[OreoCookie]

A few days ago, FAC has been founded. No, that's not a Marxist guerrilla organization fighting for independence in the South American jungle, it stands for Featured Artsits Coalition. They fight for more rights for artists that include provisions and ideas which sound very reasonable to me:

• Artists retain the ownership of their music, labels only get the right to market their music. Such a license (as opposed to transfer of copyright) should be limited to at most 35 years. Music that isn't marketed can be offered to other companies.
• More participation in sharing revenues. Very often record companies would get royalty fees every time a song/piece of music is used whereas artists do not.
• Artists are given a voice and not just multinational labels.

I'd love the idea that artists will profit from honest consumers and on the other hand, that it's easier for consumers to be honest (e. g. that they don't have to bootleg songs that will not be released).

As far as I can tell, most of the artists (if not all) are from the UK, but it has quite a few prominent members, from Iron Maiden to Robbie Williams.

[Doofy]

I agree with their basic premise. However, I've been working this way forever so it strikes me that the folks signed up to this just didn't read their contracts properly and have the appropriate BS struck. I know that this is certainly the case with Robbie, in at least one contract he signed.

[OreoCookie]

The important point to me is that artists have finally started to organize and lobby, because most of the things we've heard up until now was from the recording industry whose interests not necessarily coincide with those of artists.