Record Companies Rip Off Musicians? Say it ain't so!

The suit, filed at a federal court in Manhattan, claims Sony has failed to live up to a contract requiring that it pay its musicians half of the net revenue it receives from licensing songs to download services like iTunes and Napster.

Sony has been paying the aging rockers less than that amount, in part because their record deals predate the existence of legal music sales over the Internet.

According to the suit, the record company is treating digital downloads like traditional record sales, rather than licensed music, triggering a different royalty deal.

Under that old rubrik, the record company deducts fees for the kind of extra costs they used to incur when records were pressed on vinyl, including packaging charges, restocking costs and losses due to breakage.

ANd here they go saying they are out to protect the interests of those very same musicians when they go after file sharing. However, as long as THEY own the file sharing, as in the case of Napster, then it's ok to rip the musicians off.

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More things that just piss me off