Devoted to show business and the entertainment industry

RIAA has just changed strategy in their fight to get more profits. No, they're not suing little people over downloads; now they're saying that the artists themselves need to take cuts on their royalties.

What happened to the defense that the RIAA has been using for the reason they are suing grandmothers, single moms, and children? All they've been saying to get sympathy for their outrageous tactics is that they were doing it to protect the interests of the artists, who were losing so much revenue from alleged internet piracy.

"Mechanical royalties currently are out of whack with historical and international rates," RIAA executive vp and general counsel Steven Marks said. "We hope the judges will restore the proper balance by reducing the rate and moving to a more flexible percentage rate structure so that record companies can continue to create the sound recordings that drive revenues for music publishers."

The last few words of the quote show where the true interests of the RIAA lie - with the music publishers. It is driving revenues for them that they want to cut the royalites to artists. So now what was the reason they said they're suing everybody for? Now we know!

Gear adds:

"The language of this statement reveals a great deal about who the RIAA is looking out for, and it's not artists. Couched in terms of apparent necessity, the RIAA's is insisting that the real musicians be paid less so that the record companies can continue to 'drive revenues.' If piracy really is devastating the recording industry and cell phone ringtones are one of the remaining highly profitable distributed mediums, should the RIAA really be trying to ensure that musicians be paid less for them while they're already hurting from lost revenue on album sales? At best the RIAA is kicking artists when they're down via this action, and at worst has fully revealed that despite repeated claims that artists need to be protected from piracy, the organization is very much the tool of the major labels and publishers who have famously never really cared about the artists in the first place."
 
It's good to see this coming out in the open and the real RIAA and who they represent revealing itself.