Former indie promo man David Sherbow shares a very different perspective in this rebuttal to our recent Op-Ed from Music Manager Forum CEO John Webster on the a proposed iPod tax:
Through my independent promotion company I have broken over 100 No. 1 records over the past 10 years. I have managed and booked lots of acts in my life. There is not much I don't know about record companies and what they do.
Lately, record companies especially are doing everything they can do to manipulate ISP's and device manufacturers to pay what amounts to a tax to help subsidize creativity and facilitate the future for musical artists everywhere. Does Mr. Webster or anyone else for that matter know exactly how those at the top of the value chain, i.e. record companies, plan on filtering this potential billions of dollars collected by them down to artists at the bottom of the value chain? Mr. Webster does not speak to this.
I have seen a lot of recording contracts in my 30 years in the business and I don't remember seeing any clauses anywhere that will cover how an artist signed to a particular label may share in these types of proceeds that will be generated from this new "tax."
I have never had faith in the integrity of large record companies distributing their proceeds fairly. Maybe some of that faith will be restored if I can really understand how record companies plan to share this money with their artists and what procedures will be put in place to insure a fair and equitable distribution of these new funds. - David Sherbow
