Posted in From The President, Press Releases by A2IM
To all-
A commerce goal of A2IM is to achieve economic parity for our music label members. We strive for that every day in many ways. The purpose of this e-mail is to discuss economic parity for our associate members, professional service providers which should be rewarded for their support and equitable treatment of our member community.
A2IM associate members like Pandora, to name one, which is by far the #1 webcaster in terms of non-on demand music streams in the U.S. (and not coincidentally, they play the largest percentage of independent music, almost 40%) paid approximately $28 million in sound recording royalties for last year and, via SoundExchange, delivers parity to indie artists and labels.
Conversely, there are services like LimeWire, Myxer and many more that, by the nature of their services, make it too easy for consumers to violate copyright and/or compensate independents in a sub-standard fashion or not at all. Many services promise “promotion” in lieu of compensation (as recorded music sales continue to plummet, in part due to these services). In some cases services may also use the guise of user generated content databases containing our labels’ artists’ music as an excuse for any infringements. These services know that many of our music label members do not have the time and capital required to monitor the web for infringement nor to take the subsequent legal action.
