LOL No, probably not... It'd also be a pain in the ass. Often the concept of rights holder is pretty muddied as different companies will have different rights. The whole system is fucked up and, I say this as someone who loves copyright, our entire copyright system is fucked up. For starters, it's way too long. Then, the concept of rights ownership is just fucked, as you may have rights to use a snippet for a specific purpose or you might have rights to reproduce the media on physical media - but you can't broadcast it.
The venues do pay into the system to cover the rights for live performances, but that money never makes it to the real artists.
It's pretty much bullshit and the wrong people are being paid.
Yeah its pretty much a big pyramid scheme, but to get the exposure you have to play the game
It gets worse. A lot of the music we play has rights held by someone's estate - 'cause they're fuckin' dead. There may then be hundreds, literally, of people who have a vested interest in the rights.
For starters, copyright should expire when the artist is dead - or a 10 year period, which ever is longer. That way, if a great artist comes along and releases two albums before putting a bullet in their skull, the heirs can collect on it for a little while.
Copyright should only have one original rights owner. They should be able to release rights for performance, recording, commercial, etc...
Fair use should be expanded - or at least actually enforced. You can't play a song for educational purposes, legally. Now, they're not suing all the people on YouTube, but they certainly do go after people.
DMCA should be abolished, written again by people who aren't in it for the money, and only apply for those ten years or lifetime duration.
I'd go so far as to say that copyright, if you choose to use it, should have a 'must-transfer' rule - meaning you have a right to pay to use it. We should probably establish a maximum rights value, just to ensure they don't say it's $10,000,000,000 to play a 30 second clip, thereby locking things away from the public.
The whole system is fucked.
I usually signed away my rights, in favor of a single payment immediately instead of royalties, but I'm actually entitled to some royalties. It'd be a giant pain in the ass to collect them, so I don't bother. I doubt they'd be all that much.
if you were in need of money you might look into getting the royalties
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