This is not the only time that the music business has played this game, more specifically the RIAA. From 1997-2004 I worked a lot in the world of Hip Hop on a regional scale. I did security for clubs and artist and I was a DJ. Before file sharing exploded, the mixtape was the way that people would get exposed to underground hip hop artist, the most popular being 50 Cent but also many others.
So what the industry would do is to send free music to DJ's from both the worlds of mixtapes and radio. They would beg and plead for you to feature their artist on the mixtape. This is coming from both the A&R's that worked directly for the labels and third parties whose whole job was to find popular mixtape DJ's and give them music. They were hired by record companies as well. So anyway, after you released a mixtape, you would give it to a store at a consignment price. In other words, you would give them a box of CD's and they would sell them a set price depending on how popular you were. Then you come back and split the money, of course bigger DJ's would work out a different deal.
So everyone in the industry is aware of this fact and they play along with the so called "street" rules. But the RIAA would come down and bust these stores for selling bootlegs. These are items that would be cosigned by record labels with artist even hosting the tapes but they would still bust the shops anyway. Legally, there was no paperwork so in the eyes of the law they were bootlegged and if it was the police that came down hard, I would have less of a problem. But it would be the RIAA, basically the record companies would backdoor the DJ's and the mom and pop stores.
This is why I am glad that the music business has taken such a big hit. The people are crooks and as far as I am concerned, they is what they deserve.
> So what the industry would do is to send free music to DJ's from both the worlds of mixtapes and radio. They would beg and plead for you to feature their artist on the mixtape.
After the first time, why didn't folks wise up and say "not without a contract allowing us to create and sell compilations"?
They'd probably ask for royalties and then you'd insist on the standard breakage allowance against said royalties plus the other standard terms that they demand from content producers.
So what the industry would do is to send free music to DJ's from both the worlds of mixtapes and radio. They would beg and plead for you to feature their artist on the mixtape. This is coming from both the A&R's that worked directly for the labels and third parties whose whole job was to find popular mixtape DJ's and give them music. They were hired by record companies as well. So anyway, after you released a mixtape, you would give it to a store at a consignment price. In other words, you would give them a box of CD's and they would sell them a set price depending on how popular you were. Then you come back and split the money, of course bigger DJ's would work out a different deal.
So everyone in the industry is aware of this fact and they play along with the so called "street" rules. But the RIAA would come down and bust these stores for selling bootlegs. These are items that would be cosigned by record labels with artist even hosting the tapes but they would still bust the shops anyway. Legally, there was no paperwork so in the eyes of the law they were bootlegged and if it was the police that came down hard, I would have less of a problem. But it would be the RIAA, basically the record companies would backdoor the DJ's and the mom and pop stores.
This is why I am glad that the music business has taken such a big hit. The people are crooks and as far as I am concerned, they is what they deserve.