AfterDawn: News

In slightly surprising move, according to insiders in music business, world's biggest record label, Universal Music Group (owned by French Vivendi) has increased the amount of royalties it pays to its artists from Internet downloads.

According to analysts, the higher royalty payments are an effort to match the increasing pressure from artists who have said for some time now, that they need to be compensated more fairly from Net downloads.



UMG's deal will be retroactive to January 1st this year. UMG will pay about 20 percent higher rate for songs that are included in artists' albums than those released only on singles. Royalty rates, in some cases, can be upto twice as much as they currently are for artists who work under contract with UMG.

With the new policy, an artist may now hypothetically get about 15 cents on a single downloaded for about one dollar, experts estimated. But this depends on each artist's individual contract.

Source: Reuters via Yahoo!

Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 18 Oct 2002 15:45