No Rock And Roll Fun

RECORD COMPANY BEHAVES IN A NOT-EVIL FASHION: And, its our auld enemy Universal, too. Although the changes in royalty arrangements its making aren't entirely all plaques and ham, but let's not be churlish. Since the major labels screwed bands royally over CD royalties for so long (as late as the mid-90's bands were being asked to take lower rewards to help the 'new' format establish itself), a quick decision on fair recompense for online downloads is good news. So, instead of the measley single-level of roaylty, the musicians on UMG labels will take home an album rate instead - the exact value of this varies from contract to contract, but normally is an extra 25%; the 'new media deduction' has been removed (we're not quite sure what the logic behind this was in the first place, it seems a bit Window Tax style 'made up charge' to us) and the 25% packaging deduction has gone - okay, not especially generous since, erm, mp3s tend not to be wrapped up anyway very much.
So, what are they up to? The Daily Double thinks UMG is motivated to try and win artists round to the fight against Free Music Downloads - at the moment, many acts are making such small figures on legit downloads, it's not costing them anything to encourage Napsterites and Limewirers to sample their wares for free; so, by making the payments per download worth something to them, the logic runs, they'll start to become boring, hectoring sods like Bruce Dickinson and Lars Ulllllrich. We also wonder if the new contracts are being knocked together as a poison pill to discourage other labels from attempting to snap up UMG as the Vivendi-Universal fire sale starts to take hold.