A message from Courtney........
Dear Fellow Recording Artists,
I'm writing to ask you to join the chorus of recording artists who want us
all to get a fair deal from the record companies. R.E.M., the Dixie Chicks,
U2, Alanis Morrissette, Bush, Prince and Q-Tip have called me with their
support and we need your participation as well.
There are 3 basic facts to all recording artists should know:
1. No one has ever represented the rights and interests of recording artists
AS A GROUP in negotiations with record companies
2. Recording artists don't have access to quality health care and pension
plans like the ones made available to actors and athletes through their
unions.
3. Recording artists are paid royalties that represent a tiny fraction of the
money their work earns.
As I was working with my manager and my new attorneys on my lawsuit with the
Universal Music Group, we realized that the most unfair clauses in my
contract applied to ALL recording artists. Most importantly, no one was
representing artists in an attempt to change the system.
Recording artists need to form a new organization that will represent their
interests in Washington and negotiate fair contract terms with record
companies.
Here's what you should know:
THERE IS NO ONE WHO REPRESENTS RECORDING ARTISTS
Recording artists don't have a single union that looks out for their
interests.
AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) has a contract
with major labels for vocalists and the AFM (American Federation of
Musicians) has a contract for non-singing musicians and session players.
If you're in a band, your singer is represented by a different union (AFTRA)
than the rest of your group (who are represented by the AFM).
AFTRA negotiates contracts for TV and Radio performers. They don't pay very
much attention to the recording business; it's not their priority.
The AFM acts like band members are sidemen and session players because that's
mostly who the union represents.
Record companies like this system because neither union represents all art
ists. AFTRA and AFM only negotiate session fees and other minor issues for
the singers or the "sidemen."
Who looks after our interests in Washington? Until very recently, Congress
believed that the RIAA spoke for recording artists.
The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is a trade group that is
paid for by record companies to represent their interests. The Napster
hearings last summer and a few other issues have let Washington know that NO
ONE speaks for recording artists right now. We have their attention and must
act quickly to make sure artists have a voice.
RECORDING ARTISTS DON'T HAVE A SAFTEY NET
Compare yourself to actors and baseball players. Like the music business, the
film and the sports industries generate billions of dollars in income each
year, but those industries offer far better benefits to the men and women who
create their wealth.
The Screen Actors Guild offers a fantastic health care plan to its members.
That health plan is paid for by the contracts that SAG has negotiated with
film studios.
The baseball player's union has negotiated a pension plan that ensures that
NO major league player ever finds himself without an income.
Why shouldn't recording artists get the same benefits?
RECORDING ARTISTS DON'T GET PAID
Record companies have a 5% success rate. That means that 5% of all records
released by major labels go gold or platinum. How do record companies get
away with a 95% failure rate that would be totally unacceptable in any other
business?
Record companies keep almost all the profits.
Recording artists get paid a tiny fraction of the money earned by their
music. That allows record executives to be incredibly sloppy in running their
companies and still create enormous amounts for cash for the corporations
that own them.
The royalty rates granted in every recording contract are very low to start
with and then companies charge back every conceivable cost to an artist's
royalty account. Artists pay for recording costs, video production costs,
tour support, radio promotion, sales and marketing costs, packaging costs and
any other cost the record company can subtract from their royalties.
Record companies also reduce royalties by "forgetting" to report sales
figure, miscalculating royalties and by preventing artists from auditing
record company books.
Recording contracts are unfair and a single artist negotiating an individual
deal doesn't have the leverage to change the system. Artists will finally get
paid what they deserve when they band together and force the recording
industry to negotiate with them AS A GROUP.
Thousands of successful artists who sold hundreds of millions of records and
generated billions of dollars in profits for record companies find themselves
broke and forgotten by the industry they made wealthy.
Here a just a few examples of what we're talking about:
Multiplatinum artists like TLC ("Ain't 2 Proud 2 Beg," "Waterfalls" and "No
Scrubs") and Toni Braxton ("Unbreak My Heart" and "Breathe Again") have been
forced to declare bankruptcy because their recording contracts didn't pay
them enough to survive.
Corrupt recording agreements forced the heirs of Jimi Hendrix ("Purple Haze,"
"All Along the Watchtower" and "Stone Free") to work menial jobs while his
catalogue generated millions of dollars each year for Universal Music.
Florence Ballard from the Supremes ("Where Did Our Love Go," "Stop in the
Name of Love" and "You Keep Me Hangin' On" are just 3 of the 10 #1 hits she
sang on) was on welfare when she died.
