Well is there nobody that wants to chime in on this topic? This topic probably effects most musicians who want to make it in the big arena of music promotions, maybe even more so than their music itself does. Understanding how copyrights can affect the musician and how the RIAA and Labels associated with them can actually come back and harm the individual musician or Band. Now I'm not suggesting that a musician should not hire a manager and more importantly a musician actually should hire a Music Lawyer even before hiring a Manager. When a Band or musician wants to get their Demo heard by legitimate Labels that is not affiliated with the RIAA, hiring a lawyer may be the most direct way of going about this. These lawyers are already setup and affiliated with many labels and these labels take them more seriously than they would having received a demo from you or your manager. They get this kind of bombardment daily , so when they get one from a lawyer they know, they are more likely to give it some attention. Do some investigating around for a good reliable music lawyer to get your Demo through the door. This is also the best way to protect your copyrighted music with out the built in automatic control mechanism that the RIAA Labels lure you into with their copyright control tactics. You as a musician probably won't be as discouraged about some fellow musicians redoing your music as much as the Monster Labels out there will be.

I believe that copying other musicians work is not only the truest form of flattery and compliment but it also serves as a major means in propogation marketing. This marketing reaches realms you as an individual and even the efforts of a major label could not achieve without it. As long as due credit is given to the original creator, this should be sufficient in helping everybody involved.

Ah but is it ? what really is due credit. Most musicians out there take the stance that if I were to give my music away without some kind of ownership royalty system they believe that others would reap that benefit while they sit back and get screwed out of royalties. They believe if they had the copyright restrictions in place this could never happen. They are probably right, maybe? what do you think? how do we get around this very real hurdle. Could there be a royalty system put into place where it is not so rigid and unfair that basically limits the regular joe musician from being able to use the song in the first place? for example, If I wanted to reproduce a well known song. I would first have to ask permissions from the copyright holders. They would in turn probably allow me to reproduce the tune for a license fee and then another fee for production of so many CD's to distribute. Well the normal daily musician does not have this extra cash laying around for a possible trial and error attempt with someones song. If they just go out and do it without permission this guy gets sued possibly. Why not allow these artists to go out and perform and reproduce these songs and then have some sort of lease system in place that says if your efforts in usage of this song earns a certain amount of money that you then have to pay a revolving percentage based on the amount that is earned from this song.

This system could work if everyone involved was honest, haha. Lets say there is a standard grid royalty percentage based on sales. All Labels must know of this grid payout system in order to get say a license to be a label. They will automatically know what the artists usually will be earning in these sales so then they could manage this royalty payout structure to the other copyright holders. This system could be regularly published and artists could know in advance what a particular song could be leased for on that grid system. So lets say I pick a song. The song won't hurt anybody if I flop with it so there should not be any charge for me using and producing CD's and distributing them. This is a physical cost to me anyhow that I will be putting forward on my own or the label will be. Now if this song sales x number of CD's there would be a percentage grid that is used on a per sales bases. What harm would there be with a system like this and who would really be hurt with a system like this. Call it a "Label Union Rights Extension" to enhance the existing copyright laws. This system could come to be known as the "LURE" System which means exactly that it will lure musicians in, as opposed to repelling them away. A system like this could be good for everyone.

What do you think?

Groove On!!!

Concerning the common phenomenon of copying other people's work, I had a couple of interesting discussions in life, not only with musicians; also with graphics artists, story/poem writers and programmers. The basic point was almost the same in each of those cases:
Someone creates a work (maybe artwork) and wants to sell it for gaining an income or at least a profit - in form of either money or appreciation. The creator then fears that others may copy and spread his work and receive money/tribute without effort. Although the term 'steal' is often used in this context, it's actually not an exact description, because 'steal' pertains to material things like cars, lawnmowers or money, which are unique and can't be duplicated. However, money which is meant for my work but doesn't reach my own pocket can absolutely be defined as stolen. Aggrieved artists could furthermore say: money which isn't even payed for my work (because others have spread my work for free) is also stolen.

Well, everybody wants to survive. Nature gave us skills to help ourself and others by interacting: I do this for you, you do that for me, we both are winning. Normally this system works fine, as long as the transferred values have a physical nature, for example: you give me a cow, I give you three pigs. Or the modern variant: you fix my computer, I give you bucks.

The problem appears when things of interest are NOT having a physical nature, such as inventions, poems/stories, music/movie/graphic ideas or program code. Since they're of ideological kind, they can be seen as templates and therefor axiomatically be cloned to an arbitrary amount of instances.
If someone needs such an object (let's say: a program), he/she may think: why not just copy an instance instead of buying an original (which is a copy anyway)?
Nowadays almost all of these objects are available in binary format (e.g. txt, pdf, mp3, mpg, mov, jpg, exe). Pretty easy and comfortable to get them - a computer with inet connection is all you need.

Apart from easiness of copying there's still another fact which lowers the threshold: It's quite impossible to determine the value of an ideological work.
A carpenter may calculate exactly the material and time, saying "producing this chair costed me 8$, I sell it for 12$", and everyone would be happy to possess this nice robust wooden chair - even the 4$ profit for the carpenter would be absolutely ok.
Now, how would the cost of a song be calculated? Adding the time investment of finding the lyrics, rhymes, melody, chords and writing all down? Time for finding loops online, recording a guitar riff and a singer? Time for mastermixing, exporting, converting and uploading? And what is the prize for 1 hr of composing/sequencing?
Material... yes, there are also 2000 CDs which were burnt. Each one with front booklet and inlay backsheet, which had to be printed... Not to forget our PR, alot of phone calls and rented online advertising...
Ok, independently from any cost calculations we all know that it's pretty much like gambling. If all our CD's are sold out and many visitors have bought our online MP3, we can lean back and smile. On the other hand... 90% of our CDs may collect dust in the music store, and hell nobody wants to pay/download our online MP3. (Well, to be true, there was 1 payed download by a serious guy. But his undutiful son copied dad's iPod and distributed our song to his school class. One weak later our mp3 has been spread illegally all over the States. And Europe. Actually globally.)

Facing all this, it can be said: Yeah, try your luck, go for poker or baccara in the casino, go speculating on stock market, go and publish your music, have a risky life if you want. In case you win, I grant you the success and all the money - in case you lose, don't come by to cry on my shoulder, noone is responsible for your life (which is still a jungle) but you. High expectations means also high damage, it's just your decision.

I know I'm lucky not to be forced to sell my music, but I still got to sell my programs and webscripts for a living, so the above said affects me as well. What do I do, when my work is copied, stolen, whatever? I return offering things of physical nature that cannot be copied... maybe individual guitar lessons, programming lessons or even handcrafty services like repairing wooden things or assembling built-in kitchens.