When is Enough--Enough?

I am so annoyed with how the rich and powerful are so unsatisfied with what they have. They appear to have this insatiable desire to have more and more regardless of the effects on others. And what is so irritating is that they feel they deserve everything they have and more. They are very quick to tell you that they earned everything they own. They worked hard for it. They’ll probably tell you the personal cost it took to get were they are. And, for some, that may very well be true. But when is owning enough—enough. The latest estimates indicate that there are just and handful of individuals or companies that accumulate most of the wealth of the world. I can’t and won’t speak to those incredibly selfish individuals whose only generosity extents to how much they must give away to decrease their tax responsibilities. But I will speak to the “owners” of music rights who are also extremely wealthy and seem to be so unsatisfied with what they have.

Let me start by saying, I’m not referring to the actual creators of the music. They deserve some compensation when someone records, sings or prints their music for profit. And I’m not referring to the artists who play or sing the music, they with the creators should be paid when they play, sing or sell their music. I’m am talk about the “hoarder” of music rights. Many of these are not even creators of music. They are just owners. They want to be paid when someone plays, sing, or records or potentially plays, sing or records the music they might own. They want to be paid if some media format or device could possibly store or play any music they might own. They want to be paid if someone is plays music they might own even if it’s background music for some other service. For example, these music rights owners want to be paid when music is playing in a showroom where cars are being sold. Let’s see. These music rights owners got paid when the artists recorded the song playing in the showroom. They got paid when the company buys the music or service to play the song in the showroom. They got paid when the company buys the device to play the song in the showroom. And they want to be paid when the car company turns on the device or service that has the song on it. These rights owners have been paid at least four times—probably more—just to play a song in a car sales room.

The horrible thing is while these money grabbing owners collect everywhere they can, only token payments filter back to the original music creator. What is—more than—crazy some artists have been paid out right by these rights holders and will never receive another penny for their work regardless of who plays, records or uses it. Now, these rights owners will also tell you that they spend thousands of dollars promoting, distributing, nurturing artists. They really don’t make that much money. Wow! If that were true why would Paul McCartney be willing to spend millions of dollars to buy back the rights to the music he lost control of four decades ago. He can’t just want them for sentimental reasons. He must expect to recover the cost and probably in his life time. Considering his age, that would be a lot of revenue over a very short period of time.

In June of 2016 there was an estimated 1.17 million small businesses in Canada. If even only half of these business were using music in some area of there business and were required to pay only $100/year (which is on the low side) for the privilege of using music. That would generate close to $60,000,000 dollars a year in Canada alone. Imagine the amount of revenue collected in the United States. That amount is just staggering. And this doesn’t include the thousands of community centres, sports areas, performance spaces, and service clubs which must also comply and pay.

How ludicrous would it be if you bought an office desk and then were required pay a “design rights holder” a yearly fee to use that desk because you are making money using a desk they designed? Or purchase wrench to repair cars, and then have to pay a yearly user fee because you are using the wrench for business?

They could turn around and say. Well you are often required to pay a yearly subscription to use copyrighted software. That would be comparable to purchasing the yearly rights to use music. Not!!! Software companies spend an enormous amount of time and money improving their software. So, yearly subscriptions often come with regular updates and improvements to the initial program. It gets better with age. A song on the other hand doesn’t improved with age. In fact, we often want it to be the same as when we first heard it, and can be annoyed when somebody changes it. So, rights companies want to get paid for doing nothing except letting you play their music.

Now paying a regular fee to use music is not that expensive and most companies pass that expense off to their customers. It’s just the thought that in this era where 90% of the population pays most of the taxes that support all the services we have now. While the other 10% position themselves to pay little or no taxes. Then to have these rich companies, who try to avoid taxes, require us to add an additional tariff to our already tax burdened customers is just annoying.

It’s really no surprise that so many are still getting illegal copies of music. Rationalizing that if I must pay a yearly fee to use the music I may as well get the initial song for free. I would rather pay more for the initial song and be done with it.

Now I don’t give crap about the struggling musician and how unfair it is for them. And how we need to help them. Really?! If you write a good song, people will like it, people will buy it and you will make money. Write a crappy song and… Well you know where I’m going. In this day of social media (Facebook, YouTube, etc.) it is much easier to get someone to hear your music. You don’t need some rich executive to promote you on some radio station that has the ears of maybe 10% of a community. Using Social media, you can reach 100% of the internet world—for free.

Now I’ve gotten off track. I should get back to where I was going. I honestly believe these rich property holders have enough. They will still generate enormous amounts of money as artists and musicians create new music and rerecord good songs. They don’t need to burden us with additional user fees. No wait. You’re right. With out those yearly fees, who would pay for the company jet, the yacht, the summer house and that new carbon tax that comes with all those toys. That right. We should. ‘Cause you’ve earned it!