Guardian: Sympathy for the record industry

The primary objection to record companies is always going to be the unequal relationship between an unsigned artist and a major label. Record companies are very fond of charging all costs back to the artist, so that in the end artists may be in debt to the company, even though they had little or no control over the spending. It is particularly sad for young artists who may be naïve when confronted with popstar potential, so they probably don't realise that the when the company is paying for all the freebies and extras, it is actually the artist who ultimately foots the bill. The unequal relationship also enables the company to own the masters, preventing the artist from having future control over their own work. I think there is real potential for legislation to control the contracts, and increase the freedom of the artists. My final objection is to the way record companies increase their margins with each new format that comes along, hoping the changes will obscure the increases. Given current technology it would be possible to allow the buyer to allocate proportions of the profit to the various parties, so if you were liked a label and artist but not the store you could make allocate 60p to the label, 50p to the artist and 10p to the store.