Musicians' Union to sue major labels over veteran acts' digital rights

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/may/20/musicians-union-major-labels-digital-rights

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The Musicians’ Union is planning to take major labels to court in the UK over the royalty rates for digital music paid under contracts signed before the days of streaming and downloads.

Its move follows a legal case in Finland earlier this year, when the sons of a musician from the band Hurriganes won a case against Universal Music for claiming internet rights over music released in the 70s.

The MU assistant general secretary and founding member of R&B/doo-wop band Darts, Horace Trubridge, said the three major record labels “don’t play fair” and “are screwing musicians”.

While Darts don’t earn a lot from their music these days (they released six albums between 1977 and 1984), Trubridge still gets royalty statements from Warner every six months, and his last was for less than £100.

The 12% royalty rate that Darts are currently paid has multiple deductions; Trubridge argues that heritage bands should be on a streaming royalty rate of roughly 30% with no deductions.

Speaking at the Great Escape festival in Brighton last week, Trubridge claimed Warner is deducting costs for packaging, “breakages” and “returns” on his royalty statements for the digital sales of Darts’ music.

“Who’s broken a digital download recently? Who’s returned a stream?” he said. “It’s absurd and record companies think it’s fair to do that. The right that the record company assume ownership of in order to collect revenues from digital service providers didn’t exist when I signed my record contract.”

Darts signed with Magnet Records in the late 70s, which was then acquired by Warner.

The MU is citing the “making available” right, which is an exclusive right for authors, performers and producers of music to allow or prohibit the distribution of their works through online channels. It was implemented in Europe in 2001 after being introduced by the World Intellectual Property Organisation.

Trubridge said his contract with Warner makes an “assumed assignment” of the making available right for his past works, and the MU will be making a legal claim.

“I’m not a lawyer, but common sense surely sees that if two people enter into a contract, one of those people cannot possibly assume ownership of something that didn’t exist at the time the contract was entered into,” he said.

“The Finnish musicians’ union went to court against Universal, and they said, ‘How can Universal assume ownership of a right that didn’t exist when they signed this particular Finnish artist? The courts said, without any question, ‘They can’t’ and they told Universal they don’t have those rights any more. We are going to be doing the same in the UK with a UK artist, and it might be my band that we do it with.”

Warner Music declined to comment.