Universal increases royalties on legally downloaded music


jab1981 was kind enough to point us to an article on Yahoo! News about the Universal Music Group increasing the royalties it pays artists on downloaded music.



Universal, home to Sheryl Crow, Sting and Limp Bizkit, has increased its online royalty rate and stripped out some charges, a move that could effectively double payments to artists for songs downloaded on the Internet, the sources and experts said.

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The higher payments reflect an effort by the music conglomerate to meet artists' demands for greater transparency in accounting while enlisting their support in an ongoing campaign aimed at squelching online music piracy.

Under the deal, which is retroactive to Jan. 1, Universal will pay a higher "album" rate for song downloads to artists under contract. Royalties paid on songs that are part of an album are generally about 20 percent higher than the royalty paid on a song released as a single, music attorneys said.

"This looks like it would increase royalties substantially, possibly as much as doubling the amount, but it will vary from artist contract to artist contract" said Jay Cooper, a music attorney.

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"This comes as a result of artists' unhappiness with the deductions the record companies were taking for regular sales and applying to downloaded sales," Cooper said.

"It's also a good faith attempt by the company to respond to certain artists' complaints to get them to work with the labels in building a real download business," he said.

In my opinion it's a good attempt to create a 'download business' but would you be willing to pay to download music files?

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Source: Yahoo! News

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