[MagnusDredd]

The solution is to call them and tell them that they've gone too far this time and you're not going to buy their music anymore.
Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
10585 Santa Monica Boulevard
Los Angeles, Ca 90025-4950
phone: 310-441-8600
fax: 310-470-1587
email: webmaster@warnerchappell.com
I called them. I told them I had lots of CDs already, and can simply just buy used ones, or ones from non-RIAA (local/unsigned) bands to suppliment my collection from now on. I told them that I've simply been pushed too far, and that I was telling everyone I knew.
Let them know how you feel.
Mention PearLyrics and any other tool they've shut down, and tell them you're mad as hell that it is gone now.
Mention that you used these lyrics sites to find the song name/artist of stuff you wanted to buy.
Mention that you used these sites to check the lyrics of music your children want to listen to.
Mention that you will not pay for something as inane as finding lyrics, and you don't give a rats ass WHO the publisher is.
Tell them that while some people went on download sprees, you paid for new albums, and that you are disgusted that this is the way they want to thank you.
Tell them that you have a large CD collection already, and can suppliment it with local/unsigned/non-RIAA artists... and that if an RIAA-produced album comes along that is so awesome you have to have it, you'll buy it used.
How many calls, mails, emails do you think it will take til they get the message?

[pdrayton]

I think we actually agree here. And your points are good ones.
But, with the disruption caused by the internet, selling lyrics just isn't going to be a viable business model for most artists.
As much as I respect an artist's creative work, I think it's a waste of time, effort and money to try to stop people from posting lyrics online or accessing lyrics for free online. It's important to know the value of your work and to charge accordingly. But, consumers are the ones who determine the value of work, not the producer. And if consumers don't place value on it you either package it in a way that consumers do value or you move on.
Oh... I think you rephrased something I wrote previously, not "restated" it. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

[MagnusDredd]

In reply to:

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Since a lawsuit against pearlyrics was not actually filed in a court of law they were not in fact sued. Rather they received a cease and desist letter, which may have been a precursor to the filing of a lawsuit, in fact is merely an attempt at communication between parties. Once the letter was received pearlyrics was free to follow it's admonishment, to which they apparently have ceded, or to pursue other courses of action.
The extent to which pearlyrics went to evaluate their options regarding the cease and desist letter is unknown. Perhaps they evaluated all of their options and determined that yielding was the best option available. Further is appears that pearworks, the developer of pearlyrics, is not formulated as an entity that would provide personal liability protection for the author Mr. Walter Ritter, therefore all of his personal assets would be potentially at risk if he continued with pearlyrics.

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The developer was probably afraid that a multi-billion dollar company was going to sue him into bankruptcy, causing him to lose everything he's worked for.
...And frankly, I think he'd probably be correct in that assumption. You simply cannot win these types of cases unless you're wealthy or have an attourney working pro-bono, regardless of how groundless the company's claims are.

[wheat]

In reply to:

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don't most lyric writers get a share of the ASCAP performance fees and album sales royalties? Their royalty income has nothing to do with published lyric sheets (or sheet music).

