RIAA’s masters screws artists as badly as plaintiffs

If you’ve haven’t seen it already, get prepared to be disgusted by Jim DeRogatis’ great article about how major labels have been hosing artists over online royalties: A cheap trick.

All the while, the RIAA gleefully champions the poor artists who lose their living because of evil downloaders, never mentioning how the labels that pay off the RIAA are screwing their beloved artists out of huge chunks of profit, basing their royalty calculations on antiquated decades-old laws. Remember how Courtney Love said that she was gonna take on her label and become the Olivia de Havilland of the music industry? Well, that was before she took a big paycheck and backed down from that stance. The lawsuit that artists are now bringing against the labels over this could be just as important if not as important in ending unfair practices that have gone on for decades at the expense of recording artists. For more info and background, also see a previous post I had here about the artist lawsuits.