Musical Notes

Both Jevon and Scoble are pointing to this article about the Record Industry Hearings. A glimpse:

“In a shocking statement made by Back Street Boy, Kevin Richardson, he testified that they have NEVER received a royalty check, and that they only took a large advance after their third hit album in a row failed to earn them a penny in royalties. (Case in point, three albums on a major label is generally about 5 contract years into the term.)

Also, the wife of Lester Chambers, of The Chambers Brothers, claimed to have never received a royalty check, nor an advance, in upwards of 30 years. Ms. Chambers claimed that Columbia told her there were no overseas sales to report because The Chambers Brothers records were never licensed to an overseas distributor. She believed them until she started seeing her product on E-Bay and found 22 different foreign pressings of Chambers Brothers recordings, all by foreign affiliates of her label, Columbia Records, a subsidiary of Sony. Similarly, a member of The Olympics, of the hit “Hully Gully,” was present and complained that he found his recording on 94 different compilations world-wide, yet has never received a royalty check”

Meanwhile, Doc is pointing over to the RAIN site’s writeup of the Sensenbrenner bill and Rep. Conyers’ fight against it. Let’s see, can you find the Congressional Representative who’s been bought and paid for in this story? 🙂

Lastly, the record companies, while not admitting any wrong-doing, did settle the price-fixing lawsuit against them. (link via Library Planet)

It takes a lot of nerve to have all of this going on and still try to claim the high moral ground in the copyright debate.

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