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Yes and no. You've touched on a central point of how musicians earn income. It's widely misunderstood.
Most people get paid wages. They work at one job for 40 hours, and the company cuts them a check for $500 and that's all the pay they ever receive for those particular 40 hours of work, and they get it as soon as the work is completed.
The music industry does not work like that. A person writing or recording a song does NOT receive wages. When a band records an album they BORROW hundreds of thousands of dollars from the record label to pay the costs of making the album and the marketing campaign to sell it. At that point they are less than broke, they are in debt.
They don't get paid anything until the record company has sold enough records to pay off the debt. Then they get a few cents for each album sold. About a year after the album comes out, the band may receive quarterly checks that reflect their percentage of sales.
In the meantime, there are other ways of earning a few cents here and a few cents there:
Record sales (mechanical rights)
Sheet music sales (publishing rights)
Royalties for radio airplay (airplay rights)
Royalties for when part of the song is played as part of a TV program or in a motion picture (synchronisation rights)
Royalties when other bands perform the song live (performance rights)
Negotiated contracts to use the music in a Broadway-style play (grand rights).
Each of these "rights" is formally guaranteed by law. I have a college degree in music business (from the 90s) and this is how the business and the law dictate that a songwriter earns money. The presence of the Internet is dismantling all this, but that's a point for later.
The point is that a songwriter, once having written a song, collects a few cents here and a few dollars there from many different sources. The record company, the publishing company, and the performing rights society (ASCAP or BMI) collect these royalties, compute how much should go to which songwriter, and cut quarterly checks.
So when a songwriter writes a song, he will get little checks from many sources each quarter over the course of several years if he's lucky and the song remains a hit.
Hopefully he will continue to regularly write and publish new songs, so that he'll get himself on a revolving situation where there is always a little money coming in from this song or that song.
See how different this is than the way that most people work?
Would you be willing to do your job if you worked for 40 hours and then your boss said, "I'll pay you a few small checks over the next few years based on whether or not our company continues to earn profit from the particular work you've done in the past week"?
Then they came back and said, "Oh, we're very sorry, but there's this new thing called the Internet, and because of it, our sheet music sales are down 90%. Therefore you're going to lose 10 percent of your income (in small checks over the next five years). Sorry. Can't be helped."
There is another aspect I haven't discussed. Everywhere in the world, except in the United States, if a store, bar or restaurant plays recorded music over the loudspeakers while people shop or eat, the store, bar or restaurant has to pay licensing fees to the performing rights organizations for the use of that music, and the perforimng rights organizations turn around and cut small quarterly checks to the songwriters on their behalf. This was true in the United States until about five years ago, when Congress passed a law that eliminated this mandatory paying of fees in the United States. Congress chose to violate international law in doing this.
I have several friends who are full-time professional songwriters in Nashville. They reported to me that when this new law went into effect, the average professional songwriter lost 30% of his annual income overnight.
How would you like it if your boss came to you and said, "Congress just passed a law mandating that everyone at this company take an immediate, permanent 30% cut in salary. This is in addition to the 10% we lost before. So now your salary is 40% less. You'd better get a second job if you want to feed and clothe your children."
We haven't even discussed the issue of how peer-to-peer file sharing has decimated CD sales. Or how, contrary to what most people think, virtually all musicians LOSE money on live performances and touring. Formerly, touring and performing live were undertaken as a cost because they stimulated record sales. But they don't anymore, so far fewer musical acts can afford the high cost of touring and performing live.
Of course you'll point out mega-star bands like U2 or Metallica that do in fact make large sums of money from touring and playing live. But these situations are very, very rare. Most musicians just scraped by as it was, and today, many are leaving the music business and getting that day job so they can feed their families.
Everybody on these forums seems concerned about protecting and encouraging the pace of technological innovation. I'm a musician and a computer technician, and I have to tell you, I am much more concerned about protecting and encouraging musical innovation and art and culture in society. You can take all the computer innovation and dump it into the ocean as far as I'm concerned if it means you can save music.

[wheat]

In reply to:

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Or, you could listen to the lyrics and write them down (for free!). Was this illegal? Or is it simply illegal to distribute these lyrics?

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Exactly right. As a listener, you have the legal right to write them down for your own use for free. But distributing copies to other people is illegal.
Songwriters and publishing companies have a legal right to make income by selling sheet music and lyric books. If anybody infringes on that right by giving copies of lyrics away for free, then the songwriters and their publishing companies have the right to sue for damages and lost income.
Decades ago, if people bought tickets to an opera or a Broadway play, they would also, separately, in the lobby, purchase a pocket-sized book called a libretto. The libretto contained all the lyrics and dialog written out. That's another way that the company putting on the show, and the songwriters, would earn a little extra income.

[wheat]

Dude, something "as meaningless as knowing the lyrics to a song"?
You obviously don't know any professional songwriters, do you?
To them, the lyrics are the most important things they have created in their entire lives. They are their art. They are the best they have to offer the world. They are the way by which they make their mark on the world and the way they will be remembered after they die. The lyrics are also the means by which they earn income and feed and clothe their families.
Your comment would be deeply insulting to someone who makes his living writing songs.
I don't know what you do for a living, but I would not presume to characterize your life's work as "meaningless".

