![]() In Sweden they make up 91% of digital revenues.Subscription services are the fastest growing area in digital music.Streaming services will be the next step for global music consumption,” he says. He is now being asked to travel around the world to give presentations on how music streaming has transformed the record industry in his country. “At international meetings, people looked at me like I was something the cat dragged in because I represented Sweden, where piracy had destroyed the market for everyone.” “We were the worst in the class,” says Per Sundin, managing director for Universal Music in Sweden at his office in the capital. The numbers also represent a big turnaround for a nation that used to have one of the highest rates in the world for unauthorised downloads and was home to the notorious file-sharing site The Pirate Bay. It was a figure most countries could only dream of, with global music trade revenues increasing by just 0.2%, the first rise since 1999. I have to have a side job in a bar as well to make a living” Plaintiffs should not be handicapped in these tasks.”Į-mail: Twitter: it comes to getting the worth of your work, these streaming sites are definitely not good. UMG also believes that the “true, disguised purpose in seeking the artist names is to help evaluate their case for settlement purposes.”Īccording to the court documents, the plaintiffs tell the judge, “It is ironic that UMGR continues to press for more information about how Plaintiffs will calculate their damages, but seeks here to deprive Plaintiffs of important data Plaintiffs can use both for internal analysis of class certification theories, and to illustrate for the Court available methods for calculating damages for any class or subclass. In the case involving Eminem music referenced above, UMG asserts that “when plaintiffs earlier sought private download data for just a single artist, Eminem… he strenuously objected, and was prepared to intervene until Plaintiffs agreed not to seek such data at all.” UMG lawyers states in a court filing on Friday, “Under plaintiffs’ proposal, plaintiffs’ attorneys and music-industry professionals could review the private financial information of thousands of recording artists with whom they may have adverse relationships, and who have not indicated any desire to be part of any class or to be represented by these attorneys or professionals.” UMG says that “the issue’ here is that the plaintiffs’ attorneys - “all 50 or so of them” - do work in the music industry. The plaintiffs are willing to designate the information potentially handed over as “Attorneys’ Eyes Only,” but UMG is objecting with a noteworthy argument on “third-party privacy interests.” And they’re not willing to settle for data that leans on anonymity such as “Artist #4 downloads and $785 in download revenue in 2005.” The plaintiffs’ lawyers think that having access to data will help them sort through the issues in preparation for certification. Commonality is one of the factors that a judge will consider when deciding whether or not to certify a class action. Not all artists enjoy the same level of success. Not every artist has precisely the same contract. The attorneys for other UMG artists want to repeat the success, which would entitle these artists to collect about 50 percent of collected digital revenue instead of about 15 percent.īut this case is somewhat more complicated given the potential number of artists who have contracts with UMG. At the 9th Circuit, the judges ruled that a lower court had erred by not deeming the label’s agreements with third-parties download providers as licenses instead of sales. The current litigation, in many ways, is a follow-up from a path-breaking 2010 ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals over a dispute pitting Eminem‘s production team of Mark and Jeff Bass against Eminem’s record label, Aftermath (a subsidiary of UMG). The lawyers representing the plaintiffs want UMG to turn over download revenue and volume data tied to particular artists so they are able to come up with a calculation of damages and order the information in an effort to gain class certification.īut UMG is telling a judge that’s not reasonable, and if it happens, the privacy of artists will suffer. ![]() Just how much money is at stake is an open question. The litigation from Rob Zombie and Rick James on behalf of themselves and others under the UMG umbrella seeks substantial damages from the record label’s decision to treat income from downloads off of venues like Apple’s iTunes as “sales” instead of “licenses.” In 2011, a proposed class action lawsuit was launched against Universal Music Group over digital income. ![]() How much do recording artists care if music industry lawyers are allowed to see the amount of money they make from digital downloads?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |