BoingBoing On Warner Dropping DRM

Many articles on Warner Music’s announcement that it will sell non-DRM’ed music on Amazon. My favorite post was written by Cory Doctorow on boingoing. A quote:

Of course, the labels — Warner included — already shamelessly steal from their artists in the realm of digital downloads, through a crooked accounting process. Here’s how it works: artists are generally entitled to a seven percent royalty on “sales,” but are contractually guaranteed a fifty percent royalty on “licensing.” When the labels “sell” you a song online, they actually claim that they’re only giving you a license to the music (and that’s why they can attach all kinds of unreasonable conditions to the transaction — see next paragraph for more). If you’re only getting a license — rather than making a purchase — then 49.5 cents from ever $0.99 track should go straight to the artist. Instead, they get a measly seven cents.

I argue that distributors of music get too large of the share of the pie. Cory’s quote explains that in ugly detail.

I also like Cory’s approach to this topic. When the labels do something good for the consumer, he reminds us of their abuse of the artists. And if the labels did something good for the artists, he would remind us of their abuse of consumer. Of course, I cannot recall the labels doing something good for the artists. Not recently.

Also, I noticed how easy it is to drop the ‘i’ when typing ‘boingboing’. Funny that.