It's Not Appropriate

While scanning news for work, I saw this article on the RIAA and copyright, where a Sony representative said $150k for a song violation is appropriate. To be fair, he acknowledged that the jury picks the awards, and he is asking for a message.

This is the McDonalds coffee case in reverse. A message should be sent, but not at $150k per song, or even incident. Ruining a few people's lives won't stop piracy. More reasonable behavior would.

I was thinking about this the other day as I heard a song on the radio and thought it would make great bumper music for a collage of images and thoughts. But it would be for work, so it would be for commercial purposes. I'd pay some money for the use of the song, but how much?

I've tried to get blanket licenses based on audience, but the RIAA, and other music organizations make it so hard. Thousands for a single song, and tens of thousands for their catalog, despite the fact that I'd be using a small portion, 10-20sec, of a song.

On one hand you could look at my audience, and typical downloads, which are about a few thousand a day, so I'd pay maybe $10-30 a day, or call it $0.01 a user. Maybe that's low, and I could pay $0.10 a user per song, but I have no control over that. If I hit a popular topic and ended up with 100,000 views, I'm not sure I should pay $10k.

In fact, there's an argument that if I create lots of exposure, and subsequently credit, I'm helping sell and grow the song. Something that the RIAA conveniently leaves out. I'm acting as a radio station, providing them benefits.

My thought is that licensing, by the song or catalog, ought to be more reasonable, and fixed, requiring credit or something else that might promote the song. In that way there's a chance that someone will go to iTunes or the Zune marketplace, or even Wal-Mart, and just buy the music.

The idea is to sell music, so help people market for you, at a reasonable price. Let them make a YouTube video or parody for $5 and upload it if it's non-commercial. Let podcasters like me buy the rights for $20 an episode, or some regular yearly rate.