Serious question about Copyright

[malaise]

I was visiting with a good friend who is in the middle of serious grief. She is staying in her brother’s apartment. He is a serious techie.

We were remembering some of the songs her deceased daughter loved and one of her nephews suggested we use the radio on the clearly super smart TV.
So he simply said Echo please play song X and we went on for ages.
How does Amazon not owe the owners of all this music. The same question applies to Alexa and Apple

[DURHAM D]

1. Good question. nt

[malaise]

2. On edit, it wasn't the radio just the internet connection

and the appropriate setup.
It’s not fair.

[dweller]

3. ffs

They don’t even pay taxes … why would they pay the little guys ?
🤨



✌🏻

[rgbecker]

4. There is tons of free music available on the internet...just google what you want to hear.

Amazon's Echo is just finding it on the internet and playing it.

Copyright issues mainly come into play when people are playing the music to make money...that is, selling the music that is free, and not paying the performers or whoever owns the copyright.

[former9thward]

5. If an artist would like to have their music played on a streaming service

they sign with a streaming company which negotiates with Amazon, etc. The artist gets very little. Amazon pays $.004 a stream. So they make 4/10s of one cent every time someone plays their music. For popular groups does it add up? Yes, but for most not so much.

[hurple]

6. Amazon has a huge digital music section

And subscribing to Prime let's you stream a large portion of it anytime anyplace. Like Spotify or pandora.

And for an extra monthly fee they offer even more.

They DO pay the copyrights for the music.

[SergeStorms]

10. That's what I was thinking too.

I'm a prime member and listen to a lot of music around the house using it.

[Takket]

7. most songs are posted for free by the artists/producers on youtube

Also, your friend might be subscribed to amazon music. They have a huge library, as does apple, spotify, etc

[PJMcK]

13. YouTube ain't free

They have to pay licensing fees and anyone posting has to agree to their Terms of Service which cover copyright protected works.

YouTube generates its fees from the advertisements and membership fees. Apple, Spotify and other streaming services pay licensing fees that are distributed to copyright owners.

Legitimate internet music is paid for in one way or another. The songwriter, of course, gets a very tiny percentage of the subsequent royalties. It has always been this way!

[Takket]

15. I meant it is posted free to the end user, not the artist.

Anyone can go on YouTube, search for a song they like, and play it without charge.

“ Apple, Spotify and other streaming services pay licensing fees that are distributed to copyright owners. ”

Did I say otherwise???

[PJMcK]

17. Sorry for the misunderstanding (n/t)

[Hugh P. Saschitt]

8. Amazon pays a very small per-stream fee to artists

I am not sure how it is paid out, possibly to publishers.

[Patterson]

9. Payments are supposed to go to the publisher. The publisher is supposed to pay the songwriter

half what it got. I said “supposed.” Publishers and record labels are notoriously crooked. I’m not sure about the artist getting paid.

[PJMcK]

12. The music business is not as crooked as you think

I've been in this business for over 40 years and I've seen very little illegal behavior. The tiny bit I've seen was the result of either misunderstanding of a deal or negligence in executing a deal.

What you wrote about publishers and labels is dated. It happened in the distant past but today the business is so inundated with lawyers and accountants that large-scale criminality would be nearly impossible to execute.

Among my professional activities, I'm a music publisher for some of Broadway's top songwriters and I've worked with all of the major publishers and record companies. I've never seen anyone cheat.

There are plenty of anecdotal tales of an artist being "ripped off" by their label or management. It's pretty hard to do unless you're not paying attention to your business. Many artists need to be reminded to mind their business carefully. But, in general, it's not how the music world rolls. It would unsustainable if there were wide-spread corruption.

[PJMcK]

11. Performing Rights Organizations collect and distribute royalties

Ascap, BMI and Sesac are the major collection societies in the U.S. There are similar organizations in most other countries.

These organizations charge annual fees to distributors (radio, TV and streaming services) in the form of blanket licenses to transmit the songs in each group's catalog. Through the use of playlists and random monitoring of outlets, the P.R.O.s calculate the approximate number of "plays" that songs get and pay the songwriters and their publishers a pro-rated share.

It's a somewhat sloppy state of affairs but it has been in use since the early 1900s and is continually being revised to try to improve its accuracy.

You may recall that when Apple was developing the iPod, Steve Jobs had many negotiations with record labels and other music executives to sell them on his radically new music system. Jobs needed to have a one-size-fits-all licensing system in order to make Apple Music work. He was relentless and eventually the major music organizations went along with Jobs' plan. Many people in the music industry feel that Jobs' efforts reinvigorated the music business in the new digital world.

So, streaming services pay licensing fees that eventually trickle down to the copyright owners. It's part of the reason consumers have to pay services like Apple Music, Alexa, etc. Other "free" services, like YouTube, charge advertisers for their viewers eyeballs and those fees are used to pay the licensing fees.

This is all kind of general and not specific but it's how it works in the broad scope.

[onenote]

14. Streaming services pay royalties which, in part, flow to recording artists and songwriters

It's a complex system, but broken down to its simplest terms:

There are two separate copyrights in a recorded song. One is the copyright in the musical composition (i.e., the song itself). The other is in the sound recording of that song.

The royalty for the sound recording performance right is set through an entity known as the Copyright Royalty Board, which also sets the terms for the license obtained by paying the royalty. The streaming services pay the royalty due to an entity called SoundExchange, which was set up to represent the record companies and allocate the royalties based on what recordings are performed and how often. The royalties collected by SoundExchange are divided between the record company and the recording artist. A summary of this arrangement can be found here:https://www.soundexchange.com/artist-copyright-owner/digital-royalties/

The royalty due to the owner of the copyright in the musical composition (the songwriter or some entity that has acquired the rights from the songwriter) is paid to a "Performing Rights Society" -- entities established to represent an allocate royalties to songwriters. The best known performing rights societies are ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. The amount of those royalties are negotiated between the performing rights society and the streaming services.

[PJMcK]

18. Exactly correct

Respectfully, the music industry would use different terms to identify the contrasting rights.

1. The copyright in the song, owned by the songwriters and their publisher.
2. The copyright in the Master Recording which can be owned by the label and/or the artists.

We're saying the same thing. It's the language of the industry that I'm highlighting.

[Sympthsical]

16. Services may have streaming rights

I know I get hung up on Alexa sometimes. I have my Spotify account tied into Alexa. When I'm in the kitchen cooking or whatever, I'll say, "Alexa, play this song." Now, the way I have it set up, Alexa should be playing music from my Spotify account. But sometimes she defaults into Amazon's music library instead.

As a result, I'll sometimes get, "Sorry, I don't have that song. Here's something similar . . ." Which is annoying AF. I was trying to get the Popeye movie soundtrack going earlier, and I ended up down some hip hop wormhole after I corrected Alexa a dozen times. Forget it. I played it on my phone instead.