[pdrayton]

In reply to:

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Everywhere in the world, except in the United States, if a store, bar or restaurant plays recorded music over the loudspeakers while people shop or eat, the store, bar or restaurant has to pay licensing fees to the performing rights organizations for the use of that music, and the perforimng rights organizations turn around and cut small quarterly checks to the songwriters on their behalf. This was true in the United States until about five years ago, when Congress passed a law that eliminated this mandatory paying of fees in the United States. Congress chose to violate international law in doing this.

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Could you provide an online reference for us? I remember the issue of music being played in bars and restaurants but I don't remember it playing out the way you describe it here.

In reply to:

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I have several friends who are full-time professional songwriters in Nashville. They reported to me that when this new law went into effect, the average professional songwriter lost 30% of his annual income overnight.

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Again, is there any information online that backs up this anecdotal information? And, have you ever met a Delta Air Lines pilot? Talk about pay cuts, those pilots have gone through the wringer! A 32% pay cut in 2004 and a 14% cut this year.

In reply to:

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To them, the lyrics are the most important things they have created in their entire lives. They are their art. They are the best they have to offer the world. They are the way by which they make their mark on the world and the way they will be remembered after they die. The lyrics are also the means by which they earn income and feed and clothe their families.

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So what? What you've described applies to everyone else making a living. We all face challenges and changes in the marketplace. We all have to clothe and feed ourselves and our families. And we all would like to make money from doing all the things about which we are passionate. Nonetheless, we all have to adapt to the realities of the marketplace... including artists.
Lyrics deserve to be copyrighted, but I've yet to see anyone anywhere point to evidence that lyrics, as supplied by pearLyrics (which this thread is based on), amount to any sizable income and have noticeably dropped in sales.

[BobVB]

In reply to:

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Songwriters and publishing companies have a legal right to make income by selling sheet music and lyric books. If anybody infringes on that right by giving copies of lyrics away for free, then the songwriters and their publishing companies have the right to sue for damages and lost income.

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Ok, maybe I've missed it but who sells JUST the lyrics of a song to consumers? How much income does the copyright holder traditionally get from such sales? Are such sales traditionally of any significance what so ever?
Again according to the Constitution, copyrights exist for the benefit of the general public, not the copyright holder. They get it ONLY to reward them for having produced it and so they will get enough money and incentive to keep on producing copyrightable content.
Is it really likely that a lyric writer is going to lose any significant income because the lyrics alone are easily accessible in the Information Age? What traditional sales are being lost because they are available? "Sorry I only want a copy of the score, I can download the lyrics on line." Is that really even a likely scenerio?

[fibercut]

Well I guess they might want to "make" money of lyrics. It just seems they waited real late in the Internet age to stop lyric posting on the web. Now if they made this argument back in the mid 1990's (I want someone to post a new article about a music company stopping lyric post from the 1990s) it would be much clearer. I wouldn't be surprised if the world now sees lawsuits from the RIAA for people just posting a lyric to a song. For some reason this move does not surprise me because my stereotype of the RIAA is they are just stupid greedy people (this has nothing to do with the artists themselves).

[wageslave]

In reply to:

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There is another aspect I haven't discussed. Everywhere in the world, except in the United States, if a store, bar or restaurant plays recorded music over the loudspeakers while people shop or eat, the store, bar or restaurant has to pay licensing fees to the performing rights organizations for the use of that music, and the perforimng rights organizations turn around and cut small quarterly checks to the songwriters on their behalf. This was true in the United States until about five years ago, when Congress passed a law that eliminated this mandatory paying of fees in the United States. Congress chose to violate international law in doing this.

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I'd like to see a source on this too. I'm an amateur musician and there is a local coffeeshop that used to host open-mic nights once a week (this was about 2 years ago). They were contacted by ASCAP, who demanded several thousand dollars a year for performance rights for the songs people played at these open-mic nights. I know this is a little different and it's only anecdotal, but I'd love to see the exact wording of that law.

