. EMusic

29.04.02 Let my music free on the net.
Joseph Byrd is the author of a couple of somewhat experimental psychedelic album ('The United States of America' and 'The American Metaphysical Circus'), published by Columbia Records in the late sixties. He has not received a penny in royalties and despite repeated requests for reports and accurate figures from 1976 to the present Columbia, now absorbed by Sony, beautifully avoided to provide any document, also foreseeing a remastering on CD of the same album. The composer, at this point he wrote to Marilyn Hall Patel, the judge in charge of copyright infringement of Napster. The artist who now teaches music history at the College of the Redwoods in Northern California, claims not to be not the only one and that there are thousands of other musicians in his condition. Byrd, he writes, that "the record labels pay only what suits him Budgets, but for many artists they are morose … For this to allow them to collect money in our name goes against public interests. Personally I prefer that my music to be shared freely, as long as the situation has changed. " Byrd has never had a contract, and therefore no one was quick to pay, but according to the author his record is still in the catalog, and a little 'time ago the Portishead have asked his permission for a cover. "I do not think it's cynical to say that the entertainment business is so corrupt that nothing can change their business practices, less than a Charter of Rights of Artists, which would need to materialize an audience so furious to ask the Congress of the United U.S. to impose something in Hollywood. But when such a thing never happened '. "