said by Brownbay:I don't think there is any levy on blank media or mp3 players/recorders etc...
There once was... but quite a few people threw a bit fit and it was taken off. They way I found out was when i went to Best Buy to buy some blanks and an mp3 player... I asked the cashier if there was any "music tax" and she said no. I checked the bill as well and only PST/GST were charged. BUT... it's quite possible that this 'music tax' is built into the price.
Can anyone confirm is there actually still is a 'music tax/levy' in place?
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At 7:42 AM -0800 3/9/05, Kirk wrote:
>This says that when I buy a 60 GB iPod, I pay EUR 23.92 (incl. VAT) as a tax
>that is collected by SORECOP, some sort of organization like the ASCAP that
>distributes money to artists. Theoretically...
At 12:23 PM -0800 3/11/05, Geoff wrote:
>But also, I go through a fair bit of media, including a few hard
>drives (for network backups) and a lot of blank CD-R and DVD media.
I'm not sure if this applies to DVD media but in the US music CD-R
media (but not Data CD-R media. (yes I know its the same thing, but
look at the labeling next time.) as well as CD burners carry a
licence fee/tax for the same purpose, that goes to the artists.
I'm not sure if this applies to DVD media but in the US music CD-R
>media (but not Data CD-R media. (yes I know its the same thing, but
>look at the labeling next time.) as well as CD burners carry a
>licence fee/tax for the same purpose, that goes to the artists.
Only a (tiny) portion goes to the artist. The majority is supposed to
go to the "rights holders," who are usually not the artists, if it's
distributed at all. Here's the deal as I understand it:
In the US, these "license fee/tax" are royalty funds which are
supposed to be paid by the manufacturers of digital audio recording
gear and media (tapes, CDs, DVDs, anything which can store audio).
The system was set up under the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992.
In reality, these fees are not paid by the manufacturers, but by
consumers, and now I'll just set the ethics and implications of that
aside (shove shove thump!) as a different topic.
Anyway. These royalties, once collected, are divided into two funds.
A third of the money goes to the Music Works Fund, and two-third goes
to the Sound Recordings Fund.
The bigger Sound Recording Fund is for "interested copyright
parties," which theoretically means the artists and the
rights-holders. But the breakdown is amusing. About 2.6 percent goes
in an escrow account jointly managed by the AFM (American Federation
of Musicians, e.g. "The Musicians' Union") and "copyright parties"
for distribution to "non-featured" musicians. Another 1.3 percent
goes into an escrow managed by "copyright parties" and AFTRA
(American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) for
non-featured vocalists. The remainder goes 60 percent to rights
owners and 40 percent to featured artists.
The smaller Musical Works fund is subdivided into a Publishers
subfund and a Writers subfund.
"Interested copyright parties" are supposed to voluntarily work out
how these funds get distributed within the groups, but the reality is
that performance rights organizations like ASCAP and BMI rep most of
the artists clamoring after the Musical Works fund, and big media
conglomerates rep themselves or proxy through groups like the RIAA.
Disputes are handled before a Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel,
which doles things out according to how the recordings were
distributed, which means broadcast and sales.
And there's the catch: the data used in the arbitration process -
broadcast performance and sales - are not collected by disinterested
objective third parties. Instead, they're collected and/or published
only by polling organizations and/or distributors, who have financial
interests in reporting these numbers in different ways. These numbers
are the subject of much controversy, rarely add up, and seemingly
bear little resemblance to any reality with which any living person
is familiar. Without diving in, I'll just note artists who own their
own copyrights seem to have remarkably few metered performances,
while artists who've signed away everything to giant media
conglomerates are astonishingly popular. And the way industry
accounting works, in many cases any money due to the artist goes
straight to the label's pockets anyway to pay off "label debt" owed
by the artist.
Artists do not have to have BMI or ASCAP (or whatever) represent them
at the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel: they can represent
themselves or appoint some other party to represent them. However, if
you don't represent yourself or appoint someone, you're SOL.
I do know artists who've received money via these mechanisms, and,
no, they could not use the funds to buy a cup of coffee. I haven't
personally seen a penny.Yes Canada pays Either a duty tax or a vat tax as well.
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