In reply to:

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We haven't even discussed the issue of how peer-to-peer file sharing has decimated CD sales.

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I don't have any links available right now, but I've seen several studies recently that suggest that CD sales have been decimated by other factors and that P2P actually stimulates sales for non-RIAA artists (because they have distribution channels that didn't exist before). I think that this is ultimately good for the music industry because much of the business of the RIAA seems to be to shove crap down an apathetic public's collective throat and anything that reduces their power is good.

In reply to:

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Of course you'll point out mega-star bands like U2 or Metallica that do in fact make large sums of money from touring and playing live. But these situations are very, very rare. Most musicians just scraped by as it was, and today, many are leaving the music business and getting that day job so they can feed their families.

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This is what the RIAA system is designed to do. It overly compensates a few artists in exchange for a huge workforce of songwriters who dream of "making it big" when they never will. How many A&R guys are making 6 figures off of someone else's music? How many middle managers pull in their 80K from these musicians? If all of this corporate bueracracy could be eliminated from the music industry, musicians would see a lot more profit from their work.
The RIAA is fighting because they sense that their usefulness is passing. The only advantages that a major label conveys an artist over an indie label are 1) high-quality recording space/engineers and 2) massive distribution channels. The first is fading fast with the rise of DAW workstations and DIY types that can produce results as good or better than a RIAA recording engineer. The second advantage is being threatened by the internet and the ease of distribution that it allows.
The RIAA has 2 choices: fight change and cease to exist, or accept change and flourish. They seem to be choosing to fight change. I for one will not be disappointed to see them go. The whole lot of them are just leeching off of artists who will create for the joy of creation.

[wageslave]

In reply to:

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Artists who give their songs out for free as MP3s on P2P networks as a way to leverage getting incremental revenue from other channels would be wise.

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I know you meant this to seem preposterous and self-evidently wrong, but I believe that this is the key to being profitable in the music business in the future. Give away the songs (people will get them for free anyway) and make your money off of merchandising. Some bands are doing this already (although Harvey Danger is the only one that comes immediately to mind, I know there's more).
Why fight the flood? Instead, move with it. Sell high-quality recordings instead of the low-bitrate AAC files that you give away, sell t-shirts and posters, put together profitable tours (smaller areas/venues, if necessary) and pull your profit in from other sources. The public understands that nobody does anything for free and will support the artists that deserve it.
The RIAA is seeing losses from P2P because people download the whole Backstreet Boys or Sum 41 or whatever crap they're pushing now and realize that the album is garbage and don't buy it. Independent labels, however, are making more money than ever since the rise of file-sharing. People have an opportunity to hear music that isn't on the radio or widely available anywhere else and they like the authenticity and buy it. Whenever art becomes a business first and foremost, it loses it's soul.

[realtwang]

In reply to:

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This is what the RIAA system is designed to do. It overly compensates a few artists in exchange for a huge workforce of songwriters who dream of "making it big" when they never will. How many A&R guys are making 6 figures off of someone else's music? How many middle managers pull in their 80K from these musicians? If all of this corporate bueracracy could be eliminated from the music industry, musicians would see a lot more profit from their work.
The RIAA is fighting because they sense that their usefulness is passing.

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I definitely believe there is some truth to this. It's much like the musicians union (which I am a member of). It still benefits the very top, first call musicians, but does next to nothing for the ones in the trenches. They could do so much more for the amount of dues they charge in order for musicians to belong. Organizations like these were originally formed so that vendors (clubs, studios, etc.) didn't take advantage of musicians. Now it seems as if the organization itself is doing just that. Offering no help where we actually need it. I'm sure the RIAA is no different.

[Dan Miller]

The EFF has written an open letter to Warner/Chappell:
http://www.eff.org/d...ives/004246.php

[Scholle McFarland]

Actually, the whole question of "why don't people sue gun manufacturers for crimes then?" isn't a rhetorical one. This legal technique is being used for more than just copyright violations. A number of cities are trying to sue gun makers for "creating a public nuisance through their sale and marketing of weapons that are later used to commit crimes and endanger public safety." New York City has a case in progress right now. See this link.