Collective Soul earned almost no money from "Shine," one of the biggest
alternative rock hits of the 90s when Atlantic paid almost all of their
royalties to an outside production company.
Merle Haggard ("I Threw Away the Rose," "Sing Me Back Home" and "Today I
Started Loving You Again") enjoyed a string of 37 top-ten country singles
(including 23 #1 hits) in the 60s and 70s. Yet he never received a record
royalty check until last year when he released an album on the indie
punk-rock label Epitaph.
Think of it this way: recording artists are often the writers, directors and
producers of their own records. They write the songs, choose the producers
and engineers who record their music, hire and oversee the photographers and
designers who create their CD artwork and oversee all parts of video
production, from concept to director to final edit.
Record companies advance money for recording costs and provide limited
marketing services for the music that artists conceive and create. In
exchange, they keep almost all of the money and 100% of the copyrights.
Even the most successful recording artists in history (The Beatles, The
Eagles, Nirvana, Eminem) have been paid a fraction of the money they deserved
from sales of their records.
This is a very big and very important project and we're in the early days.
Here's what we're looking for:
1. Artists who are willing to speak to the media to publicly lend their
support to the idea that recording artists need an organization that
represents our interests in Washington and with the record companies. We also
would like you tell your managers and attorneys that you support this cause
and that you expect them, as your representatives and employees to do the
same.
2. Anyone who can tell us specific stories about how artists have been ripped
off by record companies like the ones I told above. We're going to have to
educate the public and the media and Congress and the only way we'll do that
is by giving them examples they can relate to.
NOW is the time for action.
Artists like Garbage and N*SYNC have joined me in questioning bad contracts
and have also gone to court to change the system.
Record companies have merged and re-merged to the point where they can no
longer relate to their artists.
Digital distribution will change the music industry forever; artists must
make sure they finally get their fair share of the money their music earns.
We need to come together quickly and present a united front to the industry.
Your managers and attorneys will probably tell you not to rock the boat and
not to risk your "relationship" with your record company by taking a stand.
Most attorneys and managers are conflicted. Almost all entertainment law
firms represent both artists and record companies. Lawyers can't take a stand
against record companies because that's where they get most of their
business.
Even the best managers often have business relationships with labels and
depend on record companies to refer new clients.
Think about Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam's stand against TicketMaster.
Everyone knew he was right and yet no other artist took a public stand
against a company that we all knew was hurting our business because our
managers and attorneys told us it would be a bad idea.
Attorneys and managers are your employees. Make sure they know how you feel
and that you want them to publicly support the idea that the terms of
recording contracts are unfair and cover too long a time period. You also
want them to support an organization that will negotiate health and pension
benefits for all recording artists.
Artists have all the power. They create the music that makes the money that
funds the business. No one has ever harnessed that power for artists'
collective good.
And remember something equally important: Actors had to fight to end the
studio system that forced actors to work for one employer and baseball
players had to strike to end the reserve clause that tied a player to one
team for his entire career.
Even though "experts" predicted economic disaster once actors and athletes
gained their freedom, both the film business and baseball have enjoyed their
greatest financial success once their talent was given its freedom.
Join us now in taking a public stand. Your name will help get the attention
that artist's rights deserve. If you're willing to speak to the media or
testify before Congress, you can help make our goals a reality.
Do it for yourself, for your children and do it for the artists who inspired
you to make music in the first place.
Email us : HERE
Give us your stories and your support. Tell us we can add your name to the
list of artists who support this organization. And let us know how to contact
you directly as we move forward on this project.
If you're interested in learning more about my case with Universal, visit my
manager's website: HERE
You can download a copy of our cross-complaint and press releases that
describe the issues we're taking to court.
MTV apologizes after teens sue
SANTA MONICA (AP) -- "MTV apologized Thursday to two 14-year-old girls who
said they were splattered with feces when an act defecated on stage during a
taping of the music channel's "Dude, This Sucks" show.
"This is a terrible incident. It was unintended and we regret that it
happened," Brian Graden, the cable channel's president for programming, said
in a statement.
He added that the episode would never be aired and that he had taken steps
to see that such an event never happens again.
"We are sorry if these women were hurt. It is certainly never our intention
to hurt anyone," he said.
Graden said the network had just learned that the girls are suing MTV,
adding that the company "will respond accordingly through the legal
process."
