RIAA, DiMA Prove Commitment To Artistic Poverty, Gluttonous Corporate Greed

We all know that the RIAA doesn't represent musicians or bands, it represents the record labels that publish musicians and bands - but the whole "artists' best interest" lie loses another piece of credibility as it seeks to lower royalties paid to artists industry-wide.

The crush comes on the heels of a judicial decision to set rates to determine what songwriters earn for downloaded and streamed music. Not terribly dissimilar to the clusterfrak over royalties that precipitated the writer's strike, the RIAA is at odds with DiMA, its counterpart in representation of digital media companies, over the mechanical royalties each group must pay whenever a song is physically sold or digitally downloaded: they're in a pissing match to see who can be greediest.

Both groups think they should pay less in mechanical royalties, which go directly to songwriters - who depend more heavily on royalties than the bands that perform their songs. They're also trying to ditch royalties from streaming music entirely, claiming that format/medium is analogous to radio, which pays only a "performance royalty."

With this much confusion, I'm willing to hate the RIAA and DiMA on divisiveness alone. Wired's Eliot Van Buskirk clears up some of the smoke:

"... music is bad enough already. Cutting songwriters out of the equation not only means that manufactured bands that reliable sound worse. It also means bands that do their own songwriting will have a tougher time surviving."

The music industry has been in trouble for years. Maybe this is better for the industry in the long run, but even so it smells strongly of petty greed and nose-cutting-off to spite the face. It's also worth noting that DiMA is pushing for even more aggressive cutbacks on royalties than the RIAA - and DiMA represents some faces we usually think of as friendly: Apple, Amazon, Napster, iMeem, Live365, RealNetworks and more. Nobody is your friend.

Artists' best interests? RIAA presses for lower royalties [Ars Technica]