

Ask HN: Do musicians profit from RIAA lawsuits? - dnsworks

Whenever a music label gets $5k for sending threatening letter because somebody used bittorrent to download the latest Lady Gaga song, does Lady Gaga get blood money out of that?
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dazzawazza
Many musicians have complained that they don't see any revenue from the RIAA.
The best place to investigate/learn about this IMHO is techdirt[1].

Unfortunately a lot of what happens within the RIAA is private to the RIAA so
it's hard to know who is getting the money. Since many artist complain that
they don't see any money from online sales it could be that the record label
absorbs the money and that the RIAA is not at fault.

Given that the RIAA attend court with numerous lawyers I doubt they make that
much money from the lawsuits they win (assuming the defendant doesn't have to
pay legal fees of course).

1 - <http://techdirt.com/>

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headShrinker
No. The RIAA represents the major labels as the plaintiff. The labels consider
it recouping losses, not making additional profit. They also don't consider it
recouping revenue for the artist. All label obligations are fulfilled and are
usually based on total album sales minus recording, production, legal and PR
costs.

It's important to note that most contracts a label will offer, reward the
music copyright and ownership to the label, not the artist. Artists have very
little grounds to sue for anything by the time the label is done with them.

Unless you are Metallica, Radiohead, Prince or some other huge band that has
fulfilled your 5 album label contract, and now have [a]leverage for a new more
even-weighted contract or [b]millions to start your own label and produce and
promote your own albums, it is likely you will sell your sole and your
ownership of your music to sign a contract like the one described above.

~~~
ismarc
Don't forget about the fact that contracts separate out pay-schedules for
different types of distribution. And since there is no way to identify how the
original copy of the artwork being infringed was obtained, they have no
contractual obligation to provide any money to the artists (and even if they
could, the artists are paid per-sale, and lost sales that are recouped do not
get included).