The teen-agers said they were standing next to a stage on Jan. 21 at the
Snow Summit Ski Resort in the San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles,
watching a two-man act called Shower Rangers during videotaping of a "Snowed
In" segment of the MTV show.
"Without warning or explanation the two Shower Rangers turned their
backsides to the audience, both opened a flap on the back of their shorts,
exposing their naked buttocks," the girls' attorney Gloria Allred said.
"Before they could say or do anything, the Shower Ranger whose buttocks
faced them bent over, spread the cheeks of his buttocks and emitted a spray
of fecal matter," the lawyer said.
Monique Garcia and Kelli Sloat of Big Bear Lake are seeking unspecified
general, compensatory and punitive damages, claiming intentional infliction
of emotional distress, negligence and battery.
"All of a sudden I was smelling something disgusting and I started to gag. I
looked around at my friends. They were covered in something. As I looked
down at myself, I realized I was, too," Garcia said during a news conference
at Allred's office.
"We believe that subjecting children without their knowledge and consent and
without notice to their parents to such an outrageous and indecent act is
completely unacceptable and intolerable," Allred said.
The teen-agers "want to send a message that this type of act goes far beyond
the bounds of decency and that neither MTV nor any television network should
ever allow any similar disgusting incident to take place in the future,"
Allred said. "
Copyright © The Sacramento Bee
|
Dear Fellow Recording Artists,
I'm writing to ask you to join the chorus of recording artists who want us all to get a fair deal from the record companies. R.E.M., the Dixie Chicks, U2, Alanis Morrissette, Bush, Prince and Q-Tip have called me with their support and we need your participation as well. There are 3 basic facts to all recording artists should know:
1. No one has ever represented the rights and interests of recording artists AS A GROUP in negotiations with record companies
2. Recording artists don't have access to quality health care and pension plans like the ones made available to actors and athletes through their unions.
3. Recording artists are paid royalties that represent a tiny fraction of the money their work earns.
As I was working with my manager and my new attorneys on my lawsuit with the Universal Music Group, we realized that the most unfair clauses in my contract applied to ALL recording artists. Most importantly, no one was representing artists in an attempt to change the system.
Recording artists need to form a new organization that will represent their interests in Washington and negotiate fair contract terms with record companies.
Here's what you should know:
THERE IS NO ONE WHO REPRESENTS RECORDING ARTISTS Recording artists don't have a single union that looks out for their interests.
AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) has a contract with major labels for vocalists and the AFM (American Federation of Musicians) has a contract for non-singing musicians and session players.
If you're in a band, your singer is represented by a different union (AFTRA) than the rest of your group (who are represented by the AFM).
AFTRA negotiates contracts for TV and Radio performers. They don't pay very much attention to the recording business; it's not their priority.
The AFM acts like band members are sidemen and session players because that's mostly who the union represents.
Record companies like this system because neither union represents all art ists. AFTRA and AFM only negotiate session fees and other minor issues for the singers or the "sidemen."
Who looks after our interests in Washington? Until very recently, Congress believed that the RIAA spoke for recording artists.
The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is a trade group that is paid for by record companies to represent their interests. The Napster hearings last summer and a few other issues have let Washington know that NO ONE speaks for recording artists right now. We have their attention and must act quickly to make sure artists have a voice. RECORDING ARTISTS DON'T HAVE A SAFTEY NET Compare yourself to actors and baseball players. Like the music business, the film and the sports industries generate billions of dollars in income each year, but those industries offer far better benefits to the men and women who create their wealth. The Screen Actors Guild offers a fantastic health care plan to its members. That health plan is paid for by the contracts that SAG has negotiated with film studios.
The baseball player's union has negotiated a pension plan that ensures that NO major league player ever finds himself without an income.
Why shouldn't recording artists get the same benefits?
RECORDING ARTISTS DON'T GET PAID
Record companies have a 5% success rate. That means that 5% of all records released by major labels go gold or platinum. How do record companies get away with a 95% failure rate that would be totally unacceptable in any other business?
Record companies keep almost all the profits.
Recording artists get paid a tiny fraction of the money earned by their music. That allows record executives to be incredibly sloppy in running their companies and still create enormous amounts for cash for the corporations that own them.
The royalty rates granted in every recording contract are very low to start with and then companies charge back every conceivable cost to an artist's royalty account. Artists pay for recording costs, video production costs, tour support, radio promotion, sales and marketing costs, packaging costs and any other cost the record company can subtract from their royalties.
