RSSSony Sued for Shortchanging Artists
By Ed Oswald | Published April 28, 2006, 3:24 PM
Sony Music could be the target of a class action lawsuit from its artists, if a suit filed in a New York Federal Court is successful. Musicians The Allman Brothers and Cheap Trick say the company is not giving its artists a fair share, which under contract was half of the licensing revenue.
"Sony Music is presently engaged in a widespread attempt to underpay its recording artists; with the technological advancements in the music industry, it is essential that artists receive the royalty income to which they are entitled," Attorney Brian Caplan said in a statement.
Because both bands have deals that were signed before music was sold on the Internet -- The Allman Brothers' is from 1989 and Cheap Trick's from 1976 -- Sony has paid less than half. Instead, it is treating digital music as traditional record sales, which is on a different pay scale.
Through that deal Sony is able to pay less, as it is permitted to deduct fees for extra costs incurred to produce the music. This means that in the two bands' case, about four and a half cents per song is paid, rather than the 30 cents most other bands are receiving.
Sony on average is receiving about 70 cents of the average 99-cent per track charge for digital downloads, the suit alleges. The group is looking to make the case a class action suit, covering any band that signed a deal with Sony between 1962 and 2002. This would cover approximately 2,500 bands.
If successful, Sony may be forced to pay millions in royalties to artists. So far, Sony BMG has not commented on the suit.
How unusual for Sony, or for any big business for that matter. Ripping people off is the way they make money... it's just a matter of degrees. Even when they're caught, they still have made more money than lost.
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|Like most bad business practices that are discovered, there's going to be a hubbub about this for about 3 weeks....then there will be silence. A month or 2 down the line people will refer to all the 'bad things' Sony did....and a month later, it will be completely forgotten - and Sony will do the same thing again for another 10 years until they mess up and get caught again (I'm speaking on both issues, but foremost the thievery from artists). Then, they will be slapped on the wrist with a completely ridiculous lawsuit that makes them pay someone, or maybe a few people - a total of like 2 million or some crap....so, yeah...whatever; bad sony, bad bad sony...
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|OMG LET THE DRM FLAMING CONTINUE! even though this article has ABSOLUTLY NOTHING to do with the DRM that caused a problem 6 Months ago....
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|Most people are bringing it up because it shows a pattern of how bad publicity is starting to eat at their reputation and their bottom line.
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|Actually folks, the problem is that all the record labels pay millions of dollars to big name crap artists and never make the money back. They have to screw someone so it's the customer and great bands of the past.
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|Australians may know a show on SBS a couple of years ago called 'John Saffran's Music Jamboree' (the series before 'John Saffran vs God'). He is satirical presenter of entertainment, but he's always on the ball and gives credit where credit is due, and puts shame where it is deserved. Its well worth a watch even though it is a couple of years old because he states in there how much music companies are actually ripping the artists off. I'm pretty sure Sony was a mentioned party...
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|Our govt loves Sony. Read the details of the pending Senate bill the "Intellectual Property Reform Act of 2006" hosted by the comedian Lamar Alexander. If it passes, you could be arrested for devulging the existence or circumvention of a rootkit published as a DRM toolkit. Gotta love it. Like most Americans however, we'll bend over and take it with a smile, under the name of Homeland Security or whatever.
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|Why the heck are you brining this up? it's somthing tottaly different
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|SONY is as close equivalent to the evil empire as you will find in real life. They are always pulling something on the public or its bands. Some examples: the SONY root-kit that installed itself on your computer and compromised security of your computer just so they could enforce their copyrights. That root-kit was installed without the user's knowledge whenever they played a SONY CD. This Christmas, I received a Shakira CD that would not play on my computer. After doing some research, I found out it is not really a CD, it is some other kind of media, which SONY did so that you could not rip the CD on your computer. Result: I have I CD I can't listen to because I only listen to music on my iPod.
I hope SONY goes bankrupt with all these class action lawsuits, they deserve it.
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|I'm with the Allman brothers.......stick it to Sony
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|Sony, makers of the first-ever DRM rootkit is being sued for ripping off its artists. Well, what a surprise!
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|I hope it costs Sony Billions!
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|AWWW ... you are all so down on Sony, its not fair - how else can Japan make money out of the music industry except by sucking the life-force from creative western musicians? All Japan ever gave to music was Yoko Ono and she split up The Beatles! It must be terrible for the Japanese living with all that guilt and not being able to do anything to make up for it. They need the money to drown their sorrows. You heartless, creatures!
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|Sony BMG is an American Company....... Sony is a Japanese company, but the BMG devision is ran and operated by Americans....
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|Why use Sony at all, there is no big need, it is quite easy to produce music and put it online one self.
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|Amen guys! The Allman Bros. are selling instant LIVE concert CDs on their website. It has nothing to do with SONY at all. Some other artists like them are getting around the big 4 record companies. Maybe all of them will eventually become extinct and take that damned fascist RIAA gang with them...
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|Sony sucks, PS3 is gona suck, Sony lies, they show us pretty CGI its all BS - Sony can only make nice TVs but are never #1 - they always jack you as with the new braveria TV's only 1 HDMI port - SONY SUCKS PS3 SUCKS - sony has no idea how to write a good OS and the extra HP the PS3 might have is rendered useless with a flawed OS -
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|OMG Blah blah blah blah... you're an idiot we know.
Do you have any idea how many companies are riding on the PS3?
Sony
Toshiba
nVidia
IBM
Blu-Ray Foundation (over 40 companies)
Game Developers (such as Square Enix)
All these companies are riding on the PS3, and it looks like you're hoping on them all to fail and loose millions. So what you are trying to achive is for millions of people to loose their jobs and become homeless etc... Yeah you are a true idiot...
