Sam Yannotti
Professor Hest
2/23/12

"What's The Buzz In The Biz"

My article mainly centers around many lawsuits in the music industry having to do with production companies being "cheated" out of royalties. By "cheated" they mean the uneven distribution of royalties between themselves the production company, and the major recording labels for whom they are usually employed by. The article mainly deals with a lawsuit involving the production company "FB Productions" pressing charges against rapper "Eminem's" "Aftermath Record's", but references many identical cases which are occurring at the same time.

"FB Productions", argues that the royalties of popular "Eminem" songs when it comes to digital downloading are unfairly weighted towards "Aftermath Records". The ratios of the splitting of the profits are believed to be as horrid as 80% to 20% from which the recording company collects a significantly heavier cheque.

"FB" and the many other production companies pressing charges against major record labels such as "Aftermath", argue that the royalties should be divided equally amongst the production companies and the record labels. However, the record labels have somewhat of a different idea of the division of royalties and argue that the "unbalanced" ratio simply lets the recording companies pay for misc. other companies and workers whom are employed by the label itself.

However, the cracks of "Aftermath Records" have been exposed after some of the royalties were tracked down and showed that "Aftermath" has used the majority of their profits on other lawsuits from previous years, and hence an unfair ratio was established.

However, there is still no set verdict in the "FB productions" vs "Aftermath recording" case, and a much awaited trial is scheduled for April 4th.

MY TAKE ON IT:

I side unanimously the all production companies whom are pressing charges against the major recording labels such as "Shady Aftermath". My view on a production company being scammed out of royalties by a record label is that I find it rather ironic. The production company is obviously the hand that feeds these recording labels, so why would anyone bite the hands that feed them. The split of ANY ROYALTIES including "Royalties of Digital Downloads", (Which will OBVIOUSLY be the way of the future) should be split 50-50 between production companies and record labels.