The wording of the rights retained seems tightly worded: "artists signed to the e-label will retain copyright and ownership of their master recordings" -- I'm not sure if this means that the artist won't keep the rights to the publishing (ie, the song writing), but as labels frequently don't get publishing rights, I'm assuming this is a "less evil" agreement.
My hunch is that Warner is trying to offer a carrot to the super-stars who recently have been recording songs and selling them directly from their web sites, or doing direct deals with iTunes.
I'm not sure where the "3 songs at a time" concept came from, it seems odd to me.
And my favorite line from the article, is when the Warner CEO says "We like government levies when they benefit us" -- finally, some honesty!
No word on how well musicians will be paid, DRM, or other important issues, but we'll be watching this one...
"If the government mandated filtering technologies, we'd be delighted."
The are pro filtering, so probably pro DRM.
--
Regards,
Marco Raaphorst
Posted by: Marco Raaphorst | August 24, 2005 at 08:18 AM
Hmm, perhaps the 3 song thing comes from the singles market where there are generally 3 songs on the CD (1 A side and 2 B sides). The only reason I can think of is to try and hook people on an artist so they will buy more of the artist's music. It's also a mechanism by which they can justify charging more than iTunes et al.
Tim
Posted by: Tim H | August 25, 2005 at 03:12 AM
Hey, I heard your interview on tllts the other day. This is to good to be true! I just bought my first download this morning.
Keep it up!
/P
Posted by: Per S. | August 26, 2005 at 03:45 AM