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|do you work for sony? do you have insider information? or are you just shooting off random biased uneducated opinions so someone will listen to you?
in case you havent noticed sony bmg isnt excactly sony....
and why is your main point that sony tv's have only one hdmi port? that isnt even related to this article.
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|I tried to use Sony Mg and lost my intire music collection as I couln't use any other device with it. When tried to transfer my music it was all lost. Sony sucks and I used to buy Sony all the time. Never again will I uae Sony products. They seem sneaky and underhanded and this and several of there other antics have totally turned me away. Plus cost me money. Plus hours of agravation.
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|"Through that deal Sony is able to pay less, as it is permitted to deduct fees for extra costs incurred to produce the music." Extra Costs???! Let me ponder this, cost to load a song onto a server and make it available for download versus cost to burn a cd, package it and ship it. This makes no sense at all, but is typical of Sony.
Sony = BetaMax, Mini Disc, Memorystick, Rootkit DRM, BluRay,and now Screw the Artists. Sorry, but I will take my business elsewhere.
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|PC_Tool - Did you read this? They are saying "Class Action", which means there are many bands involved here. I'm sure they include sons and daughters of passed away artists as well.
This is typical in this industry. When they cry give the bands money, they are really crying give us money.
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|Class Action simply means the lawyers get the money. ;)
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|I'll take the RIAA and MPAA over Sony any day :)
Kidding fanboys, I only kid...
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|I don't exactly get your joke, but you do know Sony is part of the RIAA don't you?
ref: http://www.riaa.com/about/members/default.asp
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|1. Sony BMG and all those other "Sonys" != Sony Corp.
2. "Distributed Labels of Reporting Companies" != "part of". NVIDIA and AMD work together for many technologies, but NVIDIA is definately separate from AMD.
3. It wasn't a joke, and actually I would personally prefer RIAA and MPAA sticking around as opposed to Sony--if given the choice. That won't happen though, and I cannot "stress" or push that point.
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|this isnt surprising. i'm sure this goes on much more than we think.
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|Yeah, bands are always nipping at the hands that feed them...
No, this is actually quite uncommon, I am sure. In the day and age when *anything* Big Media hits the news, we'd have heard about it.
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|Sony BMG est tjrs ds la grosse derme
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|Just when you think sony is trying to shake off its PR image, they land in this revelation of ripping off artists. I for one am getting tired of the Sony antics and find myself avoiding sony products as a result.
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|Ditto.
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|It's a debate on whether the digital downloads falls under the 4 cent catagory (The label's position) or the 30 cent catagory (the artists position).
Call me cynical, but I have a nagging feeling the label is gonna win this one. If only because the 26 cents per song they saved should hire some damn good attorneys.
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|In this day and age of digital music and streaming content, bands should be hiring IT guys instead of a label. I could get some bandwidth, and an e-site up pretty quickly.
Buggy
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|Wow, The you would think that the record industry would have anticipated this one. This undermines thier whole compaing. "You have to pay, but we don't!"
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|I find it amazing how much more the company makes than the actual artist who "created" the work ... I guess that's the price you pay for advertising.
Let's see ... 4 1/2 cents for 1 millions copies is only 45,000 versus 30 cents for a million copies ... 300,000 ... massively big difference in the pay scale don't you think? No wonder the RIAA and MPAA want a DRM installed on your system ... greedy so and so's
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|Habenaro-
No, 30 cents is what current bands are receiving. However, it seems in the cases of older bands that had contracts written before digital music, this four-and-a-half cent payment (or around there) seems to apply.
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|Oh I know, I'm just sayin that I bet that the current bands have different rates depending on where their song is listened at .. i.e. whether on the radio, d/l'd off the net etc. These older bands probably get a one-rate deal because their contract appears to be fairly small.
I find it amazing that the record companies actually paid the bands so little, it looks like to me that they are making approximately 95.5% of the money that is made off the artist (older bands) where these days (neweer bands) are apparently making 30% of what is made with the RIAA people making 70% of the money. I can see why so many artists strive to make their own records labels now!
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|Sony sucks, the PS3 is going to suck
Dont waste your time mate
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|"the price you pay for advertising" ... yeah that's part of how they must justify it... but when was the last time you were exposed to any kind of advertising pushing Cheap Trick or the Allman Brothers !?!?!
I like Cheap Trick and the Allman Brothers... and It's sickening that SONY is raping them on 'digital' royalties.
These numbers should make ALL music consumers sick. The artists are receiving 4.5 cents per song?!? So if I were to buy an $18.00 CD with about 12 songs on it... the artist gets about 54 cents and the other $17.46 goes... where?
Hmmm... so you could pirate someone's CD and then send them a $1.00 and the artist would still be ahead of the game! Amazing!
The consumers are weak and spineless and will never force a change in the industry. The ARTISTS need to lead the way to an alternate distribution system. Maybe artists SHOULD hire an IT guy instead of a 'record label.' This is one IT guy who would love to see it happen and love to be involved in the revolution.
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|You're a good man! Right ON!
Another example of how Sony ripes people and companies off.
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|World class Canadian artists are starting to take on their record labels over DRM and such. Sarah McLaughlin (?), Alanis Morrisette and other big names.
ONLY when the artist start to speak out (over us consumers), will the labels listen. Hugely popular artist like those I named above really have NO NEED for labels anymore... so perhaps the labels will listen because they don't have a strangle hold on those artists like they do on newer bands that are no talent and all record label marketing glitz.
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|maybe you should concentrate on well constructed arguments instead of random hate messages. i think someone might pay more attention to you then.
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