leaving the loophole for the COMPUTER devices
and media, which is what RIO was, strictly speaking. A computer device. It had no digital
audio input, only a data connection for the computer, from which it would download MP3s.
Which by the strict definition, makes it not a digital AUDIO devices, but a COMPUTER based
device, a digital data device. Although it was used only for music. Although everyone
knew that it was a music device. According to the Act’s language, it wasn’t a digital
music device, and so the courts decided against the labels, and the crucial precedent was
set, which will lead directly to Apple’s iPod in 2001, and the whole new era in the
industry.
