No CD player, more CD's purchased than ever!

Do you know how this is divided up and paid to composers and recording artists? Presumably there is some account taken of music sales?

Further to this below is a summary of a survey made in 2012:

Results in a nutshell

• Legal private copying is done by every third Finn

• The Finns copied altogether 548-678 million files

per year, which amounts to 100-125 copies per

capita in proportion to the country’s population

• The aforementioned copies are all legal and nonlicensed

private copies that shall be compensated

with a private copying levy under Finnish copyright

law

• Alternate forms of copying (e.g. pirated

material, online purchasing, self-made works)

were separated from the figure above e.g. by

questioning the respondents about the nature and

source of the copies made

• The survey’s design group included

representatives from copyright societies, Nokia,

Elektroniikkatukkukauppiaat ETK (Finnish

electronics wholesalers), and the Confederation of

Finnish Industries

and the distribution decision 2013

The Ministry of Education and Culture's 2013 distribution decision concerning the private copying levy funds collected in 2012   Distributions to individual right owners:   Distributing organisation   Kopiosto ry 1 558 Gramex ry 979 Teosto ry 936 Tuotos ry 235 Total: 3 708 Distributions for collective purposes of the right owners   AVEK, The Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture 1 483 MES, The Finnish Music Foundation 976 Anti-Piracy Centre in Finland 205 The Finnish Copyright Society 73 Finnish Centre for Performing of Literature 61 VISEK, The Promotional Centre for Finnish Visual Arts 21 The Finnish Association of the Deaf 4,3 Total 2 823 The Ministry of Education and Culture will give a decision later 156 Total 6 687

There is a lovely story of the aged Edward Elgar walking in London and finding a busker violinist play Elgar's Salut d'amour. Elgar dug deep into his pocket and found six shillings. He gave them to the busker and told him that he had now earned one more shilling than the composer from the music!

Elgar sold the rights to the music with another few small pieces in his youth for the grand some of five shillings!

ATB from George

Salut d'amour:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4xiFs0q1kU

And the version for small orchestra as well!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ANlp5hIIPA

As mentioned by Harry and others above, whilst I can't get enough of the cheap CDs that are available to us these days, I do feel slightly uncomfortable with the royalty to artists side of things.

If the artists can't make a living from making music, they won't make any for us to listen to, or it will be at a much reduced level at least.

Streaming services such as Spotify make a big play about therevenues they return to the artists, but I'm not convinced they pay very much back per stream.

maybe fine if you are a big artist, but I'm pretty sure the small to medium artists don't get very much in total.

I guess most of the 2nd hand CDs I buy seem to be music that has been made/ released a minimum of 5 years ago so at least they are not depriving young and hungry artists from royalties.

I just try to do my bit by not passing the 2nd hand CDs back into the second hand market once ive bought them (stored away after ripping, of course the only legal way) and try to buy my fare share from my nearest CD/vinyl store.

Dont know what I would do if my local store disappeared, or indeed if new bands didn't bother because it wasn't worth their while.

I guess that's a different thread though.......

More to the topic - according to Nielsen Soundscan's mid-year report, released last week, CD sales in US dropped 19,6% compared last year (also digital album sales was down 11,6%).

Thanks Claus! I've bought a few CDs from Amazon.uk, but the there's a kr 200,- limit which must be taken into account. Amounts higher than that - including shipping will add 20% in toll and also a processing fee of kr 135,- ....

Just for for the record I'd like to say that I always pay for my music and DVDs.

.........and to stay within topic: that streaming is the greatest thing since sliced bread!

That's fascinating stats Osprey.

Streaming seems to be where it's at, just hope the smaller artists get royalties equal to or higher than when it was all about unit sales of whatever medium their music was sold on.

Dear Char,

Elgar certainly earned more from recording for HMV than he did from composing the music he would later record!

Times have changed indeed. And they will continue to change, I am sure. Not always in the nicest direction, sadly. But Elgar wrote music because he felt compelled to do so rather than to become rich, which he never did, though he had a comfortable income once he joined HMV's roster of recording artists.

ATB from George

Without knowing the numbers my guess is that many artists will get most of their income from playing live. This is not a bad thing, unless they urn very littel from playing live. Many times at the concerts I go to the artist will sell their own cd, and I would guess this gives more money than selling one cd in a store.

Claus

Musicians making more money from live performance than recordings?  Who would have guessed?  The recordings were about capturing a singular moment, anyway, rather than a Mondrianesque grid of "perfect" takes….