Real Numbers From Music Industry. More evidence that looking at real financial numbers for the music industry is key to gutting their entire position on digital music sharing. We should not begrudge publishers legitimate fees for legitimate services, but we should never have let them recast the file sharing argument as one of protecting artists. It's a patently bullshit argument and will continue to fall under close scrutiny.

Who Gets Hurt When You Pirate Music?.

There's a case study in the NYDaily News -- apparently a propos nothing but this Sunday's Grammy Awards -- that breaks down the cash flow of a hypothetical hit album by a hypothetical rock quartet. It illustrates all the people that get paid along the food chain, including some odd recoupable record company expenses, like a 25 percent "packaging deduction" and a 15 percent "free goods charge," off the top, most of which the label keeps.

The bottom line is that a gold record (500,000 copies) selling at $16.98 will gross roughly $8.5 million, of which each member of the hypothetical quartet will pocket about $40,000. (The case study doesn't take songwriting royalties into account.)

So for every $16.98 album you rip, you're costing a performing artist about 34 cents, and the lawyers, producers and labels about $16.64. [Over the Edge]

[b.cognosco]

If some kind soul would just setup a service where I could mail the $0.34 to the artist then I think everyone would be happy.  Heck I'd even be prepared to go as far as $0.68... that's a whopping 100% profit! :)