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  • War of the Worlds

    • 10 out of 10
    • Jeff Wayne
    • With the new movie adaptation of H.G Wells' classic Sci Fi invasion tale, War of the Worlds, currently on theater screens everywhere, there's new interest in Jeff Wayne's rock opera version, and it is
  • Abnormal Anonymous

    • 8 out of 10
    • Congo Norvell
    • Very few albums manage to capture snapshots of a quality of life in the manner that Congo Norvell's sophomore record, "Abnormals Anonymous," does.

      Comparisons to the Velvet Underground are

  • Album Of The Year

    • 10 out of 10
    • Brother Love
    • Killer grooves, catchy riffs, edgy vocals with oh-so-just-right layered harmonies, and a drive that will move even YOU out of your chair, Brother Love's initial release is what rock and roll should be
  • Hello

    • 8 out of 10
    • Poe
    • Poe rocked my world with "Angry Johnny" (I want to kill you/I want to blow you/Away) and "Trigger Happy Jack" (Trigger Happy Jack/ You're gonna blow/But I'm gonna get off/Before you go), as powe

  • Gimme Fiction

    • 10 out of 10
    • Spoon
    • Gimme Fiction by Spoon is a terrific album by an Austin band that I was lucky enough to catch on an Austin radio station during a Christmas visit.

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News

Columnist: Artists Should Blame Labels, Not Apple, for Small Download Royalties

Recording artists looking for more money from digital downloads should turn their attentions towards their own labels, rather than targeting Apple in lawsuits over iTunes, wrote Greg Sandoval in an editorial at ZDNet. Eminem’s recent lawsuit against Apple was the impetus for the piece, but Mr. Sandoval delves fairly deeply into the intricate issues that lie between artists, their labels, music publishers, and Apple.

With declining CD sales, labels, artists, songwriters, and music publishers alike are all taking a financial hit. At the same time, however, Apple’s music download sales at the iTunes Store are rising -- Music labels are pressuring Apple to raise prices, while a few artists have sued Apple saying the company doesn’t have the right to sell their music in their own attempts to gain more of the download pie.

"To understand what artists are upset about," wrote Mr. Sandoval, "one has to pick through the complex way they are paid. Artists are compensated on a royalty structure for traditional CD sales. When a CD is sold at a retail store, say at a Wal-Mart Stores outlet, the artist receives about 16 cents (US). The music publisher gets 9.1 cents."

As an example, he pointed out that Cheap Trick has said it earns only 4.5 cents per single download, due to the CD-oriented distribution licensing agreement that the band signed with its labels years ago. That agreement allows the labels to subtract a certain amount from the band’s royalty payment for "breakage," which they do, even on digital downloads --- "breakage" on digital downloads, a medium for which the labels have practically no distribution costs when compared to the CD, cassette, or vinyl formats of years past.

Some artists are looking for a new business model for digital downloads, one in which the artists and labels split revenue after the publishing house and retailer take their cuts.

"If that structure were to apply to downloads," wrote Mr. Sandoval, "the artists and labels would split whatever’s left after Apple, and the publishers takes their cuts. The assumption is that this would lead to more money going into the pockets of the musicians."

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