Meet The New Boss. Same As The Old Boss.

Bob Lefsetz’s blog is widely read in the music biz. He’s funny, caustic, and never fears to speak his mind or get in a pissing contest. I have him on my RSS reader.

But his piece on the need for artist support for performance royalties for radio digressed into Choruss and he misses the mark:

Like with this Choruss thing.  Sure, the devil is in the details, but I’ve broken bread with Jim Griffin over this topic, the intent of the rights holders isn’t to fuck college students, but to create a legal avenue for music acquisition that generates revenue to purveyors.  Suddenly this is a foul goal?  Music should be free forever more?  There should be no legal alternative to P2P theft?

But if you read the online prognosticators, this is an evil plot by the record companies, to collect names and add heinous college fees.  How this story has gotten so twisted, I do not know.  But I will say that Choruss has done a bad job of telling its story, of getting the facts of its mission across.  Labels have been hated for so long, having sued their customers, consumers no longer give them a pass, they believe if the labels are behind it it’s a rip-off, it’s faulty, it must be stopped.  So a few bloggers take down the entire mission.

I doubt Bob reads my little blog but I am one of those who does think Chorrus is an evil plot by the record companies. Now Bob is right. Music shouldn’t be free forever and a legal alternative to P2p would be a fantastic shift. But I haven’t seen many people argue that music should be free forever. Striking down that straw man arguement doesn’t make the point.

He’s right again that labels are hated, sued their customers and that Choruss has done a lousy job in telling the story. But what he misses — ironically in a piece on how artists should band together — is that the labels have a long history of ripping off the artists. And that Choruss is a label-run entity at its core.

We need look no further than the 2007 settlement with Napster that yielded a few hundred million to the labels. The New York Post had this line that perfectly sums it up:

What’s more, these sources said that after the labels recouped their legal expenses, there wasn’t much left to pass along to the artists.

Typical.

Choruss would have so much more credibility if it came from ASCAP or BMI or any place other than WMG. I don’t get how Bob can believe that Choruss will be transparently set-up when transpancy is the last thing any label wants. Again, who creates the formula for tracking that determines how much each artist is paid? How much does Choruss take for setting up the toll booth? How long will payments take? And why should artists trust the labels when the labels are the same companies that have screwed them for decades, charging for breakage, no payments for music clubs, late or missing payments for digital settlements, etc.?

Maybe Bob is 100% right. The intent isn’t to fuck college students. But the labels will fuck artists. They’ve done nothing but.

I’m not against Choruss as a concept. Yet. I’m against who is in charge. The best idea in the world run by incompetent crooks will not end well. Yes, the labels need to be on board with such a concept but if they really want traction, they’ll step back and let someone else run it.

You don’t put Tony Montana in charge of the drug evidence locker.