from the because-that-would-mean-paying-them-accurately dept
The more you learn about the way major record labels work, the more ridiculous it seems. Unlike pretty much every other creative deal making situation, musicians who sign major record label contracts basically hand over all their rights to the label. The label gets the copyright. It gets to determine the type of music the musician plays. It handles much of the marketing and promotion. And… the biggest thing of all is that it handles all the accounting and payments (if there are any). Over the years, that’s resulted in many, many accusations from artists that the labels are flat out lying about how much an artist actually earns. That’s why you hear stories of artists selling millions of albums and never seeing a dime in royalties or of artists suing record labels because of sneaky accounting tricks to hide how much an album has earned.

Continues @http://techdirt.com/articles/20090619/0323015288.shtml