Posts by Simon Grigg
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Hard News: A fiction of unalloyed darkness, in reply to Tim Michie,
because they're ever so inscrutable those Chinese. Gah.
But it runs, doesn't it? 'There be monsters over the sea' has worked since the dawn of time. Now it just makes the NYT.
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to Steve Barnes,
True but sad.
No, true but good. I'd rather have a percentage that adjusts with the price of an item than being reliant on a fixed return. Ask anyone signed to an old fashioned recording deal in the early 1960s how it felt to be on a farthing a record in the mid 1970s.
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to Steve Barnes,
So why not just price per track/minute, just like any other bland commodity.
Percentage based royalties are almost universal these days, no matter what commodity you look at.
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to Kumara Republic,
UK: 14 tracks; US: 12 tracks*, wasn't it, generally?
Yes 11 or 12, but as you say, only ten from the UK album. The singles made their publishing off the single release.
They had a big scrap with Berry Gordy when one of his tracks was gonna get passed on the album cut. He refused (surprise....)
Was that before the double-album prog rock/concept album era?
It was still happening in the 90s. When we issued the OMC album in the US with a hidden bonus track we only got paid on 10. We had to pick one not to get paid on, as the bonus was the horrible US recorded I Love LA cover and Randy Newman always gets paid.
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to Steve Barnes,
So, the more tracks you put on an album, the less money you get. Hey, I knew these record companies were greedy but that is bizarre.
Not really. There is a set amount returned from an album sale and the pie doesn't get any bigger by adding more songs. The statutory amount is based on a percentage of dealer price. It works in your favour if you only wrote the B side of a single - you get half the money despite the fact that people are buying it for the A side (or hit track if we are talking CDs or bundled digital singles).
In the US it used to be limited to 10 songs on an album, so if you had 11 then one didn't get paid. Hence all those shoddy US Beatles and Stones albums with only 10 tracks.
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Multiplied, surely?.
No divided.
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to nzlemming,
I wouldn't go that far:
He didn't write that or any of his 'hits'. Lionel Bart was the composer.
rather than a wider interest in the welfare of copyright holders?
Or the broader intent of copyright.
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to Sacha,
I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt (he's a hellava nice guy who has a done a huge amount for countless artists over the years) and assuming his words were taken out of context :)
I do wonder though about these people the media/content industries wheel out time and time again when a copyright extension is touted. In the UK it's always dear old Sir Cliff who's contribution to the songwriting craft is nil.
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to nzlemming,
Mechanicals are the songwriting payments made when a CD or other format is sold, and it's a statutory percentage of the price ( I think its still 8% of wholesale but about to rise). So if an album wholesales for $10, the writers get 80c divided by the number of tracks.
The performance royalty is another thing altogether. There are two copyrights:
1) the songwriters. This gets collected by APRA and after a small admin fee sent to the listed publisher.
2) the master, i.e . the recording. This gets collected by PPNZ (mostly unless the label is not a member) and then sent out to copyright owners of the recording after an admin fee). How much this is, is determined by various deals struck by PPNZ and broadcasters (and other users) from time to time.Ray would get none of 1) because he didn't write either She's A Mod (written by an obscure UK rocker called Terry Beale) or Till We Kissed (written by 60s NY team Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil). He did write some of his other 60s hits but they would get zero airplay these days, so income from those must be around nil.
He would be entitled to a share of 2). This is sent to the artist in a couple of ways.
a) via the label. They pay 50% of what they receive as miscellaneous income to the artist (less unrecouped amounts). However NZ majors have simply never done this in the past. So...
b) PPNZ instituted something called The RAP fund, and they pay a percentage of their income to NZ artists directly.I imagine b) would be Ray's income stream from the recordings. The amount would be not inconsiderable given the gold airplay both those songs get on stations like Coast, but I doubt it would pay the bills. And also, any monies would need to be divided amongst the 5 members of RC & The Invaders or their estates.
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to Russell Brown,
Boom!
And correct me if I'm wrong, but Ray's big hits, the ones they still play, were all written by other people.