Record companies also reduce royalties by "forgetting" to report sales figure, miscalculating royalties and by preventing artists from auditing record company books.
Recording contracts are unfair and a single artist negotiating an individual deal doesn't have the leverage to change the system. Artists will finally get paid what they deserve when they band together and force the recording industry to negotiate with them AS A GROUP.
Thousands of successful artists who sold hundreds of millions of records and generated billions of dollars in profits for record companies find themselves broke and forgotten by the industry they made wealthy.
Here a just a few examples of what we're talking about:
Multiplatinum artists like TLC ("Ain't 2 Proud 2 Beg," "Waterfalls" and "No Scrubs") and Toni Braxton ("Unbreak My Heart" and "Breathe Again") have been forced to declare bankruptcy because their recording contracts didn't pay them enough to survive.
Corrupt recording agreements forced the heirs of Jimi Hendrix ("Purple Haze," "All Along the Watchtower" and "Stone Free") to work menial jobs while his catalogue generated millions of dollars each year for Universal Music.
Florence Ballard from the Supremes ("Where Did Our Love Go," "Stop in the Name of Love" and "You Keep Me Hangin' On" are just 3 of the 10 #1 hits she sang on) was on welfare when she died.
Collective Soul earned almost no money from "Shine," one of the biggest alternative rock hits of the 90s when Atlantic paid almost all of their royalties to an outside production company.
Merle Haggard ("I Threw Away the Rose," "Sing Me Back Home" and "Today I Started Loving You Again") enjoyed a string of 37 top-ten country singles (including 23 #1 hits) in the 60s and 70s. Yet he never received a record royalty check until last year when he released an album on the indie punk-rock label Epitaph.
Think of it this way: recording artists are often the writers, directors and producers of their own records. They write the songs, choose the producers and engineers who record their music, hire and oversee the photographers and designers who create their CD artwork and oversee all parts of video production, from concept to director to final edit.
Record companies advance money for recording costs and provide limited marketing services for the music that artists conceive and create. In exchange, they keep almost all of the money and 100% of the copyrights.
Even the most successful recording artists in history (The Beatles, The Eagles, Nirvana, Eminem) have been paid a fraction of the money they deserved from sales of their records.
This is a very big and very important project and we're in the early days.
Here's what we're looking for:
1. Artists who are willing to speak to the media to publicly lend their support to the idea that recording artists need an organization that represents our interests in Washington and with the record companies. We also would like you tell your managers and attorneys that you support this cause and that you expect them, as your representatives and employees to do the same.
2. Anyone who can tell us specific stories about how artists have been ripped off by record companies like the ones I told above. We're going to have to educate the public and the media and Congress and the only way we'll do that is by giving them examples they can relate to.
NOW is the time for action.
Artists like Garbage and N*SYNC have joined me in questioning bad contracts and have also gone to court to change the system. Record companies have merged and re-merged to the point where they can no longer relate to their artists.
Digital distribution will change the music industry forever; artists must make sure they finally get their fair share of the money their music earns.
We need to come together quickly and present a united front to the industry. Your managers and attorneys will probably tell you not to rock the boat and not to risk your "relationship" with your record company by taking a stand.
Most attorneys and managers are conflicted. Almost all entertainment law firms represent both artists and record companies. Lawyers can't take a stand against record companies because that's where they get most of their business.
Even the best managers often have business relationships with labels and depend on record companies to refer new clients. Think about Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam's stand against TicketMaster.
Everyone knew he was right and yet no other artist took a public stand against a company that we all knew was hurting our business because our managers and attorneys told us it would be a bad idea. Attorneys and managers are your employees. Make sure they know how you feel and that you want them to publicly support the idea that the terms of recording contracts are unfair and cover too long a time period. You also want them to support an organization that will negotiate health and pension benefits for all recording artists.
Artists have all the power. They create the music that makes the money that funds the business. No one has ever harnessed that power for artists' collective good.
And remember something equally important: Actors had to fight to end the studio system that forced actors to work for one employer and baseball players had to strike to end the reserve clause that tied a player to one team for his entire career.
Even though "experts" predicted economic disaster once actors and athletes gained their freedom, both the film business and baseball have enjoyed their greatest financial success once their talent was given its freedom.
Join us now in taking a public stand. Your name will help get the attention that artist's rights deserve. If you're willing to speak to the media or testify before Congress, you can help make our goals a reality.
Do it for yourself, for your children and do it for the artists who inspired you to make music in the first place.
