Artist: The Royalty

Singer, songwriter and producer Roy Hamilton II aka Royalty just released his micro-mixtape, The International . It's him doing his take on 5 familiar songs. You may not know him by name or by face but you may recognize some of his work. He co-wrote and co-produced R. Kelly's "Number 13 feat. Keri Hilson. You can check out one of the songs from the mixtape below. The song is a dance spin on Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car"; this song is perfect for the clubs. [...]

• Roy Hamilton III - I Got A Fast Car!!-Fake Blood Remix

Filed under: News , I Fought the Law Sly Stone -- the reclusive and notoriously quirky ringleader of legendary funk act Sly & the Family Stone -- has filed a $50 million lawsuit against his former business manager and associates, according to media reports. Among the charges are fraud, breach of contract, unjust enrichment and converting and misappropriating the artist's royalties and assets for more than two decades. "On the eve of the Grammys that celebrate the best of our artists, we see a dark [...]

The Busy Bee Cafe in Mablethorpe has got so tired of the PRS demanding a £1000 licence to have the radio on that they've dumped their tranny in favour of a Florida based podcast which uses rights-free music instead. It's a cash-conscious move - the PRS are probably hoping that it doesn't start a trend, or anything.

You might have seen this last week on Gizmodo, and at the time James M pointed it out to me but it fell off my 'to do' list - Tim Quirk from Too Much Joy shares his digital royalty statement from Warners . It's best read against the backdrop of that repeated mantra from the majors, insisting that everything they do they do for the artists: Our IODA royalties during that time had totaled about $12,000 – not a princely sum, but enough to suggest that the total haul over the same period from our [...]

Warner Bros admits to screwing its bands.

Today's Guardian business pages have an interesting but limited piece on Spotify this morning; one which contains two statistics which are supposed to be impressive but, erm, actually aren't. Number one: But last week the blogosphere was alight with speculation about Spotify's model, fuelled by reports in its home market that it paid Lady Gaga – through the Swedish performing rights society STIM – a mere 1,150 kronor (£100) for a million streams of her song 'Poker Face'. Spotify stresses that payments to STIM only represent a fraction of the money received by rights [...]

Although Lily Allen is mostly wrong on copyright, it's with a degree of respect that I wave my hands at her latest blog yelling "no! no! no!" At least she's debating, sort-of, something, with her call for people to pay more for music. On MySpace. A site whose popularity was first, largely, built on sheaf after sheaf of unlicensed music. Perhaps Lily doesn't see her use of MySpace, and delivery of traffic there, as a reward for past behaviour, but it does smack of someone using a platform built from profits of crime to [...]

If only music publishers ran supermarkets, how sweet it would be. They'd have the little pieces of cheese on sticks as samples, and after people had a bite, out from behind the deli counter would come the publishers, seeking recompense for the consumed cheese. "But this is a sample, isn't it?" the customers would stutter. "Yes, it's a sample. And the samples cost. So cough up..." Or, in other words: Publishers are now seeking to be paid when people listen to the 30 second sample on iTunes . Oh, and in [...]

According to a post on fan site True To You, Morrissey would like it to be known that he "has not received a royalty from EMI since 1992" and "last received a royalty payment from Warners ten years ago." This...

The music biz can be so confusing. That's why legendary former MEGADETH bassist Dave Ellefson tapes a video podcast called The Rock Shop where he disucsses various topics related to the music biz. He just posted a great 5 minute talk explaining the intricacies of royalties and getting paid in general by a label. Check [...]

The Guardian asks a pertinent question: what happens to all the damages handed over by unlicensed music users who get shaken down by the RIAA and similar organisations ? Obviously, in most cases, the legal costs far outweigh the gains to be made, but sometimes there is a profit. What then? Well, of course, the moneys raised are shared with the artists whose work has been "stolen", isn't it? Because that's what it's all about, right? Protecting the artist? Oh, don't be so silly : A spokesman for the [...]

