14 DAY TRIAL // Recently, artist Eminem filed a lawsuit against Apple, but prominent copyright lawyers warn that pursuing such a lawsuit would e unwise. Not only is the lawsuit not likely to progress very far, but the real target for artists is to challenge the record labels. As usual when it comes to digital music, Apple is merely in the way.
Eminem's lawsuit, like so many others hopes to challenge the record label's claim that they have the rights to negotiate Internet sales on their behalf. The core of the problem is the revenue that artists receive from each sale of digital music. Artists receive about 16 cents per album sold at retail outlets, while the music publisher gets 9.1 cents. In contrast, artists receive about 4.5 cents on every 99-cent digital download and actual retailers such as Apple make very little per song. "This particular issue is a real sore spot in the industry," Jay Rosenthal, legal counsel for the Recording Artists' Coalition told ZDNet. "It's the gorilla in the room, and you're going to start seeing more of these suits as you start to see layoffs and cutbacks."
Although on paper, the artist makes more money through selling of digital tracks than they do by selling a CD, many are still unsatisfied. One of the core reasons is that digital music buyers rarely buy more than a few tracks from any single album, and thus less money is made. Buyers on the other hand enjoy being able to buy tracks and not be forced to buy a whole album for just the one or two tracks they actually like. In order to bypass this, the labels have long tried to get Apple to agree on a variable pricing structure in order to charge more for those few tracks that do sell, but buyers are not at all enthusiastic about the prospect.
Among the other artists who have expressed discontent over their cut of download revenues are Cheap Trick and The Allman Brothers Band, who jointly filed a lawsuit last year that accused Sony BMG Music Entertainment of shortchanging them.