Email us : HERE
Give us your stories and your support. Tell us we can add your name to the list of artists who support this organization. And let us know how to contact you directly as we move forward on this project. If you're interested in learning more about my case with Universal, visit my manager's website: HERE
You can download a copy of our cross-complaint and press releases that describe the issues we're taking to court.
- bill 4-06-2001 4:00 pm
MTV apologizes after teens sue
SANTA MONICA (AP) -- "MTV apologized Thursday to two 14-year-old girls who said they were splattered with feces when an act defecated on stage during a taping of the music channel's "Dude, This Sucks" show.
"This is a terrible incident. It was unintended and we regret that it happened," Brian Graden, the cable channel's president for programming, said in a statement.
He added that the episode would never be aired and that he had taken steps to see that such an event never happens again.
"We are sorry if these women were hurt. It is certainly never our intention to hurt anyone," he said.
Graden said the network had just learned that the girls are suing MTV, adding that the company "will respond accordingly through the legal process."
The teen-agers said they were standing next to a stage on Jan. 21 at the Snow Summit Ski Resort in the San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles, watching a two-man act called Shower Rangers during videotaping of a "Snowed In" segment of the MTV show.
"Without warning or explanation the two Shower Rangers turned their backsides to the audience, both opened a flap on the back of their shorts, exposing their naked buttocks," the girls' attorney Gloria Allred said.
"Before they could say or do anything, the Shower Ranger whose buttocks faced them bent over, spread the cheeks of his buttocks and emitted a spray of fecal matter," the lawyer said.
Monique Garcia and Kelli Sloat of Big Bear Lake are seeking unspecified general, compensatory and punitive damages, claiming intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence and battery.
"All of a sudden I was smelling something disgusting and I started to gag. I looked around at my friends. They were covered in something. As I looked down at myself, I realized I was, too," Garcia said during a news conference at Allred's office.
"We believe that subjecting children without their knowledge and consent and without notice to their parents to such an outrageous and indecent act is completely unacceptable and intolerable," Allred said.
The teen-agers "want to send a message that this type of act goes far beyond the bounds of decency and that neither MTV nor any television network should ever allow any similar disgusting incident to take place in the future," Allred said. "
Copyright © The Sacramento Bee
- bill 4-06-2001 4:09 pm [add a comment]
When they start using toilet paper we can call them sellouts.
- jimlouis 4-09-2001 1:48 am [add a comment]
Something smells here--besides allegedly sprayed fecal matter. I looked up "Shower Rangers" on Google, Dogpile, and the MTV search engine. Nada. The whole thing sounds like an '00s version of the "Frank-Zappa-crapped-on-stage-and-Captain-Beefheart-ate-it" folklore of the '70s, but here there's not even a real band. Just some publicity for MTV's dumb "Snowed In" program. As long as we're being gratuitous, here's the girls:
- Tom Moody 4-09-2001 2:10 am [add a comment]
Like, ohmygawd.
- jimlouis 4-09-2001 2:12 am [add a comment]
The version I always heard was that Zappa crapped AND ate it. Another one went that Black Sabbath stomped on a crate of baby chicks during a show.
- steve 4-09-2001 7:59 pm [add a comment]
...and Ozzie ate the head off a bat...
- jim 4-09-2001 8:05 pm [add a comment]
The bat incedent did happen, but it was done before a board of record executives, not a screaming throng of fans (actually as I remember it, there was never much screaming at Sabbath shows, most of us just sat there motionless)
A V-1 special went into great detail on the story, they interviewed Ozzy who said he went to a doctor afterwards inquiring about the possibility of having contracted rabies)
- steve 4-10-2001 6:38 am [add a comment]
I searched for nought a link to Dr. Mumbazo (a Joe Coleman alter ego - plenty Coleman/no Mumbazo). Mumbazo geeked lab mice as perfomance art in the 80's. He started the act while in the punk band Steel Tips in the 70's.
- bill 4-11-2001 2:38 am [add a comment]
didnt gibby master bate??
- Skinny 4-09-2001 9:30 pm [add a comment]
Well sure, but we're talking about on stage...
Somebody stop this thread before it's too late.
- jim 4-09-2001 9:41 pm [add a comment]
It's always too late.
- jimlouis 4-10-2001 1:10 am [add a comment]
The thing about the baby chicks is TRUE! A friend of mine's friend said he saw it!
- Tom Moody 4-10-2001 1:29 am [add a comment]
the dixie chicks ?
- bill 4-10-2001 2:43 am [add a comment]