Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: fallacies

Author:Eric Soroos
Posted:7/13/2000; 9:19:40 AM
Topic:scriptingNews outline for 7/12/2000
Msg #:18555 (In response to 18551)
Prev/Next:18554 / 18556

Let's say I pay my $30/month and download nothing but Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" over and over. Does Christina Aguilera get any of my $30, or does it all go to the Led Zeppelin Trust or whoever owns "Kashmir"?

That's the key. When you have all of these downloads, you know the relative popularity of all the music on your system. It's no longer a statistical sample, it's a population survey.

A week ago friday, the Wall Street Journal ran a story (dead trees version, in the second to last page of the weekend section, didn't see it online) from a jazz musician who occasionally gets ASCAP/BMI style royalty checks from airplay of a couple of albums that he did.

From the US, he hardly gets anything, since the royalties are paid based on a statistical sampling of airplay, and the statistical sampling tends to undercount unpopular music. (you get a handle on how often unpopular music as a whole is played, you just don't get a good handle on what unpopular music is played in any given time period)

From abroad, his royalty checks are 10x (the numbers I remember are $10 vs $150/month), since they count every time the song is played.

Napster et al have the data on their servers to parcel the royalties out much more equitably than the current system manages.

eric

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