Uh-oh - more trouble as the music industry tries to pretend that infinite supply won't drive down prices. EMI publishing have refused to accept the hard-won new PRS rate for online streaming, and so henceforward will opt out of having PRS collect their royalty earnings for them. "We are not currently satisfied that the new rates - in particular the minima - proposed by PRS for Music for streaming services are appropriate", said EMI Music Publishing's general counsel for Europe Antony Bebawi. Quite how EMI hopes to get any value from collecting its [...]

A gang have pocketed £200,000 in bogus royalties, according to police, after downloading their own music from iTunes and Amazon.com using stolen credit cards. Police arrested nine people in London, Birmingham, Kent and Wolverhampton following a joint international investigation with the FBI that began in February. A London DJ was among the gang, who police believe uploaded music to iTunes and Amazon.com before spending £460,000 to buy the tracks using stolen credit cards. The gang allegedly compiled 19 songs to put online and then used distribution service Tunecore to upload the tracks to websites before downloading them at [...]

They're trying to sound upbeat about it, but clearly, the new online music rate accepted by PRS is an acceptance that their insane, overvalued pitch has been totally routed: Royalty collector PRS For Music has bowed to websites' pleas for smaller charges, more than halving its on-demand streaming music rate from £0.0022 to £0.00085 per track, effective July 1 and lasting for three years. So, the blustering about demanding larger shares of money (albeit money that isn't there) has blown away, and the rights agency have had to accept that online music for personal [...]

Aside from Tupac, there's only one artist I can attest to being so heavily prolific 15 years after his death.  That artist is none other than Frank Zappa , the goatee-wearing, toliet-sitting composer who released over sixty records during his lifetime, with copious amounts of unreleased music trickling out by the year. These unreleased efforts are due in part to Zappa's widow Gail, who aims to keep Zappa's legacy alive.  Though collectors and superfans are delighted by her tremendous efforts, there's a dark side to this story.  Just recently, the widow has been lobbying for performance royalties [...]

Well, this certainly isn't going to help our case to get Wilco to re-hire Jay Bennett: Wilco Ex-Member Sues Jeff Tweedy For Royalties. In the Washington Post's coverage of the lawsuit, they link to our 2002 interview with Bennett wherein...

• WILCO - Cars Can't Escape

Naturally, the RIAA aren't so stupid as to push Guy Hands into the battle to persuade Congress to pass a radio royalty for recorded music. Instead, they find a slightly more p=heart-rending spokesperson : Jack Ely, the singer whose 1963 version of "Louie Louie" still makes the rounds on oldies radio, lives with his wife in a mobile home on a horse ranch in Oregon. Ely says they share $30,000 a year from her teacher's pension and his Social Security checks. They are paying down a mortgage. So sometimes it bothers Ely, 65, when he [...]

Rotterdam had afgelopen Koninginnenacht de primeur. Iedere track die Richie Hawtin in zijn set draaide werd via zijn Twitter account gemeld. Bryan McDade van het Minus label programmeerde een applicatie die automatisch de trackinformatie uit Traktor doorstuurt naar Twitter. Hierdoor kunnen twitteraars op de dansvloer of thuis realtime op de hoogte blijven van de gespeelde tracks. De applicatie heeft ook tot doel om op deze manier royalties in de clubs beter te structureren. Als er iemand in Rotterdam is geweest die hier iets van heeft meegekregen laat het dan even weten in de reacties. [...]

Have you been cutting back on your trips to the pub because of recessionary fears, or just because you like to mix your own drinks? Were you the sort of person who would go to bars where music was playing, if only to drown out the drunken conversations of the people next to you? Well, the company responsible for collecting music royalties in the UK would like to blame you for less money falling into their pockets. But the amount that PRS collected from pubs and clubs dropped 2% to £39.7m as [...]

There is some soothing balm for the PRS in the news that Google and GEMA have failed to reach a royalty agreement: GEMA's demands are 50% higher than PRS are looking for , which does at least mean that the PRS is no longer the organisation with the slimmest grasp on what online music is really worth. As in the UK, music videos are now being switched off all across YouTube.de.